School life portrayed in TV series

Case study: GTO (great teacher Onizuka) 1998 ver.

GTO is an award-winning manga/ anime/ tv series which focuses on 22-year-old ex-

bōsōzoku member Eikichi Onizuka who becomes a teacher at a Tokyo-based private middle
school, Holy Forest Academy. He is assigned to class 3-4, the class of the most problematic
students. While Onizuka’s perverted nature and unorthodox methods might not be the best
role-model, the show depicts him dealing with serious social problems which Japanese
students face in their everyday life: family problems, bullying, gender stereotypes, etc.

Episode 3 focused on school bullying in Japan with its starting sequence being a middle
school student attempting suicide by jumping off the school building. According to a study
conducted by Tokyo Metropolitan School Personnel in Service Training Center in 2013, 66%
of the 9,000 interviewed children had been bullied.1 Half of the children had experienced both
inflicting and receiving it, creating a vicious circle of bulling. This has also been portrayed in
the GTO episode: after Onizuka sensei had tormented the bullies, Noboru Yoshikawa, the
victim, showed little compassion and deemed more punishment was needed.

The episode also dealt with a subtler theme of gender stereotypes: the one bullied was a
timid boy and the aggressors were three girls. It shows that falling victim to bulling is
regardless of gender. The character was prompted not to “man up” but to gather courage to
face his bullies. This emphasised the universality of the problem: it’s not about being less of a
man, anybody can get bullied and it takes courage to stand up to that.

In Romania, similarly to Japan, students experience bulling of various degrees, from

verbal, emotional to violent. Just like in GTO, the bulling is played off as a “game” or as a
part of life “that people have to learn to deal with”. According to UNICEF statistics, 46% of
Romanian children experience a form of bullying. While no study has been made to establish
a clear connection between school bullying and suicide rates, 15% of the participants in a
2013 study said they had suicidal thoughts after experiencing bullying. 2

Both in Romania and in Japan, exposing the bully will most of the time result in the victim
being put in the spotlight, the person receiving negative attention and further deterring them
from confessing any incidents. Moreover, those who skip school due to bulling receive little
help from teachers who view the problems as 1) excuse 2) an exaggeration.

In GTO the episode ended with Noboro’s brave gesture of stripping in front of his
classmates, showing his bruises, signs of abuse received from his three classmates. Because of
the clear evidence, the three had been declared guilty. The message sent is an encouraging one
for all victims of abuse: the courage to stand up to the abusers will be repaid.

1
Kirsty Kawano, “Bullying Japanese Schools” at https://savvytokyo.com/bullying-japanese-schools/ [ last
accessed 7 January 2019]
2
Laura Galescu, “Fenomenul Bullying-ului: Ce este si cum se manifesta in scoli” at
https://www.dcnews.ro/fenomenul-bullying-ce-este-i-cum-se-manifesta-in-coli_460773.html [ last accessed 7
January 2019 ]