In the summer of 1997, Fuji TV's Tsukiji drama, which is always sentimental, temporarily stopped broadcasting the tradition of romantic dramas, and instead broadcast an unusual work with almost no love and only friendship. This Japanese drama about two beach boys made The protago

In the summer of 1997, the always sentimental Fuji TV html February 9 drama temporarily stopped the tradition of broadcasting romantic dramas, and instead broadcast an unusual work with almost no love and only friendship. This Japanese drama depicts two beach boys , let the protagonist Sorimachi Takashi , who debuted for three years, taste the taste of popularity-"The Virgin Road" in early 1997 was actually also very popular, but it was a little bit behind "The Beach Boys".

However, the work that really made Sorimachi one of the top Japanese dramas was " Hot Teacher GTO" in 1998. This Japanese drama gained momentum as soon as it was aired, and eventually achieved an excellent average ratings of 28.5%. However, "Spicy Teacher GTO"'s "great achievements" don't stop there.

"I am also a teacher after all"

School dramas are not an unfamiliar theme in the history of Japanese dramas. The "contrast" teacher like Onitsuka Eikichi in "Hot Teacher GTO" was not the first in 1997. Sawai Ken's 1990 comic "Funny Teacher Madonna" (イオナ) is one of the masterpieces. Onizuka Eikichi was once a bosozoku, so he was naturally informal in his choice of words. His decisive line, "I am also a teacher after all," was like "crying out for injustice" for his image of a rogue teacher, which was greatly different from his own.

"Hot Teacher GTO" is adapted from a popular manga, so it can be expected that there will be many cartoon-style exaggerated scenes, including Onizuka breaking down the walls of students' homes, not dealing with student bullying, etc. Although the Japanese drama version has deleted many of the more bizarre plots in the comic version, these contents have amazed the audience.

In future Japanese dramas such as " Gokudo Senshi " (ごくせん) and other Japanese dramas, many images of "contrasting" teachers and bad students are mostly based on Onizuka Eikichi played by Takashi Jikarimachi and the students of "Spicy Teacher GTO". The number of borrowed allusions is even greater than that from the comics adapted from these Japanese dramas. For example, there must be a cool and calm genius with high IQ, a beautiful and brainless innocent class star, or a rebellious but kind-hearted lonely child, etc.

screenwriter Kazuhiko Yukawa's career masterpiece

But in the final analysis, "Hot Teacher GTO" is adapted from the popular manga of " Weekly Shonen Magazine". Before the Japanese drama version was broadcast, the manga had been serialized for nearly a year and a half, and it was already a popular manga in "Weekly Shonen Magazine" Magazine"'s highly supported series. Adapting a popular comic like this doesn't seem difficult at all - just stick to the script. Interestingly, there were serious differences in the behind-the-scenes production process of "Spicy Teacher GTO".

Producer Kazuhisa Ando decided from the beginning that the Japanese drama version of "Spicy Teacher GTO" must be closer to reality than the comic version. Many realistic descriptions in comics were decided to remove before writing the script, such as some excessive descriptions.

But these are still small cases. In the comic "Spicy Teacher GTO", there are a lot of stage drama-style inner dramas of Principal Uchiyamada: He has a lot of long inner monologues, and the content is of no scale (after all, they are inner words). Regardless of the crooked content he had in mind, this expression of "a mind that changes a thousand times in one second" was reluctantly abandoned when it was adapted into a live-action work.

But for screenwriter Kazuhiko Yukawa, this is the first time he has adapted someone else's work. The so-called "realization" only means changing the settings of the students in the manga from "junior high school students" to "high school students". It won’t be too difficult because of the actor’s age.

For Youchuan, the comic itself is already very interesting. As a screenwriter, he doesn’t know what else he can “adapt”: “It’s not that I don’t want to do it, I just found it interesting after reading the comic. I thought that with the support of the original work, the script would be easy to write. However, after I wrote it, I only received comments like, "Isn't this exactly the same as the manga?"... That's when I thought, ah, I see, let's make it into a Japanese drama. Speaking of things, I have to think more broadly... and I actually don’t know much about Onitsuka Eikichi, so I can’t write anything special.”

If it’s just a script, it won’t be a live-action version. meaning.Yukawa, who was unaware of this at first, could no longer write the script after only writing the first episode. This was a fatal crisis for Japanese dramas that required continuous shooting. Yukawa, who has always written original scripts in the past, is used to coming up with a great story first and then extending the necessary characters from the story.

However, this is not the case with the manga adaptation. The manga "Spicy Teacher GTO" had not yet been completed at the time. Yukawa did not know how Onizuka's story would develop in the future, resulting in him being unable to find the characters that served the plot from a complete story. So now he must do the opposite.

Each comic chapter is only about 8-10 pages long. Within this limit, each comic chapter must explain the plot, explain the results of the climax of the previous episode, and then explain the suspense climax that is left to the next episode. But TV dramas are different. A cross-page battle scene in a comic may last less than a minute in a TV drama (but this already takes up 1/4 of the space in a comic).

Japanese dramas have more expression methods to use. You can use the protagonist's clothing, music, screen editing, etc. to more completely depict the characters in the story. Simply put, film and television adaptations must focus more on reshaping the characters.

"If I don't continue to explore the deep content of these characters, the script cannot be written. If I don't put myself in the protagonist's shoes, it will not work. Only after realizing this can I continue to complete "Spicy Teacher GTO" script." Youchuan said.

