Please Teacher-Volume 1: Hot for Teacher (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Main Menu Audio & Animation Trailer-O-ne-Tea promo clip Trailer-Onegai Teacher! promo Trailer-Lesson 1 Preview Gallery-Character Artwork Biographies-Character-Character Profiles Trailer-Madman Propaganda (7)
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	91:38 (Case: 100)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Yasunori Ide
Studio Distributor	Bandai Visual Madman Entertainment	Starring	Soichiro Hoshi Dave Wittenberg Kikuko Inoue Bridget Hoffman Naoya Uchida Michael McConnahie ei Sakuna Karen Strassman Tomoko Kaneda Sandy Fox Ayako Kawasumi Michelle Ruff
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Shinji Orito

    This is the opening volume of a new and different anime series. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and I have to admit that I'm pleasantly surprised.

    The basic situation in this series doesn't sound too promising: a scrawny boy in 10th grade (usually means about 15 years old) is involved with, and even married to, his teacher? That seems wrong, but there are extenuating circumstances. Kei Kusanagi, although he only looks 15, is actually 18 — he suffers from a strange disease that causes him to go into a coma and cease to grow for periods of time. At one point he was in a "standstill" for three years, hence his appearance. One might still question the ethics of a student and teacher together, but there are reasons... You see, his teacher, Mizuho Kazami, isn't just new to the school, she's new to the planet — she's on assignment from the Galaxy Federation, observing Earth to make sure we don't take a wrong turn in the development of our civilisation.

    I'm not completely comfortable with the idea, because Kei, for all that he is officially 18, still only has 15 years of experience — that's rather young to be getting involved in marriage. Still, Mizuho seems very much an innocent about life on Earth, but then again, she is an adult. Perhaps the thing that disturbs me most is that he is clearly not fully mature yet.

    Yet, in some ways this is like a recreation of My Favourite Martian, except that the alien is a gorgeous (and well-developed) young woman, the earthling taken into confidence is a schoolboy, and... Hmm, maybe it's not quite the same. And instead of there being two sides to the situation: those who know about the alien, and those who don't; there are four sides, there are those who know about the alien, those who don't know about the alien, but know that the marriage is a sham of sorts; those who don't know about the alien, and believe the marriage to be real; and those who don't know even know about the marriage — you almost need a scorecard to keep track of who knows what.

    The disc cover is decorated as though it were an airmail letter, and is labelled First Mail, with a subtitle of Hot For Teacher. The episodes are labelled as lessons. The episodes on this disc are:

    There are moments when we see Mizuho with what looks like a cigarette and a cigarette packet. It turns out that the packet, labelled Pochy, contains sticks of chocolate, which Mizuho likes because it reminds her of her father.

    Mizuho can call upon her spaceship for things like teleporting. She does this by calling out to the ship's master control program, called Marie (even though it's referred to as "he"); unfortunately, Marie has not be working properly ever since his first encounter with Kei. Marie manifests as a small doll-like creature with a lifebelt.

    Kei was living with his uncle Minoru and aunt Kohona, both of whom seem to be interesting characters. Minoru is not in the least disapproving of the relationship between Kei and Mizuho — if anything, he is jealous, but only when Kohona isn't listening.

    Kei's main school friends are: Hyosuke, a brash youth who acts a bit childish, Matagu, a more reserved boy; Koishi, a girl who has a bit of a crush on Kei; Ichigo, a shorter girl who seems a bit cynical; and Kaede a tall redhead who goes along with Ichigo's plan to set up Kei and Koishi.

    So far, the plot seems a bit disjointed, but that may just be a bit of awkwardness as they set up the situation for their situation comedy — I'll wait about see how it develops.

    Even though I have a few reservations about the relationship between Kei and Mizuho, I am watching things unfold with interest. I'll definitely be buying the next disc in the series.

Video

    This DVD transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced. This is, I think, the original aspect ratio.

    The image is sometime clear and sharp, but there are frequent shots which are distinctly soft (the Japanese credits are bad, and the English credits, which are only shown once after all four episodes, are awful) — when it is good, it's very good, but sometimes it's really not good. Still, there's no film grain and no low-level noise.

    Colour is mostly quite good, drawing on a wide palette of colours. There are no colour-related artefacts, although there are a couple of shots with over-hot whites, particularly at 70:07 and 88:25.

    There are no film artefacts.

    There is some aliasing, particularly on vertical pans, but it's not too disturbing. There is no moirι. No MPEG artefacts. There is some occasional rather obvious interlacing, mostly likely as a result of conversion from NTSC to PAL.

    The usual two subtitle tracks appear: both in English, with the first being a "signs only" track, while the second is full subtitles. These subtitles are yellow, attractive, and easy to read.

    The disc is single-sided, single layer. No layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English and Japanese. Both soundtracks are Dolby Digital 2.0, not surround encoded, at 224kbps. I watched all the episodes in English and then again in Japanese. Both soundtracks use the same music, and offer quite a decent stereo spread; voices tend to stay in the centre (and with Prologic decoding they end up in the centre channel).

    The English dialogue is easy to understand, synced well with the animation, and is well-acted. The Japanese dialogue sounds clear enough, but, as seems usual, is less well synchronised to the animation.

    The score is quite nice work. Shinji Orito has done a good job.

    This disc is basically stereo, with no use of the surrounds or subwoofer — they aren't missed.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menus are animated with music. They are easy to use.

Promotion: O-ne-Tea Promo Clip (8:15)

    A lengthy promotional clip that was shown on Japanese TV to advertise this series.

Trailer: Onegai Teacher! (5:29)

    Another promotional clip shown before the series started.

Trailer: Lesson 1 Preview (0:31)

    We get to see all the other previews at the end of each episode — this one stands alone.

Gallery — Character Artwork (26 pages)

    A mixture of what's called Final Setting by Hiroaki Gohda and Draft Setting by Taraku Uon. As well as the normal sketches, the Final Setting stuff also includes full colour art.

Character Profiles

    Useful information about some of the characters which helps understanding of the show. Beware that there are some spoilers for later episodes. The characters covered are:

• Kei Kusanagi
• Mizuho Kazami
• Marie
• Koishi

Trailers: Madman Propaganda

    Seven individually-selectable trailers:

• Chobits (1:31)
• Spirited Away (2:18)
• Arjuna (1:20)
• Geneshaft (0:16)
• Steel Angel Kurumi (1:28)
• Read or Die (0:43)
• Love Hina (1:41)

DVD Credits

    A single page that shows credits for the folks at Madman who worked on this disc.

Reversible Slick

    The cover slick can be taken out and reversed. The reverse side has the front cover and spine in Japanese — I think this is a reproduction of the Japanese DVD cover.

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    The Region 1 version of this disc was released earlier this year. What reports I can find credit this disc with an excellent transfer. As far as I can ascertain theirs has the same extras as ours, except that they miss out on the Madman Propaganda. Their artwork shows essentially the same image, but without the "mail" motif (apparently ours more closely mimics the presentation of the Japanese DVD).

    If the R1 is indeed a better transfer, then it looks like the winner this time.

    A new anime series that I am uncertain about.

    The video quality is very good much of the time, but the credits, in particular, are quite lacking in sharpness.

    The audio quality is excellent for a stereo soundtrack.

    The extras are interesting enough, and add to the show.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall