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50 Fun Facts About Great Teacher Onizuka

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1

Which car, the pride of the vice-principal, keeps getting wrecked in Great Teacher Onizuka?

The Toyota Cresta is crushed again and again, usually because Onizuka lands on it while saving a student falling from the school building.

2

Which Great Teacher Onizuka student is a troubled genius with an IQ over 200 and mismatched eyes?

Urumi Kanzaki has one brown eye and one blue, speaks five languages, and at first turns her brains on tormenting her teachers.

3

Eikichi Onizuka of Great Teacher Onizuka holds a second-dan black belt in which martial art?

Karate backs up a street-fighting past: the former gang leader can fend off several armed opponents at once and shrugs off falls that should kill him.

4

Which Japanese maker built the Z2 motorcycle Eikichi Onizuka rides in Great Teacher Onizuka?

Kawasaki made his 750RS, a bike that first belonged to the gang leader he idolised as a teenager.

5

Which bullied Great Teacher Onizuka student does Onizuka stop from jumping off the school roof?

Noboru Yoshikawa becomes Onizuka's most loyal student, later selling his video-game collection to help cover his teacher's debt.

6

Where does the Great Teacher Onizuka class trip go after Onizuka is framed for embezzling its funds?

Okinawa is his way of making amends to every third-year student, and he is left hunting for eight million yen after the lottery ticket he was counting on proves a fake.

7

Where does Eikichi Onizuka have to live as a condition of his job in Great Teacher Onizuka?

A school storage room on the top floor is his home at Holy Forest Academy, and its door to the roof is how he comes to catch a pupil about to leap.

8

Which manga artist created Great Teacher Onizuka as a sequel to his own biker-gang series?

Tōru Fujisawa grew up in Hokkaido and moved to Tokyo alone at 17 to break into manga, having first hoped to work in animation.

9

What does Onizuka enter shy Tomoko Nomura into in Great Teacher Onizuka, launching her idol career?

A beauty contest is his cure for her low self-esteem: she doesn't win, but television producers notice her and she starts appearing in commercials.

10

Which animation studio, also home to Yu Yu Hakusho, produced the Great Teacher Onizuka anime?

Pierrot's adaptation ran for 43 episodes from 1999 to 2000, and each one was billed as a numbered lesson with no title.

11

Which vice-principal schemes throughout Great Teacher Onizuka to get the new teacher fired?

Hiroshi Uchiyamada spent 29 years working his way up, and only warms to Onizuka after watching him fight to save a dying student.

12

Which popular Great Teacher Onizuka student is the ringleader of her class's war on teachers?

Miyabi Aizawa is the most popular girl in school, and her plots against Onizuka run from blackmail traps to planting stolen money on him.

13

Which Japanese word for biker gangs describes Eikichi Onizuka's life before Great Teacher Onizuka?

Bōsōzoku is the label for Japan's teenage motorcycle gangs, and the 22-year-old Onizuka still calls in his old riding friends when a problem needs muscle.

14

What does Onizuka use in Great Teacher Onizuka to smash the wall between a pupil's parents' rooms?

A sledgehammer through the wall is his first real lesson: the girl's busy parents had drifted apart, and he wants nothing standing between the three of them.

15

Noriyuki Abe, who directed the Great Teacher Onizuka anime, later made which hit series from 2004?

Bleach followed a run of hits for him at the same company, including Yu Yu Hakusho, Ninku and Flame of Recca.

16

Which Great Teacher Onizuka student is a computer prodigy who posts faked photos of his teacher?

Yoshito Kikuchi expects to be punished, but Onizuka instead asks him to fake some celebrity pictures, and he soon becomes one of his first allies.

17

Which old gang partner of Onizuka runs a motorcycle shop and steers him towards Holy Forest Academy?

Ryuji Danma rode beside Onizuka in their teens as half of a feared duo, and still bails him out with advice, drinks and tough love.

18

Which actor played Eikichi Onizuka in the hit 1998 live-action Great Teacher Onizuka drama?

Takashi Sorimachi also sang the drama's theme song, and he returned to the role in 2024, more than 25 years after first playing it.

19

Suguru Teshigawara, Onizuka's obsessive rival in Great Teacher Onizuka, teaches which subject?

Mathematics is taught by a Tokyo University graduate who wears a single white glove as his symbol of perfection and is fixated on a fellow teacher.

20

Which rock band performs Driver's High, the first opening theme of the Great Teacher Onizuka anime?

L'Arc-en-Ciel took the single to number two on Japan's Oricon chart in 1999, and the anime brings it back as the closing song of its last episode.

21

Which Holy Forest Academy chairwoman overrules her staff to give Eikichi Onizuka a teaching job?

Ryoko Sakurai offers him the post after he storms out of his interview, convinced that his unruly character is just what her school needs.

22

Which old friend in Great Teacher Onizuka became a crooked policeman who sells seized evidence?

Toshiyuki Saejima keeps trying to cut Onizuka in on his scams, yet he is the friend who shows up, badge and all, when things turn dangerous.

23

Julia Murai, the young mother of Onizuka's pupil Kunio in Great Teacher Onizuka, does which job?

A crane operator on a building site, she was pregnant with Kunio at thirteen, which is why her protective son bristles whenever Onizuka flirts with her.

24

In the 1998 Great Teacher Onizuka drama, Azusa Fuyutsuki wants to quit teaching for which job?

Flight attendant is her dream in the drama, where she starts out disliking Onizuka; in the manga she is an eager teacher who backs him from the start.

25

In Great Teacher Onizuka, what must Onizuka take just after being shot rescuing a kidnapped girl?

A national exam meant for students decides whether he keeps his job; he arrives wounded, races through the paper and still comes out with the top score.

