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Great Teacher Onizuka is one of the greatest (no pun intended) mangas I have ever read. Reading it has made me actually introspective about myself, what I want to do in life and what I'm like as a person, something that no other piece of media has EVER done before. I've always had this thought 'How do people connect so much do a story, it's just a story', but holy shit I completely gained that feeling now with this manga.

The story is so fun and satisfying, just seeing annoying authority figures being put into their place by this loveable ... ape that is so asinine about teaching actual schoolwork and so genius in teaching people how to be people is incredible. And if it's not that it's Onizuka teaching his students how to learn to value themselves or deal with life. It's just this ongoing thing of here is this new person that either has a problem or is a problem and here comes our main man, all hands on deck, ready to solve it. He puts people in their place, but not in a way that makes the character look like a dumbass, but in a way that shows their humanity. Onizuka finds their flaws, lays them flat out in front of them, says 'Hey motherfucker wipe yourself off and get to work fixing this' while also always actively helping fix those same flaws. Not a single arc in this story is boring, I had to constantly slow myself down so I wouldn't binge the whole manga in 3 days, and I still read it really quickly.

Onizuka himself is a very interesting fellow. He is impulsive, childish and a pervert. His perversion is comedic but it seems like a trait of both the time the story was written but also Japanese culture, as you can still see very perverted characters in todays anime/manga. I'm not a fan of perversion as a comedic trait, I don't find it funny 90% of the time and it makes the character look like a dick. However, Onizuka does shows time and time again that that perversion is just a comedic trait and not actually who he is. Several times in the manga he shows that he is able to put peoples wellbeing in front of his sexual drive, most prominently this is seen (*very minor spoiler here*) in his conversation with Ogi during the final arc of the story. (*end of spoiler*) He is a majorly flawed person, but still his overwhelming amount of good traits always come through. Onizuka is simple and straightforward, he doesn't complicate when it comes to solving problems, there is no beating around any bushes, he just gets to the point. I mentioned before his method of helping people. It's hurtful what he says to people but it's to the point, it's the purest Onizuka way. But what I always like about every character that goes through the Onizuka life class is that there is no judgement from Onizuka himself. No matter if you tried to hurt him, embarrass him or hell, even tried to kill him he forgives and forgets because he puts other people before him every time. Every person that Onizuka 'teaches' has a very well done character arc, Onizuka himself doesn't change much during the story, he fluctuates but ultimately stays the same person he was at the beginning, to me that makes sense, because he is 22 years old, he is well past his character defining years while the majority of the cast are highschool students in their formative years, yes people can change throughout their entire life but it gets significantly harder for those changes to appear once you cross into your twenties as you become pretty much completely developed as a person. I could keep talking about this man forever but I want to talk about other parts of the manga.

I want to touch on the other characters a bit. As I said earlier I feel like everyone has a nicely done character arc, I like where each of the characters stories go. Especially Urumi, Anko, Fujiyoshi and Noboru. Some are there just for comedy (prime example is Uchiyamada), but even some of them get a bit of development.
One character that I changed my opinion on drastically is Saejima. He has 2 or 3 chapters that are just Onizukas conversation with him, but it's just him talking and nothing else, and I wasn't a fan of those. The chapters he appears in, including the few that are JUST him, make Saejima seem like this douche that only thinks about money and he does the worst possible scams to get some cash, he's a just corrupt, greedy cop that wants to get rich quick and I didn't understand why Onizuka was a friend with this dude as I felt that Onizuka could judge him well enough to realize that. However, his last appearance flipped my view of him completely. (*again minor spoilers for the few ending moments*) When he came to see Onizuka in the hospital in the final arc and the one panel of Onizuka laying in bed with Ryuji and Saejima sleeping right there on the corners of the bed barely fitting there just made me stop and think 'Holy shit, Saejima is just as much a real friend to Onizuka as Ryuji'. I don't know how I didn't see that sooner but it made me appreciate Saejima so much more. (*end of spoiler*)
I'm not going to go into much more detail with the rest of the cast as I feel that what I said earlier applies to everyone, I just wanted to touch on Saejima because of the flip I had. I like the cast, A LOT, they are all flawed people that needed help and I love them all.

A brief mention of the art is now in order. It's not great, Tooru Fujisawa isn't some god artist, but it works really well for a comedy manga. Comedies don't ask for super realistic drawings, you want them to be goofy and simple and Fujisawa accomplishes that nicely. A lot of the time for art it's not about just being good it's about context. Does this style fit this type of story, that question is just as important as does this look realistic or does this look good. I'm not saying Fujisawa is a bad artist, far from it, I like the art, it fits a comedy perfectly but it's not gonna get any awards. I don't think anything more than that is necessary.

All in all, GTO is genuinely one of my favorite manga I have ever read. It's marketed as a comedy everywhere but it's so much more than that. It's this amalgamation of great characters that you can empathize with and understand their pain, but also laugh with and at them when you should. It is incredibly funny but knows exactly when to drop the jokes and get serious so it can tug on some heart strings. You will laugh, you will be emotional and you will fall in love with the cast. I fucking love Onizuka and I fucking love this manga. It spoke to me on a level that nothing ever has and I will be coming back to it for the rest of my life.

