Meanwhile, Fuji TV was rushing a TV animated series into production for Summer 1999, co-produced by Studio Pierrot and SME Visual Works. It premiered as a one-hour TV movie on June 30, 1999, then continued for 42 more half-hour episodes until September 30, 2000. It did not receive the ratings of the live-action version, which had been gentled into a more believable soap opera (dedicated teacher Onizuka charms his troubled students by being such a Nice Guy), but it pleased the manga's fans by being more faithful to the exaggerated and raunchy action (ex-biker Onizuka charms his delinquent students by being a Badder Ass than any of them).

Ekichi Onizuka, a 22 year-old college dropout, realizes that being a biker is a dead-end proposition and he needs a real job. Becoming a school teacher with lots of hot teen chicks in his class sounds cool. But without accreditation, the only position he can get is in a private school, in a class so viciously unruly that no other teacher will take it. Onizuka shocks the uptight other teachers by treating the students as his pals instead of constantly belittling them. He learns the secrets of their emotional problems and works behind the scenes to correct them. But his unorthodox methods, ranging from taking the guys to girlie shows to beating the crap out of bullies (all wish-fulfillment fantasies for both students and teachers), keep him constantly on the verge of being fired by the PTA and similar constipated do-gooder groups.

Cartoonist Fujisawa has an ugly, warts-and-all art style, featuring lots of close-ups of exaggeratedly grimacing faces with bursting blood vessels. The animation dwells on these, and on making a virtue of such limited effects as vehicles that drive by without their wheels moving. An aspect of the exaggerated teen delinquency which Onizuka must overcome (making GTO rated for 16+) is that he is supposed to be teaching a junior high class. But they are drawn as 17 and 18 year-olds, and are into heavy smoking, S&M fetishism, pornography and other vices. A shy girl embarrassed by her F-cup breasts, which her classmates make fun of, is supposed to be a 14 year-old. Fujisawa/Onizuka's comedic parodies acknowledge real adolescent problems and fears that are usually not mentioned in public, showing that they are no longer laughable when someone is being emotionally or physically hurt.

© 1986 Soeishinsha/Final-Nishijima.

Project A-ko.
Theatrical feature, 1986. Director: Katsuhiko Nishijima. 86 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.99. Distributor: U.S. Manga Corps/Central Park Media.

"This anime classic is now remastered!" The American anime industry is now old enough that early releases are being re-released. Project A-ko (the screen actually shows the title as Project "A"ko) is a genuine classic; one of the early productions actually intended for the new home video market but given a limited theatrical release first, on June 21, 1986. Director/co-author Nishijima and character designer/animation director Yuji Moriyama had been turning out humorous sci-fi soft-core pornography for the home video market. Reportedly they realized that Project A-ko (inspired by the Jackie Chan martial-arts comedy Project A) had the potential to be more than that, and persuaded their bosses to turn it into a general release movie. It put them and animation studio A.P.P.P. Co., Ltd. into the ranks of serious animation producers, and launched a mini-franchise of five direct to video sequels and a comic book. The six anime titles were among Central Park Media's first American releases, with Project A-ko coming out as a subtitled laser disc on July 5, 1991 and video on January 22, 1992, and a dubbed video on January 6, 1993. Image Entertainment released it on DVD on July 6, 1999, but without all the extras on CPM's newly remastered August 13, 2002 release. CPM also has a Project A-ko DVD Collection of all six anime titles for $89.99.

Project A-ko starts with a prologue implying a serious sci-fi drama, then switches to one of anime's first wacky teen comedies. A meteor strikes the Earth, destroying a Japanese city. The opportunity is taken to rebuild it as a perfectly planned community. 16 years later, Graviton City is a lovely futuristic metropolis. Teenagers A-ko and C-ko, best friends, are transferring to a new all-girls' high school. B-ko, the rich, snobbish leader of the school's elite clique, decides that she will win C-ko's friendship for herself. This contest of schoolgirl rivalry is escalated to ridiculous heights because A-ko is an American-style super-heroine, while B-ko uses Daddy's wealth to build herself the ultimate battle-action giant robot. Part of the joke is that the audience cannot understand why either would want the whiny, empty-headed C-ko. Meanwhile, it turns out that the earlier meteor was actually an alien spaceship. The aliens come looking for it and start to conquer Graviton City. (This is a parody of Macross; just one of a fast-paced barrage of anime parodies -- Captain Harlock, Harmageddon, Fist of the North Star, etc. -- that have fans blind with laughter by this point.) The aliens' battle mecha and the Home Defense Force's armor are blindsided by A-ko's and B-ko's super-catfight. Beautiful Graviton City is progressively demolished as the free-for-all spreads throughout the city, each false climax being topped by a greater, to the chipper, bubblegum background score by American pop songwriters Richie Zito and Joey Carbone. If you have not seen Project A-ko yet, do not miss this release.