Anime: Onegai Teacher

A show about an alien teacher that marries one of her students to keep her identity a secret while doing whatever she pleases on earth may sound like an stupid concept for any show. Perhaps a comedy show could take this and make something very laughable, but don't judge Onegai Teacher without watching it first. The show has its issues, but's a very powerful romance with bits of slice of life and a tragic feel that makes it one of the remarkable shows of the early 2000's.

Art & Animation
Back in its day there were only a few anime with a better visual presentation than Onegai Teacher. The artwork is sharp and of superb quality and the character design is on the spot. The animation is not anything like today shows, but it was good enough for its genre and does a great job when needed. The consistency is there, variety is there, the characters are very likeable in both style and personalities, so there's nothing to really complaim here.

Sound
Back in 2002, dramactic merging endings were not that common. We had Gundam Seed to do that and Onegai Teacher as well. While the music overall is not that awesome, it's very well timed and used in a way that enhances the quality of many scenes. The voice-acting is top-notch, maybe with one voice or two perhaps to cartoonist to an anime (Morino's voice reminded me of Scooby somehow...), but besides that the overall sound direction is very solid and well done.

Story
The story of a gorgeous alien teacher who marries a student and needs to keep it a secret is something that I would instantly deny normally, but I gave Onegai Teacher a chance somehow and was never disappointed. ALthough the basic elements of the plots flows around Kei and Mizuho and their daily problems of avoiding being discovered, the plot thickens a lot with the introduction of more depressive and tragic stuff. Some characters are very ill, others have faced lots of problems, and all of them are in some sort of love polygon that constantly creates very interesting scenes and are usually very well resolved by the plot. While it's not anything out of your ordinary romance, the seriousness in most parts and the tragic feel to the show is a great element that manages only to enhance the weak and ecchi-based premise. You'll have your fanservice and some shy girls once in a while, but the show is always sure to bring you back to a more urgent and serious atmosphere than being a common noisy ecchi show like many Love Hina rip-offs back in those years.

Character
Slice of life shows usually have more realistic and better developed characters than most of the genre. This happens mainly because they're usually based in real life characters or influenced by real experiences of the authors. Having bits of the slice-of-life elements, even with your alien lady, Onegai Teacher is also home to a superb cast. The characters are all very likeable, not exactly good boys and girls, but also not being flashy or unrealistic. Their fears, the way they handle romance, everything they do is always done in a way that is understandable based on their initial personalities and problems. The development happens even with only a few episodes and you can expect some characters to slowly forge their personas as the story events unfolds. The only true problem here is the alien element. As you watch the series, you don't quite see the need for Mizuho to be an alien or anything like that. If she was just some mysterious gir or whatever the show could progress normally, but I think that back in the early 2000's it was the main thread to make out-of-normal girls. We had aliens, robots, espers, goddesses, all kinds of supernatural girls to protagonise in shounen romances.

Value
I can't remember of a show similar to Onegai Teacher before it. It was a romance that sometimes reminded me of Love Hina, but had a tragic feel and more seriousness than it. It never derails from your typical romance, but it's very well executed and brought many similar shows to the spotlight in the following years. The most similar thing I can remember is Ah! My Goddess, but it's still a different kind of experience. Anyway, for its courageous initial idea and a good pace and development, Onegai Teacher is certainly of the great shows to air in a time that was already filled with top-quality stuff.

Enjoyment
Onegai Teacher is very light hearted by most of the time, with bits of depressive scenes that gets more common as the episodes go on. Some merging endings, cliffhangers, and a few twists keep the show always interesting, but the overall pace may look a bit slow in the early episodes and perhaps too much time is wasted with self-questioning that by the end they can annoy a little. Besides that you can expect a great romance and slice-of-life show that gets more and more interesting with each episode.

Comments
Onegai Teacher has a special meaning to me. It was my first anime that I've watched in my PC (before that I resorted to VHS and anime conventions, sometimes a few dvds) and by the time I liked it but couldn't grasp its true strength perhaps because I didn't pay much attention to it. It was only by the second time I've watched it that I could understand that, behind the stupid concept, the show was in fact a very good one.

The years passed, I've watched the not so good Onegai Twins and now Ano Natsu, as well as similar shows from different productions, but Onegai Teacher remains above most of them because it never tried to hard to be funny or ecchi. It only had enough doses of bouncing boobs and creepy smiles to keep the show from being too serious, and the tragedy that was introduced later really made it stand more like a realistic novel than some sort of cheesy shounen ecchi show.

I could recommend Onegai Teacher to those who like romance but are not in the mood to tolerate shoujo elements or shy girls. You'll have bits of those here, but Onegai Teacher feels more like the shows from 2000's, when the characters had more value in their personalities than in their visual designs.

While seemingly another "hot older woman suddenly appears to make younger boys' dream come true" Please Teacher adds much more depth and conflict to the idea.