What constitutes a man? What constitutes a warrior? What is the 'Spiral of death and killing'?

The answers to these questions lie beyond the the surface level things that bring people to 'Vagabond'. Samurai and amazing art is what you are told when people recommend this manga, I was no different when I first heard of it - "The art is amazing and it is an amazing historical fantasy story." - but I kept reading and I found these deep seeded questions that every character seems to answer. Musashi is on a never ending quest to not only become 'Unrivaled under Heaven' but to also ... understand what it truly means to be unrivaled. There is more to a man than the sound his sword makes when it is swung, more than strength of his grip on the sword, but what is it? Where do you find it? There is an important turning point in Musashi's life where he goes from 'I will kill anyone and prove there is no one above me' to 'There is always someone above me, no matter what, but how do I surpass that?'. It is that character arc that I find to be exceedingly fascinating.

This concept of someone always being above you is also what feeds the 'Spital of death and killing'. To be the best you must always prove it, and becoming the best, in my opinion, means escaping that spiral. That spiral is the final hurdle that Musashi needs to overcome to become unrivaled. Once he escapes the need to kill everyone who shows up in front of him, he can become 'Unrivaled under Heaven'. We see this through Sekishusai Yagyu, as he is someone who 'defeated' Musashi without so much as lifting a finger, he is someone who holds the title of 'Unrivaled under Heaven' and he is also someone who seems to have escaped the spiral.

Matahachi is also a fascinating character. He is much more relatable than Musashi to the average reader. While one is this almost unrivaled warrior the other had longed for it his entire life but just isn't fit to be one. It's the struggle and failure of your 'average Joe'. Matahachi is just another average man that happens to be friends with a god amongst men and there is nothing he can do about it. We all know a person that exceeds in one task more than everybody else and there is always a sense of jealousy towards them. However It makes me happy to see Matahachi overcome that feeling and move on, while still being happy for Takezo, his childhood friend. Matahachi is the one who answers the question 'What constitutes a man?'. Our flaws and our weaknesses make as big of a part of us as our strengths. While Musashi also is showcase for this I feel like Matahachi is a more relatable example.

Is there even any point in talking about the art of this manga? So many people spoke of it, so many praised it and I just agree with it all. Watercolor is my favorite medium of art and seeing Inoue's watercolored pages is a treat among an already masterfully drawn work.

I'm a sucker for samurai and vagabond-like journeys (I say vagabond here as the actual meaning of the word, not the manga name). It gives me a special sense of freedom to know that in those times you could just drop your life and walk away, just travel and do things. I wish I could do something like that. This comes from a very romanticized point of view, I'm aware, but I would love to be able to that.

Overall, Vagabond is a must-read for any manga lover, but if you go in expecting a shonen level of action you probably will be disappointed as it is very realistic in it's portrayal of fights, but it still should NOT be skipped by anyone who actively reads manga.

I don't usually binge anything, I like to take my time with things, but when I was reading 20CB, the power in my house happened to go out for the entire day so with nothing better to do I read the final 130ish chapters of the manga in that one day, and honestly I think it served to better my experience with it.

Personally, I seem to prefer the scenes when the boys are young, rather than the more important adult moments. The flashbacks, I guess you could call them, seem to have this whimsical wonder to them. The whole, making secret bases and hiding ... in them with your close group of friends, away from mom's watchful eye is extremely nostalgic for me since, even though I am only 20, those are things that me and my friends did.

When we look at the other side of the story, the adults combating this unknown presence that is 'Friend' is an incredibly written mystery, as is pretty much everything by Urasawa. I get great satisfaction from watching/reading/experiencing seemingly invincible forces that dictate everyone's lives be taken down. It's a special kind of freedom that you get from that that just makes me feel good, I love it. I don't like a force that controls fate of others, I like to see them fall. The whole theme of rock music also adds to the feeling of freedom you get by defeating 'Friend', as one of the core ideas in rock is freedom and anarchy.

Naoki Urasawa's art is really nothing too special. He has a very recognizable art style, you know, I could look at anything drawn by him and immediately point to it, which is important for art, but it is still kind of basic. The characters tend to look fairly similar. One thing I also noticed is that he rarely draws a character with a straight nose, a lot of his characters just have big, curved noses, it's not a downside, a lot of people in real life are like that, it's just something that I noticed. He goes for realism but it tends to be lacking in variety.

I enjoyed 20CB more than both Monster and Pluto, just because I could relate more to the characters than in the other two, and while the story might not be as quality as Monsters, or the pacing might not be as good as the much more, compact to say, Pluto, but the overall experience just surpasses those two in my eyes, and by a decent bit at that.

I see 20th Century Boys as Urasawa at his best. It combines his masterful story writing, with a good mystery that surprises you with unexpected plot twists and a core theme that fits incredibly well with the premise of the story. A masterpiece in my books.