Great Teacher Onizuka (グレート・ティーチャー・オニヅカ Gurēto Tīchā Onizuka^?), officially abbreviated as GTO, is a Japanese shōnen manga written and illustrated by Tohru Fujisawa. It was originally serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine from May 1997 to April 2002. The story focuses on 22-year-old ex-bōsōzoku member Eikichi Onizuka, who becomes a teacher at a private high school,
Holy Forest Academy, in Tokyo, Japan. It won the 1998 Kodansha Manga Award for shōnen,^[2] and is a continuation of Tohru Fujisawa's other manga series Shonan Juna
i Gumi (lit. "Shōnan True Love Group") and Bad Company, both of which focus on the life of Onizuka before he becomes a teacher in Great Teacher Onizuka. As of 9 June 2009, a sequel to the GTO manga was released in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine, under the title "GTO - Shonan 14 Days". North American publisher Vertical Inc will begin publishing "GTO: Shonan 14 Days" globally in English, as GTO: 14 Days in Shonan beginning January 2012. Vertical will also be continuing the Shonan Junai Gumi manga series, from volume 11 onwards, as "GTO: The Early Years" starting in February 2012.^[3]
Due to the popularity of the manga, several adaptations of GTO were made. These adaptations include a twelve-episode Japanese television drama running from July to September 1998; a live-action film directed by Masayuki Suzuki and released in December 1999;^[4] and a 43-episode anime television series, aired in Japan by Fuji Television and Animax from June 1999 to September 2000. Both the anime and manga have been licensed in North America by Tokyopop.^[5] The Tokyopop version of the manga is out-of-print as of August 31, 2009.^[6] A remake of the television drama began airing in July 2012.