great teacher onizuka (1-11, sub)

did not feel in the mood for studying today - who ever does? - so i watched the first eleven episodes of great teacher onizuka. the first two episodes of this show were a pain, and then it rose up to a level resembling mediocrity. it's a feel-good anime with kinda poor execution. the humor doesn't do it for me that much, and anime cliches abound. for example, playstation games make blip bloop beep sounds like nes games. right after a girl jumps in a pool, she starts crying, and for some reason the tears are marked extremely clearly on her face. when a leader of a bunch of insignificant characters says something, the others just smirk in knowing agreement; you can practically her them saying 'baaaa.' all male characters are obsessed with middle/high school girls' panties.

there are some upsides. onizuka's a pretty good protagonist and the humor is good at times. in particular there was this instance where onizuka whipped out an attack complete with high-pitched howls reminiscent of kim kaphwan and swung his arms with fading just like rock or geese's shinkuu nage. not sure if it was a direct homage but i certainly enjoyed it. the perspective of the storyline is nice, too. at first the episodes were very onizuka-centric, but gradually they shifted more toward student-trouble, onizuka-fixing. it's a tried and true formula. echoes of early episodes of monster, where kenzou tenma visited various members of the german countryside and helped with their problems, and of mushishi, where ginko travels the world to assist with mushi.

as a final note, this is the first show where i willingly picked sub over dub after having downloaded both options. some of the dialogue is just atrociously delivered in the dub. while the same is probably true in the sub, i can't understand them, and their weird tones of voice can be attributed to 'oh it's just 'cause they're japanese' - and then miraculously it bothers me less.

yeah. look for more comments on gto same place same time tomorrow night!