Shonan Junai Gumi!
GTO: The Early Years

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Alright, I'll get straight to the point. If you're a fan of GTO this is defenitely a must read for you. It is also for you if you like comedy plus action.

Story - 9

The entire plot was really well made. It can make you cry and laugh at the same time. For me, the first 100 chapters had no problems. Midnight Angels arc (92 - 129chps) I found to be too long and sometimes confused. Second part of the arc picked up nicely and it was a blast to read. Also, Chasing Elieen arc was a bit underwhelming compared to others. My favourite was defenitely ... the Yokohama Cavalry arc as it was plain brutal and had high stakes. Overall the story was amazing and should be read if you're a fan of deliquent manga or GTO or if you just wanna read something that's full of comedy and seriousness.

Art - 10

Nothing to say here. Just outstanding and completely fits in with the 80s vibe.

Character - 8

Author throws in so much relatable characters and their chemistry is fun to read. Side characters gets spot light and their own times to shine. I had a problem with two or three side characters as they werent memorable at all and felt unecessary. They looked similar to the main cast so that kinda threw me off sometimes. Also I felt like so many characters didn't get enough closure by the end.

Enjoyment - 9

I have mostly enjoyed the manga except one arc which was underwhelming. Then half of another arc that felt dragged out. But that's just me being picky. When you're sucked into the manga, you would barely notice these things.

Overal - 9/10

A hidden gem that is buried under all the other popular mangas. I would recommend it highly. I personally enjoyed the first 100 chapters, but if you dom't enjoy the starting, keep reading around 30 chapters. This is the start of Mad dogs of kamakura arc. From there I really understood why this manga is a hidden masterpiece.

This is my first review on any kinds of manga. I wanted to make a review on the original GTO series but I can't express in the words how much I love that manga, how much it taiught me and made me the person I am now. So I will try to make a review on Shonan Junai Gumi!

It's a great manga. I was reading it for about half of a year. There were a lot of good arcs (for example, Return Of Midnight Angels was one of the best), where we discover about reckless life of Onibaku, their friendship, their delinquent lives. The manga ... depicts a pure and true friendship between Ryuji and Eikichi. It's interesting that the chpater 53 of the junai gumi has parallels with the chapter 43 of GTO (Much the same analogy, only the roles have changed)

The plot is good but there were a few boring parts. Although Fujisawa knows when and where to add more epic scenes so you feel hyped

The humor is on top-notch level for sure. I was lauging my ass off of first chapters. Then around 200s chapters Fujisawa started adding classic Onizuka Faces (they are hilarious too). The arc where Ryuuji's dick stuck in the wall is one of the funniest shit I've ever read

I found myself liking Ryuji more because in the original GTO he is kinda like a side character(which I don't like). But in junai gumi he is as main character as Eikichi. And when I see him in other series I can't help but smile

Also I liked Abe character, he was a unique one. It's sad that Fujisawa gave up on him during manga. It's also sad that characters like Shinomi, Tsukai, Katsuyki, Makoto, Kamata, Nakojo and ect hadn't appeared in the original GTO. It would be great if like Kamata came from US and helped Oni with money or something hahahaha. I also hope that in future Shinomi would take Eikichi's virginity because in the last chapters there was something going on between them

So to conclude I recommend everyone to read this manga. I think I'll reread it in future, but I want to read in paper because it sucks reading it online (the quality of images is so bad). So I need to buy all oh the tankobons

This review is from the perspective of someone who hasn't read or watched anything from GTO whatsoever, with no prior bias towards the characters or mangaka. Many will not have even heard of this prequel despite the success of it's follow up work and let's just say there's a very good reason for that.

Reading SJG you'll find a charismatic main duo, well choreographed dynamic fight scenes, an occasional hilarious slice of comedy and some brilliant highs along the way. Now all of that would be great if not for the extensive amount of abhorrent flaws that co-exist within the story. Unfortunately aside from the action ... scenes all the positives I've listed are completely overshadowed and in fact entirely negated within the same story. It is no exaggeration to say that while this series really did have some enthralling peak points, it also had, not just one, but several of the worst storyline and plot developments I've ever come across within fiction.

