Characters of Great Teacher Onizuka
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This is a list of the fictional characters that appear on the manga and anime series Great Teacher Onizuka.
[edit] Holy Forest Faculty &Staff
[edit] Eikichi Onizuka
Japanese Seiyuu: Wataru Takagi
English Voice Actor: David Lucas
Eikichi Onizuka (鬼塚 英吉 Onizuka Eikichi) is a 22-year old biker and virgin. He graduated from a 3rd-rate university and, as such, cannot get a decent job, and so his main way of spending time is peering up girls' skirts in a local mall. He is very athletic, he can bench press 150kgs, 2nd dan in Karate, and performs 500 push ups, 1000 pull ups and 2000 hindu squats daily.
Through the events explained in the main Great Teacher Onizuka article, Onizuka decides to become a teacher, even though it is later implyed that he has an IQ of about 50. His initial teacher training is in the Musashino Public High School, where he meets Nanako Mizuki (see below). His experience taming the rowdy gangs in his assigned class hardens his convictions that teaching is the way to go.
Unfortunately, he nearly messes up by forgetting to take the public teachers' civil service exam. As a result, no public high school will take him, but he is still eligible for a number of private schools. He manages to get a job at the upper-crust Holy Forest Academy, despite the objections of vice-principal Uchiyamada.
One of the conditions of having the job at Holy Forest is that he must sleep at the school (on the roof) and it is here that Onizuka meets Noboru by stopping him from committing suicide. Unfortunately, in doing so, he trashes Uchiyamada's car, making the stressed-out vice principal even more intent on getting Onizuka fired.
Onizuka is put in charge of class 3-4, a class so bad it has already made three teachers psychotic. However, he not only survives the class, but also brings them around onto his side and sorts out their problems, and this is what the main part of the series is about.
His personal transport is a Kawasaki Z2, the bike itself is also featured heavily in the prequels to GTO.
[edit] Azusa Fuyutsuki
Japanese Seiyuu: Fumiko Orikasa
English Voice Actor: Wendee Lee
Azusa Fuyutsuki (冬月あずさ Fuyutsuki Azusa) is a 22 year-old beautiful female teacher who is the heroine of the series. Unlike Onizuka, she led a relatively normal life, graduating from Waseda University. Her quiet manner and moderate ideas are misleading as she proves to be very tough on her own sometimes scaring even tough Onizuka. To prepare him for the test of his teaching life, she prepares a mountain of jelly with eyes of Maguro tuna fish as fruits and imposes impossibly tough schedule that would have killed anyone or drove them mad. Her field of teaching is Kokugo or Japanese language (English in the Live Action). She, not that surprisingly, falls in love with Onizuka but as both are quite reluctant to admit their feelings and show them in the open they claim that they are just "friends". It's not really a major matter to anyone else except Suguru Teshigawara, who finds it most aggravating that a woman with her qualifications would fall in love with one with such a crude background as Onizuka. She has difficulty with the female students in her class due to all the boys in her class having crushes on her but brings them around fairly quickly after Onizuka's advice. She has a younger sister named Makoto.
[edit] Ryoko Sakurai
Sakurai is the headmaster of Holy Forest Academy. She is a caring woman who believes that Onizuka and his 'methods' will always work positively, contrary to the beliefs of the faculty under her. The only time in the series that she gets mad at Onizuka is when Onizuka endangers Mayu, but she later admits this is because Mayu is manipulative. She was also Misuzu Daimon's former teacher, the special relationship between them explored in the final volumes of the series.
[edit] Hiroshi Uchiyamada
Japanese Seiyuu: Yūichi Nagashima
English Voice Actor: John Smallberries
Hiroshi Uchiyamada (内山田ひろし Uchiyamada Hiroshi) is the vice-principal at Holy Forest Academy, and is the Mr. Wilson to Onizuka's Dennis the Menace. He has some very set ideas on how peoples' backgrounds relates to how well they can do. Despite his many failings, he is not an evil man but is just very serious about the job of teaching. Uchiyamada is commonly seen in the manga throwing fits over his two favorite subjects, Onizuka the "parasite" and his beloved Toyota Cresta.
Biography according to Volume 5: Born and educated in a small rural town, Uchiyamada is discovered as a prodigy and eventually recommended to learn to be a teacher at the Tokyo College of Education where he first met his wife-to-be. 29 years of hard work eventually earned him his house in Imura, with a small garden.
Uchiyamada rubs Onizuka up the wrong way in the interview because of his background - as revenge when he got slugged for grabbing Fuyutsuki's butt on the train he took on the way to work. However, Onizuka is not the first to experience this, and a couple of expelled students come to the academy looking to pay Uchiyamada back for their own treatment. He offers Onizuka a job if he can get rid of these students, but after hearing what Uchiyamada has to say about them, he incapacitates Uchiyamada with a German Suplex instead. Onizuka infuriates Uchiyamada even more when he uses the vice-principal's new beloved Toyota Cresta (a Mercedes Benz in the live-action version) as a cushion when he saves Noboru from suicide, twice. Uchiyamada's Cresta is destroyed again when it gets robbed by punks and Onizuka finds them, rescues Murai & co. (who were captured also by the punks), and uses it to chase down the punks and again when Azusa, Kikuchi, and Murai steal it to go after Onizuka when he drives off with Urumi and ends up sinking it in the river. Inh addition, the vice-principal ends up paying for all of its repairs and prostrating himself in front of the ever-more-aggravated insurance committee. He also tried to protect it by installing an inflatable raft on the roof, however, it wasn't enough when Uchiyamada himself sacrificed the car to save a falling Miyabi and Onizuka from certain death.