"Spicy Teacher GTO" established Yukawa's way of creating characters. In the future, Yukawa Kazuhiko's popular works almost all have the shadow of "Spicy Teacher GTO": in "The Queen's Classroom", there is also a character with a very distinctive image. The protagonist, she has clear and unshakable principles of behavior, spiritual scars that hinder her life, and a heroic journey to overcome the scars; the same goes for the father Tamura Masakazu of "Stubborn Dad".

Kanno Miho from " Unyielding Woman ", Amami Yuki from "Enka Queen", Matsushima Nanako from " Housekeeper Mita ", " Kahoko in the Greenhouse " and "Same Time" Sakura"'s Takahata Mitsuki , and even Yukawa's latest screenplay work "35-year-old girl" starring Yuki Shibasaki also plays a similar role.

Of course, the now crazy Marvel movie series around the world is also a follower of this "emphasis on character creation" line. However, on the other hand, there have been criticisms over the years that Yukawa Kazuhiko's character creation is top-notch, but the plot is empty and old-fashioned. This is Another question.

Because Sorimachi is actually Onizuka

To successfully create a character, in addition to relying on the skills of the screenwriter, many times it needs to rely on the actor's methodological acting skills - for example, Robert Downey Jr., who plays Iron Man, his personality is actually similar to Haodaxi Gong 's Tony Stark is completely different.

However, there are some very few examples where the characters are so closely aligned with the starring actors that the audience is completely unable to distinguish between the personalities of the characters they see on TV, which ones are fictional settings in the script, and which ones are the true feelings of the actors themselves. . Onitsuka Eikichi and Sorimachi Takashi are one of the best examples of this in the history of Japanese dramas.

Sorimachi Takashi was still very focused on fitness even when he was still working as a magazine or event model before he became famous. His efforts to maintain a perfect body will help him a lot when playing a sunny character like Onizuka. In addition, Sorimachi Takashi wrote the lyrics for the theme song "POISON" for this drama. The lyrics hit the core of the plot, and it can be seen that he knows how to play Onizuka.

I don’t want to tell those dirty lies/I don’t want to ignore those sincere emotions/In this world, you can’t say what you want to say freely/But I don’t want to deceive myself in order to survive/Go straight towards reality/I want to be proud To live on earth/then fighting is necessary

In 2012, "Hot Teacher GTO" was remade into a Japanese drama version. Many settings were more in line with the original comic - Onizuka Eikichi, played by AKIRA, finally returned to blond hair.However, this more faithfully adapted version cannot surpass the impression of the 1997 version in the minds of the audience. The biggest reason is because Sorimachi Takashi had already convinced the audience in 1997 that he was the unique Onizuka Eikichi.

Use your fists to fight off issues such as education, study, etc.

"Spicy Teacher GTO" contains a variety of modern students and school issues. In the original comics, the content of these issues is already unpleasant enough - for example Teachers were bullied by students and gave up on their lives, students were raped for nude photos and sexually bullied, etc. On the contrary, Onizuka Eikichi, who has no major principles of life or various teaching theories, breaks into these dark topics that are deliberately curious with a bright and straightforward style without being verbose.

In the final analysis, Onizuka Eikichi was able to conquer the stubborn class 2 and 4 only by "becoming a friend of the students" and "eternal principles of doing things". If you want to follow Onizuka's tactics, you can use this method To become a Great Teacher or a Great Father like him would definitely be a life worse than death.

However, "Spicy Teacher GTO" is just an entertainment work after all, and there is no need to criticize it for teaching bad teachers and parents. "Spicy Teacher GTO" turns the "teacher vs. student problem" into a "sun vs. shadow" design, which is enough to make teachers and students who are struggling with learning and education problems in the education field or at home express their grievances together.

Too dazzling students

There are many students in a class, and every Japanese school drama has a large number of young actors, and these actors may be the next kings and queens in the future. For everyone's favorite "Spicy Teacher GTO", of course there are more dazzling students. They include Kubotsuka Yosuke who plays the genius "Kikuchi", "Murai" Ikeuchi Hiroyuki who has an Oedipus complex, the bullied "Yoshikawa" Oguri Shun , Tamaki Hiroshi who was still a supporting role at the time, In the movie version, there are also super young Satoshi Tsumabuki, and so on.

is not just a student. Nakao Bin, who plays Onizuka's natural enemy Principal Uchiyamada, , is actually a veteran in the Japanese art world. Because he performed in this youth school drama, more new generation audiences know his funny side. . Nakao, who had performed many serious roles in the past, instead "changed his career" in his 50s and performed many variety shows or other comedic roles, reviving his career again.

The final episode of "Spicy Teacher GTO" has an astonishing ratings of 35.7%, which means it must be struck as soon as possible. In the winter of that year, "Spicy Teacher GTO" aired the full season finale, which also had good ratings.

Six months later, in June 1999, in order to respond to the audience's enthusiasm and promote the upcoming animated version of "GTO", a 2-hour special episode of "GTO" was aired, with the same ratings of 27.4%. score. And in December 1999 - one month after Sorimachi officially dated Matsushima Nanako, the heroine of this drama - "Spicy Teacher GTO Movie Version", the final episode of the special episode and the Japanese drama version, was released...it was the Sorimachi version. The story of Onizuka Eikichi has officially come to an end.

For more than 20 years now, "Spicy Teacher GTO" has always been a family heirloom of Fuji TV. During the fixed rebroadcast period of the TV station, this Japanese drama will always be a work that the audience strongly hopes to replay. Twenty years from now, every moment in this world that makes you feel depressed and unable to speak out will probably remind you of that great rampaging teacher.