Five Best Teachers “Sensei” in Anime
Stepping away from the realities of everyday teaching, we enter into the world of anime, where we binge watch our favorite heroes and foes. What is common in most of these tales is the presence of teachers “sensei”. These characters play a special role of being a guidance to those who attend their classrooms or seek to learn from beyond the school walls. Below we’ve listed some of the best teachers “sensei” from different anime.
1. Eikichi Onizuka
Eikichi Onizuka (้ฌผๅก ่ฑๅ Onizuka Eikichi) is the main protagonist of the Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO) series. Together with his best friend, Ryuji Danma, they were once known as the Oni-Baku: Shonan’s strongest fighting duo. He decided to become a teacher after helping a troubled JK for good.
In the original manga and anime, Onizuka is a 22-year-old bachelor and teacher at Holy Forest Academy. There, he is the homeroom teacher of the troublesome Class 3-4. He teaches social studies, but is renowned throughout the school for teaching life lessons to his students.
2. Shizuka Hiratsuka
Shizuka Hiratsuka (ๅนณๅก ้ Hiratsuka Shizuka) is Hachiman Hikigaya’s Modern Japanese and homeroom teacher. She is also a guidance counselor and the adviser for the Service Club.
Shizuka is an incredibly kind, friendly, and responsible teacher who is open-minded and believes in the future of her students; despite this, however, she’s also very short-tempered, and age-sensitive. She can also be violent towards Hachiman when particularly annoyed by his apathetic and cynical attitude.
As pointed out by Yukino Yukinoshita, Shizuka wishes and works hard for the welfare of all her students. She cares about all the students which is perhaps best demonstrated when she becomes concerned about her student Saki Kawasaki regarding her late-night job.
3. Korosensei
Korosensei (ๆฎบใใใใผ) was the homeroom teacher of Class 3-E of Kunugigaoka Junior High School, and the secondary protagonist and antihero of Assassination Classroom. He claimed to be responsible for creating the permanent crescent moon and added that he planned to destroy the earth after teaching Class 3-E for a year.
Korosensei’s attributes as a teacher is that he was able to connect to each student individually, being an objective, empathic, and observant person who will do almost anything to help his students. This was why all the students respect him even though he would eventually blow up the Earth in a year. Taking care of each student’s needs, Korosensei would sometimes be piqued by a student’s current problems or interests and would try his best to guide the student along or solve it for them.
4. Sawako Yamanaka
Sawako Yamanaka (ๅฑฑไธญใใพใชใ ใใๅญใใใ) is the music teacher of the Sakuragaoka High School and one of its alumni. During her high school career, she was a member of the Light Music Club and founded the rock band Death Devil with her friends Norimi Kawaguchi, Della, and Jane, where she was a guitarist also the main vocalist of the band.
She eventually becomes the adviser of the two new generations of the Light Music Club under the leadership of Ritsu Tainaka and Azusa Nakano, respectively. Additionally, she worked as the homeroom teacher of Class 3-2 during the senior year of the original four members of HTT.
5. Noboru Taki
He is the son of Tooru Taki (ๆป ๆ Taki Noboru), the widowed husband of Chihiro Taki, and a new general music teacher at Kitauji High School at which he substitutes for Rikako-sensei (in the light novels), and is the permanent instructor (in the animated series.) Taki serves as the Kitauji High School Concert Band’s director during after-school hours and is in charge of classes 2-5 (second years, class 5).
In school, Taki is usually polite and soft-spoken, and overall very friendly. He is rarely angry or upset unless under heavy stress. However, the students quickly find that under his gentle semblance is a highly demanding and often bluntly critical teacher with a methodical personality. Many upperclassmen who remained from the schism were accustomed to the passive mindset of the band from previous years and initially disliked Taki’s methods. Despite this, Taki slowly earns his students’ respect as everyone realizes that he is serious about going to the nationals.