His is a not-quite-extreme example of the punishment an ordinary older middle-aged Japanese man takes from his home and workplace. He is forced to work with a young man like Onizuka who easily breaks the rules and does things that don't make sense to him. The boss he serves under seems to think it is fun. At home, his daughter and wife openly disdain him in his often deluded imaginings. He feels that they're only satisfied with the luxuries that his work earns.
Uchiyamada eventually realizes Onizuka's views of teaching are correct when Onizuka punches him and yells at him when Uchiyamada interferes with Onizuka's rescue of Urumi for the sake of his job while Urumi is freezing to death. With Onizuka's help, he reconciles with his family. However, he still dislikes Onizuka after finding out Onizuka was hitting on his daughter.
[edit] Suguru Teshigawara
Japanese Seiyuu: Tohru Furuya
English Voice Actor: Doug La Rosa
Suguru Teshigawara is a ruthlessly perfectionist mathematics teacher and a graduate cum laude of Tokyo University. He grew up trying to follow after his successful brother and his father, who works for a high Parliament minister. He dresses very neatly and even wears a white velvet glove - a symbol of perfection.
He's obsessed with Azusa Fuyutsuki far past the point of stalking. The walls of his apartment - which overlooking Azusa's - is completely covered with photos of her, and keeps tabs on her every move in her apartment with extensive surveillance equipment. He even has a large pillow with a full-body shot of Azusa imprinted onto it. Suguru ends up having to drape white cloth all over the walls to conceal his fetish when he tried to invite Azusa over to his apartment in Volume 5. The cloth was rigged to a special rope that he intended to pull with Azusa as a profession of his love, though Suguru admitted that doing so would cost them their relationship, at least at that point in time. Instead, Onizuka comes over and nearly pulls that special rope. Onizuka's teasing briefly drives Suguru insane and he ends up crashing headfirst into an electrified computer screen while trying to chase Onizuka out. Suguru absolutely loathes Onizuka, not only because of Onizuka's poor educational background, but because Onizuka's students love him, and Azusa even more.
As a result of his hatred he also pulls in a favor with the head of the mother of Hidemi Oda, a student he tutors, who happens to be the leader of a concerned parents' group. This eventually leads to Onizuka taking a national high-school aptitude test - and passing with flying colors while bleeding out from several bullet wounds suffered from rescuing Oda from gangsters. (Teshigawara also takes the test to try to show his superiority, ending up 3rd overall behind Onizuka and Kikuchi). While he tries to take advantage of Onizuka's shooting by sending false information to major newspapers, it may be implied that he also set up Oda's kidnapping as a side measure to get rid of Onizuka, though this scenario is unlikely. When he finally hears of Onizuka's success and commendation by Hidemi's parents (and the city) for his heroism, he literally snaps a ballpoint pen in two with one hand and repeatedly bangs his head on his desk in the faculty room in frustration.
An "epilogue" to this arc shown only in the manga shows him further exercising his frustration by physically assaulting a female student in front of his class, resulting in his suspension.
Later on in Volumes 18 and 19 his obsession and passion for Azusa reaches a boiling point when he kidnaps her. When Onizuka figures out the plot with the help of Azusa's sister (including revealing what was really behind those white-sheeted walls), Suguru finally snaps, shoots Onizuka several times, and threatens to blow up the school with homemade molotovs.
It is revealed that Suguru's mental instability arose from the pressures placed on him by his father, who expected him to live up to his brother's high standards. His brother reveals to Suguru that both his brother and father fell from power due to being involved in a corrupt deal and being blackmailed. This blackmail also caused Suguru to fail the entrance exam for a government position. This revelation causes Suguru to attempt suicide but Onizuka saves him and they reconcile. He is driven away in the back of a police car, and is presumably committed to a mental hospital.
The second Teshigawara story arc is not shown in the animé due to its conclusion just after the end of the Okinawa vacation storyline (approximately Volume 14). A brief scene in the final episode shows him in a now unkempt apartment, eating instant ramen and watching Onizuka's "arrest" on his iMac.
He is also shown briefly near the conclusion of the manga series, in what appears to be a cell lit only by moonlight, carving out a wooden figure of Azusa. This final appearance is concluded when he senses something has happened to Onizuka.
[edit] Hajime Fukuroda
Japanese Seiyuu: Kazuhiro Nakata
English Voice Actor: Richard George
The stereotypically macho-muscular gym coach at Holy Forest (aka "Moleface") with an large mole on his cheek. A graduate of a prestigious Physical Education academy, Fukuroda admires his body and does his very best to keep it - and those of his pupils - in tip-top shape. He even enjoys famously macho theme songs when out at karaoke with his colleagues. But like every macho man, he also has a closeted sexual longing for young girls - specifically his own students. He has a habit of doing push ups whenever he is confronted by a stressful situation.
In Volume 4, Fukuroda challenges Onizuka to several bouts of swimming and running competition to prove the 22-year-old-and-proud-of-it teacher's competency. Tomoko is also introduced in this storyline, when Miyabi and uses her as 'bait' to lure Onizuka into a photo-blackmail trap. Miyabi gave Tomoko a letter that she was supposed to place in Onizuka's locker inviting him to have sex with her. However, Tomoko accidentally delivers the bait letter to Fukuroda and all hell breaks loose. In the anime, Miyabi had Tomoko plant underwear stolen from the girls locker rooms in Onizuka's locker but the plan backfires as Tomoko accidentally places them in Fukuroda's locker instead.
