Finally an anime with a name that has a translation that is halfway decent am I right? Ultimate Otaku Teacher continues the newish trend in anime/manga in which otaku culture is worked into the story which in my opinion is very meta since people are likely becoming otakus for a series talking about otakus. It’s kind of like when MTV was in its prime and Youtube hadn’t been invented yet and MTV was giving out awards for music videos… something only they were playing. I don’t hate the concept because clearly here it’s executed far better than MTV prime, but it’s something that continues to grow as a trend. To put it another way, it’s like reading a comic book and the characters talk about reading comic books…
At any rate the opening to this episode is terrible. There’s forced exposition and the character introduction is weak. We’re introduced to Jun’ichiro and his sister Suzune. She comes in with a bat that she can barely swing and basically threatens his life if he doesn’t get a job. Meanwhile his room is filled with manga, anime, figures, and posters and basically what’s become the normal “otaku room” shown in stories like this.
Why he needs a job is unknown to us. Clearly it’s not for the money because he can afford his expensive hobby to the fullest. The gist I got was that the sister wanted him out of the house and we needed a story to happen. Also it’s loosely covered that he’s a genius and that he’s given up on his field of study because he never liked it to begin with. That and he developed teleportation in theory, but realized it would take centuries for mankind to make it so… bummer.
On his first day of teaching he hears a girl singing an anime song on the roof and runs up to hear it. He’s impressed and of course goes all Otaku on the girl when she mentions she wants to be a voice actress. Of course they end up in the same class as student and teacher. The only interesting part was when Jun tells the class to play a game so he can get to know them and informs them that if any of them can beat his score he’ll give them a free pass for the year. Here he discovers that the voice actress girl that he calls Face Punch (because she punched him in the face) is being bullied and that the rest of the class has Black Plagued her to avoid being involved.
The story is okay after the opening. The opening is so bad that I nearly stopped watching because it was clearly pulled from the manga and was desperately trying to catch your attention. It did, but in the worst possible way. It just goes to show that you shouldn’t always copy the source material that closely.
Everything about the story is unbelievable in the sense that a genius is teaching high school and basically everything in this world is unbelievable and ridiculous because of that, but I’m pretty sure that’s the point. It’s really just GTO with an otaku teacher and it works. I don’t know where the story can go that will be all that interesting or if I’ll actually stick with it, but I’ll see what the second episode has to offer at least.
I disliked the sister and her character motivation was extremely shallow and I mean that as the depth of her reasoning… as in there is none. “Oh hey brother that never leaves his room because he’s a NEET… get a job you’re bothering me somehow…” It made me want her to leave more than him to get a job. Sadly I think we’ll be seeing a lot of her and if that’s the case then… sign me out.
The animation is okay. It’s not the best overall, but they put a lot of effort into little details which is good. If it manages to get a second season I could see them putting more money into the animation budget, but for now it’s tolerable even if it’s not the prettiest thing on TV.
I’m looking forward to the next episode, but probably for the wrong reasons. I think that episode will really determine if I stick with this show. While it wasn’t terrible, it was pretty generic and wears its influences on its sleeve for all to see and that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Score: 3/5
Ultimate Otaku Teacher 1.1 Official Website