So let's start off with my biggest gripe, the handling and overuse of rape. Rape is a tool used in many stories to evoke either shock or a strong emotional response towards a character or scene in one way or another. Now of course there are other more intricate uses of sexual violence as a device in fiction but generally speaking these are without doubt the most common. The handling within this manga is extremely lazy. Half of the story arcs in SJG follow the exact same formula of a girl being introduced, immediately used as a narrative object to vilify the enemy of the week through being raped and/or abused by them, then tossed aside for the remainder of the manga after Onizuka deals with said villain. Subsequently we move on to the next arc and repeat with a new enemy showing up. Now while that repetitiveness was excruciatingly boring at times this is still a battle shounen so it's not as if I went into this expecting much different. However the fact that this series follows the basic structure of your average battle shounen is exactly what brought upon its most glaring issues. If you're familiar with the genre you'll know that the protagonists will often forgive and then potentially even befriend their enemies later and unfortunately despite some of the antagonists raping/abusing friends of Onizuka, SJG is exactly the same in this regard. Some early highs of Onizuka smacking the faces of these thugs are completely ruined later when he, without any context whatsoever sometimes, is suddenly seen to be friends with them.

Minor SPOILERS Ahead!!

For a series completely driven by it's protagonist, events like this that make you dislike Onizuka only serve to compound the disgruntlement with how the manga begins to unfold. Sadly this only gets worse. There are several constant flimsy affirmations of Onizuka being a man of principles and ideals, albeit while also being an angry/horny teenager, such as him believing if a guy gets a girl pregnant they should support her or how he'll sometimes stop other delinquents from picking on the weak or even take other actions such as not sleeping with a girl for pleasure alone. Now you'd be hard pressed to argue against the morality of any of those points. Regrettably they contrast entirely to the behaviour of Onizuka as well as his interactions with other characters. A few examples of this would be when this one guy sold his girlfriend off to be gangbanged by a group of thugs as payment for them beating up Onizuka. Now what happened with this guy and his girlfriend after Onizuka dealt with those thugs? All was completely forgiven. Not just from Onizuka's point of view either but his girlfriend, although clearly having been through the worst experience of her life, instantly forgave him after a few panels of tears. Onizuka himself also thought it was a good idea for her to stay with the guy. Of course this isn't a completely unrealistic outcome, at least between the couple. It's no secret there are people in the world who stick with the wrong partner for whatever reason. However that doesn't make the result any less unsatisfying.

Later on there is another girl who is raped by a gang leader who forces her to be his girlfriend. As punishment when she decides to leave the gang he has his 30 men gangrape her. Or at least he was about too but at the last minute steps in and saves her along with Onizuka. Much like before this man is completely forgiven by the girl and he befriends Onizuka too despite what he'd done to the girl who was one of Onizuka's closest friends. At that point it was already getting to be almost impossible to empathise with Onizuka but that wasn't even a droplet in the ocean of dirt Onizuka would later plunge himself into. The single moment that completely ended any attachment I may have had to Onizuka or any faith in this series whatsoever comes very late on when despite everything he's preached about before, he breaks into his friends house and tries to rape her while she's sleeping. Getting as far as pulling her clothes off and swinging his body into mid thrust before she luckily woke up and kicked him away. What happened after that? You guessed it. She forgives him after screaming at and hitting him a couple of times. I can only imagine how former readers of GTO with prior bias towards Onizuka tried to laugh this scene off and push it to the back of their minds as they continued reading. But let alone Onizuka's character it's hard for me to understand why Fujisawa thought it would be funny to have the protagonist lose control of his libido and go so far to satisfy his sexual urges as to result to such a vile act.

You could go the route of the social justice warrior and talk about how the women are only used as narrative objects for the men with almost every female character being completely degraded and stripped of any dignity whatsoever in this story. Or you could even criticise any use of sexual violence in any manga which leads to a character having their clothes stripped before the viewer. I however won't be doing either of those things. As a story targeted at pent-up teenage boys from the perspective of two horny teenage boys who just want to fight and have sex with any girl who comes into view, it's not such an incomprehensible thing that the women would be portrayed in such a way. Although it's certainly uncomfortable. If that's how Fujisawa wants to set up his manga then I wouldn't begrudge him that. Violence, sex, edginess and cool one liners fired off at the right times sell after all.

Overall I wouldn't recommend SJG anyone at all. If you enjoyed GTO and can overlook the sketchy moments in this manga then I'm sure you'll be able to at least enjoy seeing a younger Onizuka. Towards the end there are also some better arcs you'd likely love. One of them even has no rape scenes whatsoever! If only that hadn't been an anomaly perhaps this manga could have gone somewhere.