I am writing this review after finishing the manga which I read where the anime left off. It is one of the best decisions I have ever made and this five-day experience will stay with me for a long, long time. This manga, more than my family or my friends, might just be the thing to finally get me off my ass and be more responsible.

So I'm a fresh uni grad off one of the most elite universities in the States. I've been spending my quarantine after graduation loafing in my parents' house without a paying job and studying for a standardized test and not improving the score all that much. My parents, my siblings, my visions of a life living on my own all clung to me like weeds. But I still couldn't find a way to get up on my own two feet and just face it, that I've been a lazy ass, and sought out which anime to watch. Which manga to read. That'd give me that miracle.

Well, it did take a blow to the face and after finishing the Great Teacher Onizuka anime earlier in quarantine, I wanted to read the manga, but I was too lazy even for that. Not until three months later, facing a new low in prospect and outlook on life, I decided to get back to it. A manga with quality writing, that sense of photorealistic backgrounds, realistically drawn characters, a purpose. Berserk's Golden Age arc suffused me, but only gave me darkness. Almost went back to rereading Oyasumi Punpun... but didn't. GTO - GTO came to mind, and I pulled up the site, got reading.

I have now emerged from the videos, the jokes, and the roofs a changed man. How ironic, or rather how fitting, that a fictional character finally got to me. Like some of the students in Class Four, I had a parent I didn't particularly like. Like Onizuka, I was 22. I look at this man who fought and kicked his way through HS with a motorbike gang and was probably expelled, went to a fifth-rate university and look where that got him. I look at this man with my degree from a first-rate university and what am I doing? Pulling words out at almost 2 am. But this man proved that with his gold star credentials he could teach. And not algebra or physics or tests or whatever flawed education system (which yes, this manga criticizes immensely) he came to, but how to live. How to take responsibility for your own actions and not to blame others for where you are. How to talk to others and realize that you have people who care about you and might listen if you give it a chance. I might not have tried jumping off a roof to a mere test score, but seeing this man's smile and this man's determination to do it all for his students. Man, it got me. I'm like Yoshikawa, Murio, Urumi, Miyabi, Anko, the whole lotta 'em that fought to grips with Onizuka or tried to resist truth when avoiding their deepset problems in life, and when this man did his thing, ends up smiling. I can't help but smile now. Today's age may not be quite the more innocent times of the 90s with technology way more advanced than those mock phones they gave out but these problems, these life stories, these lashings out at a system that you try to blame. Onizuka shows you time and time again that jumping onto a Cresta ain't gonna cut it. And even if you're not in high school, he got to them older teachers too. As Sakurai said, he has a special power surrounding him. And try to resist life, but he'll be what a true "teacher" does - show you the way. He'll act like a kid because he is a kid. But he'll change the way you look at things. And you'll never find a greater teacher in all of Japan (anime or manga).

Onizuka, I'm now gonna read the chapters I only saw in the anime. I wish our time at Holy Forest could've gone on for longer. But I'm a college grad and have to get back to life.