26

Heihachi Mishima, who makes a cameo in Great Teacher Onizuka, comes from which fighting-game series?

Tekken's scowling patriarch turns up as a former detective who now runs his own company, named the Mishima Zaibatsu just as in the games.

27

Which Japanese comics anthology ran the Great Teacher Onizuka manga from 1997 to 2002?

Weekly Shōnen Magazine had already carried the prequel for six years, and GTO's 200 chapters went on to fill 25 collected volumes.

28

Which major prize did Great Teacher Onizuka win in 1998 in its category for boys' comics?

The Kodansha Manga Award came from the series' own publisher, little more than a year after the first chapter appeared.

29

Which earlier manga follows Eikichi Onizuka's high-school gang days, before Great Teacher Onizuka?

Shonan Junai Gumi ran to 31 volumes of brawls and failed romances, and was sold in English under the title GTO: The Early Years.

30

Which Japanese network first aired both the 1998 drama and the anime of Great Teacher Onizuka?

Fuji TV had one of its biggest drama hits with it: the last episode of the 1998 series drew a 35.7 percent audience share.

31

Class 3-4's trio of otaku in Great Teacher Onizuka are obsessed with which giant-robot franchise?

Gundam is their whole world: they dress up as its mobile suits and nickname a blonde classmate Sayla after one of its heroines.

32

A 2014 Great Teacher Onizuka miniseries sent Onizuka to teach at a school in which place abroad?

Taiwan hosted the four-part co-production, which aired there before it reached Japan and mixes Japanese and Mandarin dialogue.

33

Anko Uehara's mother holds which post that shields her bullying daughter in Great Teacher Onizuka?

PTA president Mrs Uehara tries to have Onizuka sacked for punishing her daughter, until a tape played over the school speakers exposes the bullying.

34

What does Kunio Murai find in his locker, signed only F, in the Great Teacher Onizuka anime?

A love letter sends him chasing the wrong girl, and only after she dumps him does he learn it came from a tall friend on the basketball team.

35

Which US publisher first released the Great Teacher Onizuka manga in English, reading right to left?

Tokyopop made it one of the first titles in its unflipped Authentic Manga line, and published all 25 volumes between 2002 and 2005.

36

In Great Teacher Onizuka, which make of luxury car does Onizuka win in a contest to pay off a debt?

A Mercedes-Benz E-Class is the prize, worth enough to cover the class trip he owes his students, so a scheming pupil sets out to wreck his chances of selling it.

37

Akira, who played Onizuka in the 2012 Great Teacher Onizuka remake, belongs to which J-pop group?

Exile's dancer-turned-actor stepped in after the first choice, Jin Akanishi, was pulled from the role by his management.

38

Which future Boys Over Flowers star played a bullied pupil in the 1998 Great Teacher Onizuka drama?

Shun Oguri was a teenager when the part got him noticed, and four years later he was cast as the bully instead in the school drama Gokusen.

39

In Great Teacher Onizuka, head Ippachi Maruyama is nicknamed after which missionary he resembles?

Francis Xavier led the first Christian mission to Japan in the sixteenth century, and Onizuka simply calls the look-alike head Xavier.

40

Which actress played Azusa Fuyutsuki in the 1998 Great Teacher Onizuka drama, then married its star?

Nanako Matsushima married her leading man in 2001, and the pair returned to their old roles together for the 2024 revival.

41

The sequel manga GTO: Paradise Lost opens with Eikichi Onizuka in which unexpected place?

A prison cell is where he tells his fellow inmates how teaching a class of teenage celebrities landed him behind bars.

42

In Great Teacher Onizuka, gym teacher Hajime Fukuroda challenges Onizuka to what, and loses badly?

A swimming race is the muscle-bound coach's idea of putting the childish newcomer in his place, and it backfires in front of the pupils.

43

In the Great Teacher Onizuka anime, which school nurse turns out to be a former street-racing queen?

Nao Kadena was once the Queen of Hakosuka, and took the nursing job to pay for surgery her brother needed after racing in her place.

44

Which song, sung by its lead actor, was the theme of the 1998 Great Teacher Onizuka drama?

Poison was re-recorded with the band Blue Encount for the 2024 revival special, and the original version returned as the theme of the 2026 series.

45

Which band behind Fullmetal Alchemist's Melissa performs the second Great Teacher Onizuka opening?

Porno Graffitti's Hitori no Yoru takes over as the opening theme from episode 18 and runs to the end of the series.

46

Which voice of Detective Conan's Genta plays Eikichi Onizuka in the Great Teacher Onizuka anime?

Wataru Takagi also voices a Detective Conan policeman who shares his name, and later played Okuyasu in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

47

Which Cowboy Bebop star voices Azusa Fuyutsuki in the English dub of Great Teacher Onizuka?

Wendee Lee, the English voice of Faye Valentine, takes on several GTO roles, including the school's chairwoman and the class's scheming queen bee.

48

Holy Forest Academy, the school in Great Teacher Onizuka, stands in which Tokyo neighbourhood?

Kichijōji, a shopping district in western Tokyo beside Inokashira Park, is where the long-shot hire is sent to tame a class that broke three teachers.

49

Azusa Fuyutsuki of Great Teacher Onizuka is a graduate of which elite private Tokyo university?

Waseda gives her the respectable background Onizuka lacks: he scraped through a bottom-rung college by cheating.

50

Which late gang leader, Onizuka's idol, first owned the motorcycle ridden in Great Teacher Onizuka?

Kyousuke Masaki led the biker gang Onizuka once rode with, and later appears to him in a coma, urging him on to become Japan's greatest teacher.

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