[edit] Tadashi Sakurai
The 42-year-old English teacher at Holy Forest Academy, and not very fluent at the language he teaches. His last name was changed to Sakurada in the anime in order to avoid confusion with Chairwoman Sakurai, with whom he shares no relation. Though he makes a few appearances in the earlier volumes in the manga he gets a more important role in Volumes 9 to 11 when Miyabi blackmails him into embezzling the funds for the class trip.
In the manga, Miyabi uses Sakurai's fetish for looking up girls' skirts with a hidden camera as blackmail, and his downfall comes at the hands of the police. In the anime, Miyabi blackmails Sakurai with pictures showing him as a transvestite, and he simply flees from school.
It's revealed in a flashback that he was picked upon a lot in high school. He sent a love letter to a girl. However, the girl didn't share Sakurai's feelings and insulted him. Later, he was beaten up by her boyfriend. One day, while Sakurai was skipping gym, the girl went to the boy's bathroom because the girl's bathroom smelled bad. Sakurai was able to watch her, and this was what led to his fetish.
[edit] Naoko Moritaka
She is the sexy school nurse introduced near the beginning in the manga. She's quite helpful and knows her trade well, though she seems to derive some erotic pleasure from her regular blood donations. In the anime, she is replaced by an ex-street racing queen named Nao Kadena (from Shonan Junai Gumi), who took the nursing job at Holy Forest in order to help pay for her brother's surgery - a result of him racing in her place.
[edit] Hiroshi "Chihuahua" Kochiyatani
The Science and Biology teacher, he wants to get married but can't find a partner. He is called a chihuahua because he looks similar to one.
[edit] Itagake Kinoshita
Itakagake is one of the teachers who helps Ms. Daimon to rid the school of useless teachers and pupils. But it is later found out he was hired by Madam Chairwoman Ms. Sakurai, to keep an eye on Ms. Daimon. He gives a CD to Takumi an expelled student who is also a hacker, so as to shut down the computers and stop Ms. Daimons plan
[edit] Principal Maruyama
Holy Forests Vice-Principal for Administration. Is nicknamed "Xavier" by Onizuka since according to him, he looks like Francis Xavier. Is transferred to another school during the latter half of the series.
[edit] Misuzu Daimon
Misuzu is a principal hired during the second semester after the transfer of principal "Xavier". She was placed by the board in order to weaken the position of the chairwoman and to make Onizuka leave the school. To that end she deploys a schoolwide intranet and gives each student and faculty member a palm device. Additionally, she institutes a point system for the faculty in an attempt to cause Onizuka's resignation and employs a special force in the school known as the Angels to control the school.
[edit] Holy Forest Students
[edit] Class 4
[edit] Noboru Yoshikawa
Japanese Seiyuu: Kosuke Okano
Japanese Live action actor: Shun Oguri
English Voice Actor: Ron Allen
Noboru is a pupil at Holy Forest academy, and has not had a good time there so far, being the victim of serious bullying, mostly from Anko and her group (Miyabi in the live action as Anko doesn't appear there). He is extremely good with video games and is something of an Otaku but proves to be quite handy with making things in a later episode.
Anko's bullying is so bad it makes Noboru try to kill himself twice, both times by leaping off the roof of the school, and both times resulting in him saved by Onizuka - at the cost of Vice Principal Uchiyamada's precious car. (Note that only the second attempt was caused by Anko's gang in the manga version; Noboru mentions some thugs in Class 2 as the cause of his first suicide attempt). The two strike up a sort of friendship, which works for Onizuka as Noboru has a lot of stuff that he wants to borrow. Noboru's loyalty to the teacher is also shown when he sells his videogame collection to help cover Onizuka's debt to the school later on.
In the School trip to Okinawa, he finally gets over the bullying by pretending to be the ghost with help of Onizuka and scaring Anko's group to death. He would later get lost with Anko on an island, but Anko discovers that he can be someone to trust (and love) and the bullying stops.
[edit] Anko Uehara
Japanese Seiyuu: Akemi Okamura
English Voice Actor: Midge Mayes
Anko Uehara (上原杏子 Uehara Anko) is one of the students in Onizuka's class. She is a typical female bully and Noboru is often on the receiving end of this.
Towards the end of the series, it is revealed that Anko's bullying stemmed from growing up with an older brother who liked to bully her. It is hinted that since she couldn't get back at her brother she turned to targets she could bully, namely Yoshikawa.
However, after a particularly degrading attack on Noboru, Onizuka ambushes Anko and two of her friends at a local Karaoke bar with Noboru, Kikuchi and a disposable camera, taking some humiliating pictures of them in return. Onizuka leaves the tainted camera with them in exchange for the degrading photos of Noboru. Anko gets her mother - the president of the school PTA - to file a complaint against Onizuka at an upcoming PTA meeting. However, this complaint is dropped when the mother is presented evidence (albeit slightly altered) of her delinquency by Noboru and Kikuchi. In both the manga and animé, the evidence is delivered over the school intercom, though she hears this in the conference room before the meeting in the manga version, and is scared out of her wits. The animé version seems to deliver some temporary closure to the situation, as both mother and daughter are present to hear it, and Onizuka helps them reconcile.
