Shonan Junai Gumi! (GTO: The Early Years)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Shounan Junai Gumi, Shonan Pure Love Gang, Young GTO

Japanese: 湘南しょうなん純愛じゅんあい組ぐみ！

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 31

Chapters: 267

Status: Finished

Published: Sep 26, 1990 to Sep 18, 1996

Genres: Action, Comedy, Drama, Romance

Themes: Delinquents, School

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Shounen Magazine (Weekly)

Authors: Fujisawa, Tooru (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 8.23¹ (scored by 7,546 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #383²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #835

Members: 22,540

Favorites: 763

Resources

Wikipedia

8.23

Ranked #383Popularity #835Members 22,540

MangaShounen Magazine (Weekly)Fujisawa, Tooru (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /31

Chapters: /267

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Synopsis

Eikichi Onizuka and Ryuuji Danma are members of infamous biker gang, Oni Baku. When not out riding around, they can be found in school, trying to pick up young women. This is the story of the young Onizuka, who would later become the greatest teacher in Japan.

(Source: ANN)

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Background

The first 10 volumes of Shonan Junai Gumi! was published in English as GTO: The Early Years by Tokyopop based on the 15-volume deluxe edition from June 13, 2006, to February 9, 2009. Vertical Inc. picked up the license and released the remaining volumes from February 21, 2012, to October 30, 2012.

The manga was adapted into a Japanese live-action TV series that premiered on Amazon Prime Video on February 28, 2020.

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Characters

Onizuka, Eikichi

Main

Danma, Ryuuji

Main

Masaki, Kyosuke

Supporting

Saejima, Toshiyuki

Supporting

Kadena, Nao

Supporting

Fujisaki, Shinomi

Supporting

Akutsu, Junya

Supporting

Kamata, Jun

Supporting

Natsumi

Supporting

Nagase, Nagisa

Supporting

Reviews

Jul 10, 2021

Savagexx7

Recommended

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 ...

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Jul 10, 2021

Supsary

Recommended

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 ...

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Oct 26, 2021

Trap_Traps_Traps

Not Recommended

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.

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Poll: Shonan Junai Gumi! Chapter 266 Discussion Ulquiorra - Oct 7, 2018	3 replies	by 9vash »» Sep 7, 1:53 AM
Poll: Shonan Junai Gumi! Chapter 264 Discussion Ulquiorra - Oct 7, 2018	2 replies	by 9vash »» Sep 7, 1:32 AM
Poll: Shonan Junai Gumi! Chapter 263 Discussion Ulquiorra - Oct 7, 2018	2 replies	by 9vash »» Sep 7, 1:31 AM
Poll: Shonan Junai Gumi! Chapter 261 Discussion Ulquiorra - Oct 7, 2018	2 replies	by 9vash »» Sep 7, 1:04 AM
Poll: Shonan Junai Gumi! Chapter 258 Discussion Ulquiorra - Oct 7, 2018	3 replies	by 9vash »» Sep 6, 8:34 AM

Shonan Junai Gumi!
GTO: The Early Years
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GTO: The Early Years
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