The animation is amazing, both backgrounds and characters are detailed and colored extremely well. This is one of the few animes where one of my first thoughts when watching the series was "Wow, this is some good animation."

The soundtrack is good but not great, nothing sticks out as amazing, but nothing sticks out as poor either. I did like the catchy opening and ending songs, however.

The story is interesting enough: we watch as Kei and Kazami struggle through various conflicts within their marriage and without, and watch as they try to become closer while dealing with many obstacles and bumps along the way.

The characters were the best part of the series; I really like the depth of Kei and how he struggled to keep on "moving forward," a theme in the series. Kazami was also very interesting: while at first glance she may appear to be a ditzy and perpetually cheerful woman, she has more depth than that, and on the inside proves just as vulnerable as any woman.

The side characters like Koishi are also enjoyable, though their backgrounds and characters are, understandably, not as fleshed out as Kei's and Kazami's are.

This anime was very enjoyable to watch and from the first episode I was hooked and could not stop watching. I would definately reccomend at least renting, if not buying, Onegai Teacher and think that for it is one of the top animes of its genre.

Well i watched this long long ago i forgotten i had seen it, lately ive grown a bit tired of the usual animes i watch so ive been trying some drama and romantic animes and i ended up watching this once again due to several recomendations and i dont regret one single bit, actually i might watch it again many many times...

The story seems interesting at beggining then it goes into the same old usual characters that you find on a romantic anime and all the things that prevent their love and the usual ecchi situations that arouse both feelings etc etc... but then the misterious diesease brings a holy light to one of the main character making it quite original and the development of the story is.. beautifull.I did feel a bit annoyed that they wouldnt confess their love and were just stalling alot because of the ridiculous situations with the classmates and im not a fan of romantic scenes altho i do like some drama, but this, goes directly to my favorite animes because of one simple fact: Ive seen many dramas, many similar situations ive experienced, ive been touched and moved by some of them but Onegai Teacher..

Made me cry.

and

Made me cry..

and over and over..

and then..

I felt so happy that I cried again but this time ive felt a tremendous joy.

I do watch anime because it has alot more emotional effect on me then the usual hollywood movies and/or ocidental productions, but no other movie or animation has achieved this in such a proportion.

When I first came across this on an anime site, I found the description of this anime hilarious. The storyline sounded so ridiculous I never thought I'd actually take the time out to watch it it. Then they started showing it on Internet TV, so I thought I may as well give it a try.

My conclusion: no surprises. It is every bit as ridiculous as the description suggested. So, if you're put off by it, the chances are, you're not gonna like the anime at all.

As you may have guessed, the worst aspect of this anime, imo, is the storyline. This whole student marrying his fit teacher thing is basically a fantasy straight out of someone's head. And, just like a fantasy, it lack coherence. The motivations behind all the actions of the characters are all so lame. It feels like the producers are straining to get the story going in the direction they want to, so had to make more and more stupid artificial twists to keep it on track and linking it up to the next segment of story and character relationship. It's hard to say exactly what's wrong here without resorting to spoilers.

The characters portrayed in this anime are all pretty weak. Thanks to the extremely contrived storyline, most of the character development stinks of fakeness. The only one which I feel is any good is Herikawa, whose involvement is on the more realistic side and whose pain feels really genuine and easy to sympathise with. The other one worth mentioning is only worth mentioning because the character so bad, and that's the girl with the monotonous voice. Aaaggghh WHAT'S WITH THE VOICE!!! It drove me crazy. You often see characters like these in anime, but I really don't see the point of them - they no personality, they never amuse me, they just annoy me. On the other hand... the ships control system seems to have too much personality... I mean, I thought it was a computer, but it was more like an animal. I can appreciate them trying to "cutify" it, but they overdid it to the extent that its personality was has become a plot devise that at times conveniently allows the plot to run in the convoluted direction the producers want - why else would a ship control system have the ability to fall in love and interfere with people's lives? The conversations/monologues are all highly repetitive. Half the diaglogues seem to consists of people calling the main character an idiot. Most of the character's own monologues also consists of calling the main character an idiot. Over and over again. It felt like half of the series all ended with our "hero" saying things along the lines of "It finally feels like the teacher and I are moving on!!!" or "I can feel something inside me changing".

The strength of the anime is the presentation. Although the opening theme isn't that good, I thought quality of the rest of the music was several leagues above that of the anime. The animation is okay. But unfortunately I'll have to lower the marks in order to give this anime the average I think it deserves. It's one of those animes amounts to significantly less than the sum of its parts.

The supposedly final 12th episode was actually surprisingly good I thought, but it seemed to have smudged over some issues and made a rather hurried ending. Throughout the series, my personal ratings for this struggled to get up to 3. It finally achieved it with episode 12, then lost it again. Why? Cos the 13th episode is basically letting lose all the fantasy elements in the anime that had been held back before, and just undid the good work that episode 12 built up. Oh yea, and they tried to disguise the identity of this blantent fanservice episode with a kind of "hidden moral reason" the actions of the charactes, as a kind of "you see... there is a meaningful point to this after all." Well, I didn't buy it. Imho they should have left it at 12. Still, it's interesting to note that an anime that's based on a fantasy straight out of someone's head should contain less nudity than Elfen Lied, heh.