At some point after this, however, Anko switches sides because she doesn't like the way Miyabi is making others do her dirty work, and even helps Onizuka when Miyabi sets up the embezzlement of the school trip fund. But old habits die hard as she is still found picking on Noboru when the class heads to their field trip to Okinawa. In a twist of fate, Noboru ends up saving Anko's life, and the two fall in love, though it takes a good old-fashioned Onizuka scheme (and another humiliation of Anko's trio) to bring this about.
[edit] Kunio Murai
Japanese Seiyuu: Tomokazu Seki
English Voice Actor: Rafael Antonio Oliver
Kunio Murai (村井国男 Murai Kunio) is the class 'jock bully.' He's not very bright and loses his temper very easily. When Onizuka arrives at Holy Forest, Kunio and his gang (consisting of Fujiyoshi and Kusano) attempt to kill him several times with seemingly innocent pranks - such as a cockroach planted in his school lunch. The plans backfire (such as Kunio eating the cockroach instead) and he goes insane, nearly ending up with his face impaled on a pair of razor-sharp scissors. Onizuka then takes advantage of Kunio's weakpoint - his sexy 27-year-old mother Julia - after trouncing Kunio at several arcade games. It is later revealed Julia got pregnant at the age of 13 and her parents and boyfriend abandoned her, making Kunio develop a Oedipus complex.
Kunio and his gang befriend Onizuka later on (especially in Volume 4 when he saves them from a group of ruffians, but not before Onizuka joins the ruffians and has Kunio bungee jump off a Tokyo bay bridge.) Kunio still gets very angry when Onizuka tries to make a pass at his mother, especially with the possibility that Onizuka may well be his new stepfather. His fear of a new father also rears its head in Volume 9 when he suspects that his mother may be marrying a man who resembles Dr. Elefun from Astro Boy.
[edit] Kouji Fujiyoushi
Part of Murai's gang. Always tags along with Murai.
He was once part of Miyabi and Sakurai (Sakurada)'s plan to get rid of Onizuka by making Fujiyoshi collect money (for a "school trip") and lose it. They would then plant the money into Onizuka's jacket, and charge Onizuka with embezzlement. He felt responsible and worked hard to get back the money (it was 1 million yen). He then earned back the money, and his actions eventually led to an actual school trip to Okinawa, courtesy of Onizuka.
He is also romantically interested in Miyabi, to the point of hijacking a car to get her to take a ride with him.
[edit] Tadaaki Kusano
Part of Murai's gang. He doesn't do much except help Murai with his mischief. He is quite attracted to Tokiwa Ai (and the Angels used this info to their advantage once) but it is one-sided. His mom, in stark contrast to Murai's mom Julia, is a rather portly woman that he seems quite ashamed of.
[edit] Tomoko Nomura
Japanese Seiyuu: Ayako Kawasumi
English Voice Actor: Debra Cunningham
Tomoko Nomura (野村朋子 Nomura Tomoko) is a pupil in Onizuka's class. She has very large breasts, but is not too bright, leading to people calling her Toro-ko (Toro meaning slow in Japanese, Slo-mo-ko in the English version.) She and Yoshikawa made a good duo beating the tag of Onizuka in a watergun battle by blasting the room with multiple paint rockets prepared by Yoshikawa himself (there had been no limit placed on what type of weapons to use).
After initially messing up her role in one of Miyabi's plans to get Onizuka fired, she is cut off from Miyabi's group. Onizuka later discovers that she is on the brink of suicidal despair. But Onizuka sorts this out by getting her into a local beauty contest. He even arranges for two porn producers he knows to dress her up for the occasion. Rather than read the given script for the acting category, Onizuka gives her a couple of action figures and she ends up doing an excellent improvised piece (with the vice principal getting an accidental role.) She doesn't win, but she gets noticed by several TV producers and starts starring in various commercials. Her young male manager (who first appears in Volume 8 when he hits Onizuka with his car,) was so impressed with her natural beauty and after falling in love at first sight, makes it his lifetime goal to help her succeed.
The second half of Volume 11 and the first half of Volume 12 have a small side adventure featuring Tomoko and her manager, called GTO - this time standing for Great Tomoko Oppai (Oppai meaning breasts.) In it Tomoko's manager embarks on one very madcap adventure to save her from her dubious producers.
In the live action TV episode, instead of her succeeding dramatically in following episodes, she would part for an Okinawa actor school to learn dancing and singing. In the anime, Tomoko is given a cell-phone for her performance and her act is her calling Miyabi's answering machine asking for forgiveness and friendship.
She has been friends with Urumi Kanzaki since childhood, their close bond likely arising out of their opposite personalities (Tomoko is dumb and rather docile with a heart of gold, compared to Urumi's intellect and potential to be savagely cruel).
[edit] Miyabi Aizawa
Japanese Seiyuu: Junko Noda
English Voice Actor: Wendee Lee
Miyabi is another pupil in Onizuka's class, and seems to hate teachers quite severely. She is easily the most popular girl in school, though her queen-like manner can easily irritate anyone. At the beginning she appears to be the ringleader of the classmates that want to get rid of Onizuka. Like Anko Uehara and Kunio Murai, she has her own crime trio. She also used Tomoko for a rape blackmail trap against Onizuka but expels her from the group when it backfires.
Originally just out to be rid of Onizuka on principle, she quickly makes it personal when she loses to the Onizuka-sponsored Tomoko at the beauty contest.
