Ask John: How Much GTO is There?

Question:
About GTO, how long was each series? Like, how long did the anime run for and how long did the live action run for? And was one more popular than the other?

Answer:
The character of Eikichi Onizuka originated in Toru Fujisawa’s 31 volume Shounan Junai Gumi manga series first collected in March 1991, a series that dealt with college student Onizuka’s attempts to change his priorities from fighting to dating girls. Fujisawa’s GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka) premiered in the pages of Weekly Shonen Magazine in 1997 and debuted its first of 25 volumes of collected manga in May 1997. June 1997 saw the publication of a single volume of Bad Company manga, the story of Eikichi Onizuka’s high school days.

GTO was first adapted for television in July 1998 in a live action drama that became a smash hit. The live action GTO drama consisted of 12 episodes and a TV special. The GTO drama was such a smash hit that its final episode was the most watched program ever broadcast on Japanese television! The following year, GTO was adapted into an anime television series that premiered on June 30, 1999 and aired 43 episodes, ending on September 24, 2000. While the anime series was successful enough to last well beyond the average 26 weeks, it never approached the phenomenal success of its live action predecessor. Finally, GTO was brought to the screen once more in a 1999 theatrical movie. Fuji Television and TV series star Takashi Sorimachi re-teamed for GTO: The Movie, an alternate, self-contained version of GTO that failed to match the audience or popularity of either TV series.