This whole anime just felt like it was trying to create a drama with similar emotional depth as KGNE, but fails miserably as I found it hard to take it seriosly because of the storyline. The attempted comedy wasn't funny at all, and the only reason I laughed so much in this anime is because it's one of those shows that's so bad, it's actually really really funny...

Oh yea. On a final note, this anime's got the worst catch phrase EVER. If they can't think of anything better than "It's very important" or "It's top priority" or however it's translated, then it would have been better not to have one at all. It doesn't really improve with highly repetitive use either. :(

---Addition Notes & Summaries---

Animation: Actual Rating (that's not fudged to balance the right overall score) - 6

It's ok, but nothing special, but not bad. Can't really say more than that as it didn't make that much of an impression on me.

Sound: Actual Rating - 7

The music in general is quite pleasing, although I'm not much of a fan of the opening track. Didn't really like the voice acting much. The main character's whining voice grates on my nerves, but not as much as the girl with the flat voice. And the teacher sounds like a porn star or something.

Story: Actual Rating - 3

Artificial twist; Makes me laugh when it's meant to be dramatic cos of the ludicrous situations the character gets themselves into, matched only by the even more ludicrous manner in which they try to get out of them.

Character: Actual Rating - 4

Repetitive Dialogs/Monologs; Character feels horribly fake; If it wasn't for Herikawa, this score would be even lower.

Value: Actual Rating - 2

Once is enough. Thank god this series is short.

I've learned my lesson; I'm ready to give up. I am not an anime fanboy, and therefore I should stop watching anime for fanboys. Onegai Teacher has all the qualities of a fanboy’s anime: You've got a non-descript, indecisive male character paired with a vivacious and beautiful female character and watch them fall in love. Psychologically it's brilliant; by making the male character so ordinary it's very easy for the viewer to displace themselves as that character. Of course problems will arise, mysterious illnesses will occur, but love will save the day, and the fanboy gets his girl in the end.

Onegai Teacher is about Mizuho Kazami and Kusanagi Kei, whom by a series of strange circumstances find themselves married and living together. Unsure of their and each other's feelings, problems arise. Such problems include Kei's mysterious illness, Kazami's relatives, and one of Kei's classmates.

Plot wise we get the general run of overused, unimaginative plot devices. We have misunderstandings, annoying younger sisters, a weak-willed and self-conscious protagonist who makes all the wrong decisions, and so on. The only two things redeemable I saw in the plot was the inventiveness of having an alien teacher paired up with a not-so-normal high-school student, and the relationship between two other characters, but even that was given short shrift.

The Animation though was above the board, Kazami is one of the more attractive anime characters I've seen in quite a while, the animation itself is fluid, the backgrounds are well detailed and they seem to live and breathe. There was also quite a bit of fanservice thrown in, which I rarely complain about.

Sound is a bit of a mix bag, the music itself is your standard keyboard based j-pop with synthesized incidental music, and I can personally take it or leave it, it doesn't make an impression on me at all. The voice acting on the other hand was superb; they took a script of questionable quality and originality and breathed life into it, making the characters more than the flat boring people they could have been if they were voiced by lesser talent. Sound f/x were also very good, as everything sounded as it should, from footsteps, to water, all of that was fluid.

Characters are also a strong point, thanks in large part to the voice acting. All of the secondary characters are given some time to have their various problems taken care of, especially Magumo, and Herikawa. But as I've said before, most of the characters are an archetype in one way or another, there is even a jealous younger sister, Maho, thrown in for good measure.

This is not an anime I'd consider watching again, so I don't value it very highly. It should be very enjoyable for fans of other animes of this type such as Love Hina, Chobits, and the like. If you're a person who expects to be challenged emotionally or intellectually by an anime, I would seriously recommend you stay away from Onegai Teacher.

first of all I'd like to say that this is the first anime which effected so much :P .

now for the review:
Animation: was as good as expected, besides, this days all it's hard to see a bad animation.

Sound: the combination of the opening song and the ending song was great.. i really liked the way they started the opening song (you'll see what I mean when you'll watch the series^^)
generally, the sound was good, it fits to the situations.

story: really attractive story.. the fact it's a developed content and not a new story each episode is adding allot. I could say that If Had to wait a week for each episode the come, i'd probebly would have gotten crazy :P .
also, a very funny series and all the situations there, are hilarious.

Character: chracters are just perefect, each character is built in an incredible way with it's own unique symptoms which fits in a perfect way to it's design.

Enjoiment: the fact I've seen the whole series in two days says alot. (and I'm a very busy person) :P