Miyabi is behind the school trip embezzlement, in which she blackmails Tadashi Sakurai into asking parents to submit the money in cash. This allows her to steal the money and plant it on Onizuka, who manages to lose it all in a sting step up by Miyabi.
However, Urumi (who is Onizuka's side by this time) gets revenge for him by setting her and her three friends up with a S&M group, where she is narrowly saved from being raped - when Onizuka crashes into their room of their hotel through the window after swinging Tarzan-style from a rope suspended from a blimp, all the way from another skyscraper. Of course, before he could actually save them, he demanded a sincere apology from Miyabi. In the anime, Urumi hires a group of yakuza instead of perverts. In the live action drama, she is setup by Shinichi Todou (Urumi does not exist in the live action version) who studies at Jindan Academy (a first class school). He looks exactly like her ex-boyfriend, and this is what causes Miyabi (who trusts Todou because of his strong semblance to her former boyfriend) to fall for a scheme setup by Todou and a gang of ten perverted classmates (who happen to be karate experts) who almost rape her until Onizuka arrives. In the live action drama, Onizuka's rescue of Miyabi from Todou's rape gang is what makes her change her ways and befriend him.
Urumi later insults Miyabi at a carnival. This leads Miyabi to reveal Urumi's secret. Urumi retaliates by posting a website where she says she's going to post pictures of Miyabi in the bathroom taken with a hidden camera. Miyabi attempts to commit suicide by overdosing on some pills but survives. The website is revealed to be a ruse later on.
Miyabi is the one who led class 2-4 (as they were known then) onto the path of terrorising teachers (previously, it was only Urumi who would occasionally terrorise teachers). Her motives behind this however is different between the manga and the anime.
In the anime, Miyabi is a model student who turns this way due to a teacher who indirectly caused a friend of Miyabi's to commit suicide over an illicit affair between them. This, compounded by a family problem is the root cause of Miyabi's great mistrust (and oftentimes outright hatred) for all adults. Her personal convictions however are shattered towards the end of the anime when she was accused of attempting to murder the aforementioned teacher, as well as assaulting a member of the Japanese board of Education (who she sees as taking only the teacher's side). She is shocked however, when Onizuka takes the fall for her by announcing to the Education Board that he committed all of the crimes she was accused of. Arriving at school in time to see Onizuka being led in handcuffs to a police car, Miyabi finally asks Onizuka to forgive her for everything she had done. One would assume that this event has restored in Miyabi the capacity to trust in grownups once again.
In the original manga, Miyabi has a crush on Ogi-sensei and starts to believe that her feelings may be reciprocated when he invites her over to dinner at his place. It turns out however that Ogi-sensei already had a fiance whom he wanted to introduce to Miyabi. Crushed, she takes illicit photographs of herself (knowing that his hobby was photography) and tells the class that he took advantage of her. Things go out of hand when Takumi Ishida decides to take matters into his own hands and assaults Ogi-sensei. Distraught over the events (Ogi and Takumi were both forced to leave), Miyabi decides to turn the class against all teachers and so class 2-4's rebellion begins.
Miyabi's guilt however as well as her deteriorating family situation eventually leads make her colder and more distant to her friends, eventually leading to the events in the carnival and her fight with Urumi which results in Miyabi having a nervous breakdown. Her guilt is then further compounded she discovers just how much all her friends still care for her. Things take a turn for the worse when she returns to her already broken family forcing Onizuka to intervene which results in him and a few students holding Miyabi "hostage" on the condition that her father demonstrates his love for her. The plot works, however this doesn't please principal Misuzu and her Angels who then decide to expose Miyabi's secret forcing her to attempt to commit suicide. She attempts to jump of the school roof but before that happens Ogi-sensei (who Onizuka was able to track down) and Takumi (who had flown in from Okinawa at the nick of time) appear on the roof to try to convince her not to jump despite the guilt she feels for all she's done. However, Onizuka accidentally bumps her off the ledge while he tries to restrain Sho, one of the Angels who was trying to convince her to jump. Miyabi then calls out to Onizuka who jumps after her and with the help of Tokiwa Ai, Principal Uchiyamada and his Toyota Cresta, is able to save her life.
[edit] Urumi Kanzaki
Japanese Seiyuu: Kotono Mitsuishi
English Voice Actor: Michelle Ruff
Urumi Kanzaki (神崎うるみ Kanzaki Urumi) is the antithesis to the 'dumb blonde' stereotype. In fact, she is a child genius, with an IQ over 200. However, she is also psychologically disturbed, having an intense hatred toward teachers.
Her genius is displayed repeatedly by such abstract actions as the detonation of time bombs (i.e. firecrackers in disposable boxes), and making a harmless snake look like a cobra using silicone. Her intellect is also shown through actions such as shouting curse words in French and being able to speak Cantonese. On the trip in Okinawa, Kikuchi noted that she can speak 5 languages, but ironically, she doesn't understand what her Gundam-otaku roommates say.
