Onegai Teacher! – Otaku Wishes.

Onegai Teacher! (Or “Please Teacher!” or “Onegai Sensei!”) is an anime custom-built by specifications. It has exactly what is expected of an anime of the genre, and is especially targeted at adolescent boys and/or otakus. It is basically, a wish-fulfillment series.
It does that very well, but naturally does very little else.

This is a “Things I Like” post, and as such, it’s not a review per-se, but my thoughts on the series. Spoilers should come as no surprise, but this post will have relatively few if any.

In the series, we have a bunch of 15 year olds, except that the main character, Kei (at the front of the picture above) is actually 18. He spent 3 years in a coma during which his body didn’t grow. Through a routine comedy of errors, he ends up married to Kazami Mizuho, his half-alien teacher (the gorgeous lady holding him).
Naturally, they have to keep this a secret, and there’s a girl Kei’s age (or so she thinks), that is also interested in Kei, and he has to navigate between his friends and the married-life that is on one hand foisted upon him, and on the other, both he and Mizuho seem to want, very much.

Does the above sound to you like a typical anime series, with very little added to it? Yeah, it does. Sure, it probably affected some series to come, but seeing as this series is not that old (2002 vintage), it was probably built to-spec, by those who made it.

The series seems especially tailored to young boys. They watch it, and they go, “Hm, I have a shot!”, both with older women, and with girls their age – that’s one of the good things in the series, it explores in a realistic manner romantic relationships between teenagers. As some of the other characters are involved amongst themselves.
Not everyone ends up with someone, but most people do.

Thing is, how does such an otaku feel if they watch this series when they’re over 20 and single? It perhaps might not be the best thing in the world for them. Also, the series is troubling in a couple of ways: Kei is 18 chronologically, and though he underwent a major life event (we find out much later that actually he underwent two), he spent 3 years in a coma, ergo, mentally and emotionally he’s still 15. He has no business being married to an adult, does he?
And of course, one of the girls ends up more or less together with another teacher…

So I kinda wonder, is this show aimed at 14-16 year old boys, or at 25-35 year old people who want an excuse or a way to dream of dating younger kids, say, their students?

The show does have a couple of plot twists at the end that are heart-wrenching. But again, though they do truly make you emotional, the amount they have is also almost just as ordered for this kind of series, and not more.

The real light in the tunnel for this series is the seiyu of Kazami Mizuho, Kikuko Inoue, who voiced Belldandy from “Oh My Goddess!” Her voice is warm, gentle, classy, and it wraps all around you. This probably helps the series do what it did, but truly, great voice acting, as expected, from this lady.

Kazami Mizuho’s design is pretty popular, you can see it on Euphemia from Code Geass, some lady from Macross.. her personality is both vulnerable, successful, warm and supportive, like the voice. What the geeks voted for, except for those who like super-spunk.

The other is again, that it is a pretty good depiction of teenager romantic relationships.

The opening theme (OP) has what many anime series have; great first few seconds of music, and then the music changes to a much more mellow and less up-beat when the singing begins. Here’s an idea – if you start with a bang, stay with it, rather than change it to something not as good.

The ending theme (ED) is in a word: Forgettable. It’s a carbon copy, nothing draws your attention, kind of song.
The only thing worth some sort of mention is Marie, the artificial operator of the alien ship is as cute as always. And drawn nicely.

There’s one immortal phrase from this series. Most commands to Marie, and it happened quite a lot were:

“Saiyuusen Jikou yo!”/ 最優先事項よ！/ Top Priority!

And thanks to Ewen for help with the transliteration and Kanji.
I’ll put it like this, this line is on the level of “My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!”, not in terms of how widely known it is, but as a shibboleth.

Score: 6.6 out of ten. This series does most things it should, but it’s a bit too cut and paste. But it has some good aspects, and it’s only 13 episodes. So you could spend your time in a worse manner. If you’re up for some feel-good, too-sweet, emotional, comedy series, you could do worse than this.