The original GTO dorama is one of the greatest doramas ever. If you want to introduce anyone to jdoramas, GTO would be a good entry point along with Love Generation. GTO is a dorama where all the right elements just somehow got into place: Sorimachi Takashi's cool aura and chemistry with the lovely Matsushima Nanako, a bevy of young actors playing the students who are really good, very funny comedy and great music. It was one show where not adhering too much to the source material turned out to be a good thing but the dorama special and movie proved that the dorama series was truly lightning in a bottle.
14 years on, someone decided it would be a great idea to remake/reboot a perfect dorama series. To me, if you want to remake something, it better have a damn good story that you can reinterpret. GTO doesn't. Its straight forward and has been copied over and over and over again. It is the archetype former yakuza/biker/violent past becoming a teacher with in a school where everyone is useless and the teacher changes things with unconventional teaching, usually involving fighting.
So first off, this is not even going to touch the original GTO. I'd be happy if it could but let's be realistic here. I cleared my mind of all expectations and thought to myself that as long as it doesn't suck and is watchable I will be happy.
WHAT I LIKED:
1) The casting of Miyabi
Very important character in series because she's the main bitch villain and has to be entertaining. She has the potential to be as good as the original Miyabi.
2) Casting of Nanako replacement Anko
3) Classi Onizuka pervert scenes
4) Moar eyecandy
5) They did the german from the manga.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE
1) The casting of Fuyutsuki sensei
2) The merging of the bullying and wrecking the wall storylines.
The second problem with merging storylines is that we end up having a stupid monologue she's bloody making excuses for 5 minutes for bullying. Woe is me. In the original, Nanako is makes dinner for Onizuka and starts talking about her family. Rule no.1 of scriptwriting: Show not tell. If you have to tell, tell it in context. In the original, Onizuka extablishes a relationship with Nanako before helping her out. In this one, the Onizuka's relationship is with the kid in the Oguri Shun role. In the original, what Nanako did was more mischievous. In this one, she paid Yakuza to help her and engaged in extreme bullying.
Sure, there are plenty of stories from the manga to tell but that also means there's no need to pack so much into one episode when it doesn't make sense. In the original dorama, the wall wrecking scene is so lame and stupid but somehow so cool. In this remake, this new GTO fellow just doesn't make it work. I blame the director for full camera view which was his right foot kicking up everytime he swings the hammer. Onizuka is suppose to be super cool and the above just looks so lame.....
I don't see Sorimachi kicking his leg up. Another huge difference from the original is that in the original, Onizuka doesn't give a stupid sermon while destroying the wall. Its just the piano version of Poison running in the background and the reaction shots. In the end, Onizuka tells Nanako, "Next is up to you". Simple and powerful.
3) Onizuka having two supporting guys who are getting too much screentime.
This screams to me of the producers thinking this GTO needs help cause he can't carry this dorama by himself. I'd rather watch this Onizuka fail by himself rather than a GTO and friends dorama.
4) Stupid generic warehouse fight scene.
4) Music
No contest but couldn't they have at least tried?
SUMMARY
Its watchable but the shadow of the original looms so large over this. I've seen original maybe 5 or 6 times, and taking screencaps of the original just makes me want to rewatch it. I'm not going to critisize Akira cause he's not Sorimachi. Comparing both makes me realise that the original GTO was great not just because of Sorimachi's screen presence. Every other element of it was flawless. Why waste your time watching a pale imitation of perfection?
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think that they should have cast Watabe Gota.
ReplyDeleteHe's at least got the pervert look down pat. ;)
wtf? they've remade GTO?
ReplyDeleteGot a rating of 15.1 for the first episode, Guess we've got a lot of remakes to look forward to......
I couldn't believe I watched this, but I did. I think AKIRA *looks* like Onizuka, and I think Miyabi was well cast too, but I didn't particularly like the rest.
ReplyDeleteWHY did they get Kuroki Hitomi to be the principal? She's so beautiful and perfect and needs to be spending her time on something else.