Her hatred for teachers stems from her time in elementary school. Urumi's teacher, while initially welcoming and receptive, wasn't able to handle her intellect properly, and Urumi's constant requests for the teacher's time both inside and outside of school as well as the fact that the lessons she wanted to learn from the teacher included extremely advanced, college-level subjects (such as differential calculus) eventually made the teacher snap. The teacher then told Urumi's secret to her class. From what is mentioned in her story arc the reader can deduce that it is something about her father, but it isn't stated explicitly. Urumi soon tells Onizuka that her mother had selected a sperm-donor based on his intelligence and nothing more. It is even suggested that her mother took the sperm from an American scientific genius (This information can be gleaned from a scene in lesson 130 where Urumi and her mother visited some friends in the U.S. and Urumi was led into a dark storage room by a blond doctor who explains to her in English (with Japanese subtitles for the original Japanese version of the manga) that her father is actually just a bottle of donated sperm); this explains Urumi's blond hair and very high IQ. Naturally this caused a great deal of psychological trauma to Urumi, and quite an understandable hatred of teachers. It is still unclear what happened to the teacher, as her last action in the storyline was begging Onizuka to help Urumi before something terrible happened to her.
She is later found by Miyabi in a small apartment, and hired by her to torture Onizuka after all of Miyabi's comrades have joined Onizuka's side. It is implied that she had been a student at Holy Forest Academy for a while (and that Kikuchi was actually her partner-in-crime at one point) but stopped attending regularly after some time. Her torture starts almost immediately, as she frames him for lechery and sends him to jail overnight only to appear in class and on his roster the morning after. Onizuka's frustration with her is vastly increased when Principal Uchiyamada strictly advises him that he cannot inflict physical harm on her due to her educational potential. Urumi is eventually able to turn Onizuka into her slave (i.e. "genie") by threatening to have him arrested after she fakes her death after he accidentally pushes her off a tall building. At the end of Volume 7 she makes a phone call to Kikuchi and leaves a message that Onizuka "saved her life," though it is unclear what she meant by that. It should be noted that prior to her faking her death, she and Kikuchi leave hints of her problems to Onizuka.
However, all this changes when she encounters her former teacher outside a sushi restaurant, awakening her deepest hatred and causing her to direct her wrath at the entire school. Onizuka responds by bringing his biker gang to school (including Ryuji and Saejima) and "kidnaps" her from her class. He is finally able to get through to her by almost killing both himself and her by jumping over - and nearly falling into - the gap in a suspension bridge, despite her cool attempts to convince him that she is not afraid of anything, including death. Later on, when Onizuka and Urumi are hanging out with his biker gang, he makes her see that her past trauma, however bad, just isn't worth messing up the present with. (In the manga, he does this by having his biker friends share their life stories with them.)
After this incident, she decides to switch sides and help Onizuka with his troubles instead. Because of this decision, her relationship with her old friend Miyabi quickly turns icy. Miyabi gets her first taste of Urumi's vengeance when she and her friends up for an extortion sting as retribution for Miyabi setting Onizuka up with the bill for the school vacation. (See Miyabi's section for details.) Much to Urumi's frustration, Onizuka saves Miyabi in both versions, but this does not seem to negatively affect Urumi's relationship with her teacher.
Despite this, Urumi continues her feud with Miyabi. After Urumi insults Miyabi at a carnival, Miyabi reveals the previously mentioned secret to the whole school. Urumi retaliates by setting up a web page on which she promises to post pictures of Miyabi in her bathroom, where Urumi had earlier placed a hidden camera. However, Kikuchi poses as Miyabi and convinces hackers to destroy the site. The plan apparently backfires when a hacker decides to post the pictures, but it's revealed the only picture Urumi uploaded was a picture of Urumi, Miyabi, and Tomoko as children. Urumi attempts to kill herself at an indoor skiing arena by freezing to death but Onizuka rescues her.
Later Urumi patches things up with her mother, and plays the role of "Susan," a foreign secretary, to impress her mother's investors. She grows very attached to Onizuka to the point of trying to kill herself when she thinks Onizuka is dying. At one point, she even wanted to elope with Onizuka. From this point she took the stereotype role of a female anime character that uses violence in response to jealousy - She is often spotted beating Onizuka mercilessly everytime he tried to fulfill his perverted passion. Once, she even said that Onizuka should wait for her hormones to start kicking in, because she's sure that she would have a bouncing body.
As a result of being a test tube baby, Urumi is a heterochromatic. Meaning that she has different color eyes; one brown, one blue.
Prior to her encounter with her former teacher, Urumi encounters Tomoko and her manager outside a sushi store and the two have a rather joyous reunion. Kikuchi reveals that the two have been childhood friends, explaining their close bond as an attraction of their sharply contrasting personalities.
[edit] Mayu Wakui
Mayu Wakui (和久井繭 Wakui Mayu) is the grandson of Chairwoman Sakurai. He attended Holy Forest for a while, only to leave for unknown reasons.
As part of Miyabi's continuing (as of book 14) quest to get rid of Onizuka, she asks Mayu to come back to try and get him removed.
Mayu comes back and almost immediately rubs Onizuka up the wrong way. This results in him bursting a water main and almost doing Mayu in with an entire set of lockers. At this point Onizuka finds out that Mayu is Chairwoman Sakurai's grandson, and she lashes out at him. Uchiyamada then takes that opportunity to suspend Onizuka.
However, Mrs. Sakurai then calms down, realises that it was all Mayu's fault (it always is according to her) and asks Onizuka to come back and try and bring him back onto the straight and narrow.
Mayu takes triptophan, an emotional stabilizer, to treat anxiety due perhaps to some terminal illness (due to several allusions to him dying soon). There is also suggestion that his state is due to some external factor since he decides to become an idol in order to expose those that have harmed him publicly. Additionally, a cover-up involving Mayu may explain his ready access to large sums of money; although he does come from a wealthy background.
