Honestly, I could rant for hours about why I hate Great Teacher Onizuka, but I think the central problem when discussing GTO is doublethink: indoctrination through two conflicting ideas. And, to be clear, this is entirely intentional doublethink. The creators are aware this show enables some pretty disgusting behaviors, and they intentionally try to cover it up with supposedly inspiring writing. Ignoring the subpar animation, art, comedy, and story writing, I think the biggest issue with GTO is this manipulation.
The most obvious example of this shows doublethink is Onizuka. There are two sides to Onizuka: a disgusting, perverse, manchild who ogles his high school students, and a caring and inspiring teacher. These two personas are practically entirely separate entities, but they are housed within the same garbage character. This is not due to character growth either, both Onizukas are present within the same Onizuka. One moment he’s a pervert we’re supposed to laugh at and the next he’s an amazing caring teacher we’re supposed to admire; I just don’t buy it. It feels like the show is justifying Onizuka’s perversion by saying, “well, he’s a good person anyway, just ignore it.” Which, it’s like, no I can’t and shouldn’t ignore it; Onizuka is a genuinely awful person.
Aside from Onizuka’s antics, the show works up to the most blatant support of predatory actions I’ve ever seen. Spoilers ahead for anybody braindead enough to care about this show. The final arc of the show explains why the students hate teachers so much: one of their previous teachers betrayed them by sleeping with one of the students and then leaving her when the school found out. The student then kills herself. In response to this plot point, the show tries to redeem the teacher by saying, and I’m paraphrasing here, that the teacher actually cared about the student he slept with and left for her sake. No shit, this is how they try to make the situation seem better. They presented another Onizuka who was demented enough to actually act on his perversion and then straight up attempted a redemption with the same faulty logic they tried to redeem Onizuka with. I don’t even have words for it; I’m genuinely speechless at the gall of this show.
So yeah, this show is genuinely garbage. How anybody could like it is a mystery to me. I’ve heard some stuff about it containing criticisms of the school system and bullying, but Imma squash that right now and say it doesn’t. It has bullying, but other than essentially just saying it’s bad and hurts people, adds nothing to the conversation. And it just doesn’t have any criticism of the school system, maybe other than that schools don’t hire qualified staff. But no person in GTO could ever possibly be qualified staff because they all suck. Plus, it’s all so farfetched that it doesn’t even feel real, which practically disqualifies it from being able to make meaningful criticism.