Great Teacher Onizuka - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

, officially abbreviated as GTO, is a Japanese shōnen manga written and illustrated by Tohru Fujisawa. It was originally serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine
Weekly Shonen Magazine
, also known as Shōnen Magazine, is a shōnen manga magazine published by Kodansha, first published on 17 March 1959. Despite some unusual censorship policies , it's mainly read by an older audience, with a large portion of its readership falling under the male high school or college...

from May 1997 to April 2002. The story focuses on 22-year-old ex-bōsōzoku

Bosozoku

is a Japanese subculture associated with motorcycle clubs and gangs.-Traits and history:The word bōsōzoku is also applied to motorcycle gangs, who share an interest in modifications for motorcycles, such as removing the mufflers so that more noise is produced...

member Eikichi Onizuka, who becomes a teacher at a private high school, Holy Forest Academy, in Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. It won the 1998 Kodansha Manga Award

Kodansha Manga Award

is an annual award for serialized manga published in the previous year, sponsored by the publisher Kodansha. It is currently awarded in four categories: children's, shōnen, shōjo, and general. The awards began in 1977, initially with categories for shōnen and shōjo. The first award for the...

for shōnen

Shonen

The term refers to manga marketed to a male audience aged roughly 10 and up. The Kanji characters literally mean "few" and "year", respectively, where the characters generally mean "comic"...

, and is a continuation of Tohru Fujisawa's other manga series Shonan Junai Gumi
Shonan Junai Gumi
is a manga by Tohru Fujisawa which was published from March 1990 to December 1996, and initially released in 31 volumes. It has subsequently been released in a deluxe edition of 15 volumes, from May to December 2000, and the pocket-size print run, which began in May 2005, is currently at the 10th...

(lit.