Mayu is handsome, with a devoted girlfriend (Ageha), the leader of a motorcycle gang, a capable fighter, and in later volumes a pop idol in the same agency as Tomoko.
[edit] Yoshito Kikuchi
Japanese Seiyuu: Hikaru Midorikawa
English Voice Actor: Ron Allen
Yoshito is one of Onizuka's students. This computer prodigy is a genius (making the highest score in the country on a standardized test) and serves as the class president. He is also notorious for making pornographic composite photos for use as blackmail. Upon Onizuka's arrival at Holy Forest Academy, Yoshito tries to blackmail the new teacher into resignation with several pictures posted all across the school for everyone to see. Onizuka catches Yoshito and instead of punishing him, hires him to make composite porn pictures of Azusa and other female teachers.
Yoshito eventually befriends Onizuka and later helps Noboru fabricate evidence to prevent Anko Uehara's mother - the president of the school PTA - from getting Onizuka fired. Later volumes hint at a relationship between him and Tokiwa Ai.
In the Live Action Drama Special, he has a long distance relationship with Tomoko Nomura. However in the manga, he is being linked with Urumi Kanzaki and, later on, with Ai Tokiwa.
[edit] Yūki Miyamori
He is enrolled in Onizuka's class but never shows up. Onizuka only knew of his existence when he tried to get some high points in the point system set up by Principal Misuzu Daimon. One of the criteria to get more than 100 points is to persuade a student who has not attended class for over a year to attend school again. Son of a yakuza, he developed autism when his "best friends" did not show up for his mother's funeral and deserted him. Despite his family background, he is an ordinary boy who likes to play video games and would sneak out every 15th and 20th of each month in order to buy timetables for the bullet train. Onizuka and Yoshikawa managed to talk him out of his lifestyles, thus saving Onizuka's salary in the process. He is also Yoshikawa's best friend after the incident, and becomes somewhat of a defender of the weak within the class, mostly via namedropping of his father's profession to frighten bullies. Yūki does not appear during the course of the anime.
[edit] Ai Tokiwa
A transfer student to Onizuka's class during the second semester and an "Angel". She is adept at Tae Kwon Do, and holds a grudge towards men, as she was raped by her former boyfriend and his four friends. Onizuka (with the help of Mayu's friends) saves her from a gang she defeated earlier, and tells her that if she continues her current path she'll only make more enemies and suffer more trauma. After this, she leaves the angels, and later in the manga is seen laughing with Fujiyoushi and Murai.
[edit] Sho Shibuya
Sho is a transfer student to Onizuka's class and, as the leader of "Daimon's Angels," plays a dramatic role in the ending of the series.
[edit] Ruruka Hikita
A character from the manga who appears in a brief story arc spanning the end of Volume 8 and the beginning of Volume 9. Like Uehara, Murai and Aizawa, she is the leader of her own trio with two others called Madoka and Miko. She and her trio believe in magic and charms, somewhat in the vein of the teen magic TV series Charmed, though mainly out of a fandom as "magic" doesn't exist (at least in GTO's universe). Over the course of her story arc she tries using white magic multiple times to get Ito, the class soccer hunk, to fall in love with her. However, her plans backfire, leaving her fearing that Onizuka has become sexually attracted to her instead. She and her trio subsequently dedicate themselves to using black magic to destroy Onizuka before he can impregnate her (though he clearly doesn't seem to be much aware of her existence outside of their little "encounters."). Her story arc ends when she forces herself to eat "poisoned" cookies laced with Onizuka's pubic hair, which were intended as a last measure to eliminate Onizuka but nearly ended up in Ito's mouth instead.
[edit] Gundam Otaku (Mishima Gunji, Tokida Haruo, Shirai Mokuba)
Class 4's resident Gundam otakus. During the trip to Okinawa, they ended up rooming with Urumi who they then proceed to call "Sayla" after the character from the original Mobile Suit Gundam since like her, Urumi has natural blonde hair. Urumi was driven insane by them and held a grudge against Onizuka, at one point shoving a poisonous snake in his shorts.
[edit] Takumi Ishida
Former member of class 4. He left and went to Okinawa after assaulting Mr. Ogi when he heard Miyabi's false accusations of rape. He is Kikuchi's online friend Sunakujira (Sand Whale in the English translations) who helps him out throughout the series. Later on he appears in person, and returns to class at the end of the manga.
[edit] Other Students
[edit] Aoi Fukada
Aoi Fukada is a girl that Murai has a crush on, and is one of the more popular girls in school.
[edit] Fukada Kumiko
Fukada Kumiko has the same name as Aoi Fukada, which leads to mulitple situations where Murai gets confused when one of their names are mentioned. She's a small, shy girl with bad teeth and braces, much to Murai's horror when he takes her out on a date (thinking by mistake that his date would be Aoi Fukada).
[edit] Fuyumi Kujirakawa
A member of the girls basketball team, Fuyumi is very tall for a girl her age which leads to her anguish (as boys tend to prefer girls smaller than them). She has a crush on Murai but is afraid to tell him.
[edit] Onizuka's friends
[edit] Ryuji Danma
Japanese Seiyuu: Isshin Chiba
English Voice Actor: Ron Allen
He is Onizuka's drinking buddy and 'sidekick' from his gangland days in Shonan Junai Gumi. In the years since he went straight, Ryuji has set up his own used motorcycle shop and profits greatly from it. He refers Onizuka to Holy Forest Academy when his buddy is down on his luck.