I guess I need to re-watch the original GTO, but I have a bad feeling that I had it on VHS or something else. I'm glad that Akanishi Jin was NOT cast as Onizuka or else I wouldn't have watched it at all.
i havent had the chance to see the new one ._.
ReplyDeletebut id really love to see GTO without moustache
(Akira, get proper shave)
(And uh, actually Sorimachi had kept his moustache rather thick in on of the movie.. ah well)
agreed with all ur comments but for me the new Fuyutsuki wasnt that bad either.. yes incomparable with the original cast but she was okay
ReplyDeletecan you give links where you found original episode 1 and remade episode 1? cuz 1 of them i got 1st episode but should watch it another day,and that day i didint found it,but another ''GTO'',not sure which one that was remade or original,but i'd like so see both of them,tnx^^
ReplyDeleteThere's a batch torrent on d-addicts.
ReplyDeleteAgree about GTO as a perfect entry into doramas but definitely not Love Generation. Are you sure you didn't mean Long Vacation? I watched these dramas during my initial stage of overexcitement about Japanese tv shows. Starting with fantastic GTO that got me hooked I moved on consuming one superfamous dorama after another and mostly loving all of them until I stumbled across Love Generation which almost killed my faith in the greatness of Japanese television.
ReplyDeleteI hated it so much that I swore to myself not to watch another drama with Takako Matsu ever again as I hated her character the most. But it was not only that. The problem was that all the other dramas that I watched and loved before that felt so much uniquely Japanese to me that I started to believe in uniqueness of Japanese small screen but when I watched Love Generation I saw a typical Latin American soap opera (telenovela) just made on Japanese soil and with Japanese actors. All the Japanese stuff felt completely insignificant and it was basically just a telenovela, in Japanese but still a telenovela. And it wasn't something I was looking for in doramas. In the end I considered it the worst drama of all the dramas I watched during that period.
Afterwards I kinda lost interest altogether and didn't watch any doramas for many years (7-8 perhaps) until recently I rediscovered my long forgotten passion again. So I started watching one drama after another, many of them being rewatchings of the dramas I watched before and loved tremendously (which I knew for sure as I always kept logs of the stuff I watch) but didn't remember much about after all these years. Half of these dramas I loved as much as before and another half didn't produce as much excitement in me this time but I still liked them nevertheless.
But there was one drama that I enjoyed tremendously more than during my first viewing many years before. And it was of course Love Generation. I don't know how to explain that change. Maybe I just got older or maybe just more relaxed about all the soap opera stuff (I actually liked several old telenovelas I watched during my childhood and rewatched recently out of nostalgia) but I really liked the drama since the beginning. The funniest thing is that Takako Matsu's character that I hated the most during first viewing, I liked the most during this one. Actually I think Takako Matsu is the best part of Love Generation. She even outshines Kimura in most scenes. All in all I think the drama has a fantastic first half. During that part I even thought it could become one of my favourite dramas. Unfortunately it kinda loses its pace somewhere in the middle and never gets it back. Additionally some really silly soap-operish stuff starts happening in the second half that really spoils the overall impression.
On the whole it's definitely not as bad as I thought it was but also far from a masterpiece as some like to label it. Just one of decent doramas from mid 90s. And it's absolutely in no way on the same level as almost perfect in all the aspects Long Vacation. Plus another thing that also makes it hard to recommend as a possible entry into the world of Japanese dramas is that LG feels terribly aged from start to finish. If Long Vacation feels absolutely fresh even now and it's almost impossible to believe how old it really is, with LG you really feel all its years and even more. I'd even say that Tokyo Love Story feels much fresher in all the aspects despite being 6 years older than LG. So I would never recommend it to anyone starting their journey into the world of doramas with Love Generation. They'd better stay away from it until they take a real liking of the doramas of 90s and decide to get deeper into them. Otherwise they really risk to kill the interest in Jdrama for a very long time if not forever.