(Episode Six: In which our manga dabbler realizes, among other things, that his present eyeglass prescription needs to be updated.)

Let's get this part of the review out of the way immediately: this writer is a geezer with fading eyesight who's been wearing bifocals for over five years. One of my recurring worries re: digest-sized graphic novels has revolved around the readability of shrunken pages - mite-sized word balloons, in particular. In most of the titles I've read to date, this hasn't proved to be much of a detriment, but with Tohru Fujisama's GTO (a.k.a.: Great Teacher Onizuka), my fears have been realized. Fujisama's word balloons vary from Large, Loud & Legible to bite-sized - and to make matters even more frustrating, the smallest fonts often contain the best off-hand jokes (the lettering equivalent of Will Elder's "eyeball kicks.") Partway into the series' first chapter (or "lesson," as they're titled here), I'm wondering whether I'll need a mounted, lighted magnifying glass to get through this story.

("Where's the Large Print Edition?" he shouts, waving his croquet mallet belligerently.)

That grouse aside, let's get into the first four books of this popular ("37 million copies sold worldwide!" Tokyopop brags on the front/back cover) manga series.

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GTO is the story of Eikichi Onizuka, an ex-biker and karate champ who, on graduating from a mediocre college, finds himself struggling to get a job. The series opens on our hero as he flubs one of many job interviews - then retreats to the mall to sit by an escalator and ogle passing young girls' panties. If one of the standard memes about manga is that their artists are panty-obsessed, you can see where that impression's coming from - young Onizuka repeatedly is shown leering at unmentionables. Fujisama repeats the same visual joke in the first book around this sordid act, rendering our protagonist as a dirty old man holding onto a croquet mallet (which I assume is the Japanese equivalent to shuffleboard).

When he's caught peaking at one ripe young thing's undergarments (so pristine that they glisten), Onizuka takes her out, only to learn the girl's still stuck on her older lover: a mousey-looking middle-aged teacher. "It seems like that kind of thing happens more than you think," his crony Ryuji tells him. And with this, Onizuka vows to become a teacher - not just any teacher, but a "great teacher." He gets a new haircut and spruces up ("Even had a flawless bathroom trip," he tells himself, "didn't even have to wipe or anything" - now that's classy!) Then he signs up to become a teacher in training.

Onizuka is clearly a lout, definitely not the kind of character you'd associate with inspirational tales of the teaching profession. After Happy Mania and Iron Wok Jan, it's clear manga readers are comfortable with ultra-flawed protagonists. In that light, our would-be "great teacher" can perhaps be seen as a manga version of a familiar American movie comedy type: the twenty-something asshole with a heart-load of Good Intentions (c.f. Adam Sandler or Jack Black), plus an extra dollop of thuggishness and Donald Duck-like temper. Per what appears to be a standard visual ploy in humorous manga, Fujisama plays a lot of games with his hero's apperance, turning him simian whenever he's on the verge of losing it. In one sequence, cat's whiskers appear on Onizuka's face after one of his students notes that he looks like a popular cartoon cat. He also sweats profusely when angered, tense or horny.