He is however not averse to showing Eikichi some tough love at times; he refuses to lend Onizuka any money to cover the 8-million-yen cost of a school trip to Okinawa - at least not until he clears up his own million-large debts with Ryuji (although some even later actions show that deep inside he does cares very much about Eikichi's well being - after all, the deeper in trouble his friend is, the less likely he will ever see his money again).
[edit] Toshiyuki Saejima
Japanese Seiyuu: Kazuki Yao
English Voice Actor: Jack Aubree
Toshiyuki Saejima (冴島 Saejima Toshiyuki) is one of Onizuka's and Ryuji's buddies from their gangland days in Shonan Junai Gumi. Now a corrupt police officer, he spends most of his time selling seized police evidence, trying to convince Onizuka to buy into his scams such as selling goods off the locker, Benzs, counterfeit Prada bags, handguns, poppies, pandas, Chinese immigrants among other things and "testing" out weapons from crime scenes. He gets three of his own chapters, set entirely in Onizuka's point of view, with one at the beginning of Volume 8 where we learn more about his life and what happened to other characters from the Shonan Junai Gumi series.
[edit] Nagisa Nagase
Japanese Seiyuu: Kae Araki
English Voice Actor: Cindy Robinson
Nagisa, Ryuji's grad-student girlfriend, was briefly seen near the beginning of the Urumi arc in Volume 7. She has been Ryuji's girlfriend since they met in the GTO prequel Shonan Junai Gumi. Not much is known about her other than the fact that she's attractive enough that Ryuji slammed his fist into Onizuka's face when he saw him trying to grope her. At certain times in the story when Onizuka is exceptionally angry, he is shown as sitting behind his desk while the students watch a lesson given by her on a television.
[edit] Other Characters
[edit] Nanako Mizuki
Japanese Seiyuu: Yuko Miyamura
English Voice Actor: Cindy Robinson
Nanako is a student at the Musashino Public High School who is in the class that Onizuka is given to teach while training. Initially she agrees to set Onizuka up, seducing him into taking her back to his apartment, where she undresses and some of the boys from the class take a picture of Onizuka and Nanako together.
However, Onizuka is able to persuade the boys to keep quiet about this (using about a hundred bikers to help.) Despite being set up once, Onizuka agrees to take Nanako to her house after she insinuates he might be able to have sex with her.
She eventually ends up at his house and sleeps over (with nothing sexual happening) after explaining that her parents have no time for her anymore because of their jobs. It is actually during this revelation that Onizuka actually begins actively resisting the temptation to sleep with his students.
Onizuka solves her problem by bashing a hole in the wall separating Nanako's parents' bedrooms, assuring her that the wall will not act as a barrier between Nanako and her parents. Her parents have the physical hole filled, but she realizes that time and her efforts can heal the rift in their relationship. In the live action drama, Nanako is a student at Holy Forest but her story remains the same. In that version, she is part of Onizuka's group from the beginning and refers to him as 'Onichi'.
[edit] Hidero Ohsawa
Japanese Seiyuu: Shinichiro Miki
English Voice Actor: Ron Allen
The first 'teacher' Onizuka meets at Musashino Public High School during training. This so-called 'teacher' has a reputation for sleeping with his lovely female students and convinces Onizuka that teaching high school is the way to score. Needless to say, the prospect of having a beautiful 16-year-old wife even at age 40 is irresistible to the 22-year-old Onizuka. Upon learning that Nanako has been staying over at Onizuka's place with no sex going on, Ohsawa insists that Onizuka rape Nanako and videotape it to keep her quiet about it (and ensure that Onizuka's "merchandise" won't quit on him. ) But just as Onizuka's about to go through with it, Onizuka learns of Nanako's problems and changes his ways.
It is not known what happens to Ohsawa, it is found that he was caught and left for another training session somewhere.
[edit] Makoto Fuyutsuki
Azusa's 17-year-old sister. She was in the detective club in her high school, which helped her and Onizuka a great deal when they were trying to find Azusa after she was kidnapped by Teshigawara. She is a surprisingly big fan of hentai pro-wrestling and a white belter in Judo Karate.
[edit] Hidemi Ohta
Japanese Seiyuu: Tomoe Hanba
English Voice Actor: Debra Cunningham
Hidemi is the spoiled daughter of a Tokyo legislator and the president of a concerned parents' group, and a major character in the first Teshigawara storyline in Volumes 5, 6, and 7. She finds out that Suguru - her math tutor - is in love with Azusa and ends up having him lick her feet as punishment so she would not release news of the affair. She also tries to get Onizuka to do the same thing, but the plan backfires. The climax of these events starts when she is kidnapped by yakuza right after she's dropped off from school. Onizuka follows the kidnappers and they end up in their hideout where Onizuka has to save her before they can make pornographic videos of her as blackmail for her father.
[edit] Yoshiko Uchiyamada
The daughter of Hiroshi Uchiyamada, she is into designer handbags, ganguro fashion and according to her father "singlehandedly keeps the tanning salon industry alive."
[edit] Julia Murai
Kunio Murai's mother. She had Kunio at the age of thirteen and chose to run away to be able to keep him. Onizuka tries to take her out on multiple occasions, much to Kunio's chagrin.
[edit] Kyousuke Masaki
Onizuka's old idol from his Onibaku days. Appears once in a flashback to push Onizuka on.
