GTO-Volume 2: The Bully (1998)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Main Menu Audio & Animation Credits-Japanese Opening Credits-Japanese Closing Featurette-Onizuka - Gone Wild 2 Featurette-GTO Eye Catches Gallery-Character Designs Trailer-Previews
Rating
Year Of Production	1998
Running Time	128:59 (Case: 125)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Noriyuki Abe
Studio Distributor	TokyoPop Anime Madman Entertainment	Starring	None Given
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Yusuke Honma

    This is the second disc in the Great Teacher Onizuka series. With Onizuka's initial introduction over and the stories getting underway, things are now in full swing and getting a lot more interesting. If you haven't done so, I suggest taking a look at the GTO-Volume 1 review before reading on.

    Great Teacher Onizuka is a refreshing change from the stereotypical giant robot or magical girl anime. Based on the manga by Tohru Fujisawa, the story revolves around 22 year old Eikichi Onizuka, who wants to become a high school teacher for one reason and one reason only...to perv on girls. He's an ex-biker, has a quick temper, and is rude, but this all adds to his charm. Onizuka surely is one charismatic guy, and he uses his unorthodox methods to teach his students some important lessons, both in and outside of the classroom. And you'll be falling out of your seat laughing from beginning to end. Truly one of the more enjoyable anime series to be given a local release lately.

    TEACHER BANZAI!

    The following five episodes are contained on the DVD.

    LESSON 5: GTO - An Eye For An Eye, A Butt For A Butt - After preventing Yoshikawa from committing suicide for the second time, Onizuka decides its time for some payback against the boy's tormentors. But what kind of repercussions will there be to taking revenge on three female students?

    LESSON 6: Conspiracies All Around - Onizuka may have disciplined the bullies in his own way, but it turns out that one of the girls' mothers is the head of the PTA, and she is intent on getting Onizuka fired, much to Vice Principal Uchiyamada's delight. But Yoshikawa and Kikuchi, who is starting to come around, are determined to help their teacher out, even though he fails to grasp the seriousness of the situation.

    LESSON 7: The Mother Of All Crushes - It's time for parent-teacher interviews and class tough guy Murai tries his hardest to keep Onizuka away from his young and beautiful single mother, but it's not going to be easy to deter the eager Onizuka.

    LESSON 8: Bungee Jumping Made Easy - Murai and his friends manage to get on the bad side of some gang members and soon find themselves at their mercy. Onizuka soon shows up, but will he be their saviour or their executioner?

    LESSON 9: Onizuka And The Art Of War - After being humiliated by one of Onizuka's more unorthodox lessons, PE teacher Fukuroda issues a swimming race challenge. Meanwhile, the leader of the teacher bullying, Miyabi Aizawa, schemes to have Onizuka labelled a panty thief and kicked out of Holy Forest Academy.

Video

    The transfer was sharp and clear, no film grain or low-level noise here. The colours may seem drab at first (compared to brighter anime such as Love Hina or Steel Angel Kurumi) but this reflects the style of the artwork used.

    There were no MPEG artefacts seen during the entire DVD. No aliasing was found. All in all, there was nothing detected that would distract whilst watching the show.

    There are 2 subtitle tracks on the DVD, one being the English subtitles used to translate the Japanese dialogue, while the second just translates the signs and other important Japanese text which is handy if watching the English dub. They are presented as traditional yellow text and are easy to read.

    The DVD is dual layered with the layer change placed between episodes, making it undisruptive to the viewer.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are two audio tracks encoded with Great Teacher Onizuka: an English Dolby Digital 2.0 dub and the original Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0. With anime, normally the Japanese audio is deemed superior but Great Teacher Onizuka has been blessed with a superb English dub, so whatever your preference, you'll be happy. I listened to both the Japanese and English tracks all the way through and found them to be of excellent quality.

    The dialogue was clear and understandable at all times. Audio sync was good (taking into consideration the normal problems animation has).

    The music score by Yusuke Honma is stunning and suits the style of Great Teacher Onizuka, with the up-tempo opening theme, Drivers High performed by L'Arc-en-Ciel, to the closing credits song, Last Piece by Kirari, which is a  calmer track that rounds off each episode nicely. The background music used during the episodes works well too. The surrounds are not used, and the subwoofer only comes alive to help bolster the music and action scenes.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

   The following extras have been included on the disc.

Menu

Japanese Opening

    This is basically a clean opening credits (no overlays) with a different ending title.

Japanese Closing

    A clean closing sequence with no overlayed credits.

Featurette - Onizuka - Gone Wild 2

     Similar to the featurette found on the first DVD, these are nine clips capturing some of Onizuka's more excitable moments taken from the episodes on this disc. Can be watched in either English or Japanese, but there are no subtitles available.

Featurette - GTO Eye Catches

    A collection of eye catches, which are short breaks used before and after commercials, that were used during the broadcast of Great Teacher Onizuka in Japan. In a lot of anime released for DVD, these eye catches are usually left intact but they have been removed from the episodes which makes for an uninterrupted flow.

Character Designs

    Assorted sketches of some of the characters found in Great Teacher Onizuka.

Previews

    Trailers for Spirited Away, Trigun, Steel Angel Kurumi, and Arjuna.

    The video quality is excellent.

    The audio quality is great.

    The extras are pretty good.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall