Onegai Teacher

9 reviews - 36.0 total score (Explanation of the rating system)
avg. score: (4.0)

9. Marshal of Manga

Animation, character design, and music are all decent, but Please! Teacher doesn't please me much.

There’s quite a bit of fan-service, and the teacher in question looks rather lovely, but that’s all the show seems to be good at.

The story is about a humanoid alien (Mizuho) with an interest in the Earth, who decides to experience it first-hand by becoming a teacher there. She meets a student (Kei) who suffers a blackout whenever life becomes too distressing, and a romance develops between the two. At first, the romance is forced onto them, after they were caught in awkward circumstances that necessitated the concoction of a fake marriage to escape embarrassment. To make the marriage seem genuine, the two start living together and fall in love…

While the concept of ‘marry first, love later’ may have raised many interesting situations that would be fun to watch, this is not so in Onegai Teacher. Kei and Mizuho first fall in love in a timeframe of two minutes – Kei largely because his eyes met Mizuho’s body at the right parts at the right time, and Mizuho because she shared a conversation with Kei that I think half the world’s male population could have equaled. How’s that for the seedling to a love story?

Things don’t get better as Kei preoccupies himself with the notion of ‘moving forward’ and overcoming his emotional blackouts, while Mizuho gets jealous a little too easily and more often than not runs away from problems rather than facing them. This might be ‘cute’, but the results aren’t good.

Kei’s resolutions vacillates as quickly as my electric toothbrush oscillates in a minute, and Mizuho certainly doesn't behave like a model teacher – in fact, we are never shown how Mizuho actually teaches her students! The role of Mizuho as a teacher seems to have been thrown in just to romanticize the idea of teacher-student relationships.

While it would've been great to see a motherly figure aiding a pupil in need, Mizuho seems to be portrayed as an attractive and well-meaning, but overly naive teacher who doesn’t really understand love. Kei doesn't help – he is not effective at dealing with personal issues, let alone making a marriage work, and let’s keep in mind he’s only 15!

The support characters aren’t too deep – there are two girls who fall in love with Kei and his friend, but no reasons are given for the attraction other than the usual ‘he’s got a passionate side’ approach, and we see little of this passionate side in action. All the boys in this series seem to be more smitten by the lust of love rather than love for its own sake.

My analysis might be a bit shallow, but either the overemphasis on fan-service distracted me, or the lack of other values left me with nothing else to look into.

Onegai Teacher is passable entertainment at best.

8. h8er13

I got hooked on Onegai Teacher after maybe the 2nd episode, and by the end, it became one of my favorites. The animation is nice and fluid and I really like how Mizuho is drawn. One thing that really led me to like this anime was it's somewhat realistic perspective on relationships, such as sex and also the tinge of jealousy that arises when your girlfriend/boyfriend is talking to someone of the opposite sex. There is also one really really cute scene, which has to do with a snail...you'll know what I'm talking about once you watch. The end is a bit abrupt, but if you watch the 13th episode (I think some people consider this the ova), it's a really nice complement. If you didn't get that warm fuzzy feeling inside of you by the end of the series, the ova should do it for you. Dakara, Onegai Teacher mitte kudasai!!

7. Eso

With a story like this, I'm not surprised that weasl had a surge of Onegai Teacher wallpapers. I'm not going to give a synopsis because it's already been done. Instead, I'll drop my two cents about this little gem here. Onegai Teacher kept me entertained, and indeed, it has that right amount of sentimental stuff that I tend to look for in anime like this. The art and animation is smooth, colorful, and sexy. Character development was okay, but I didn't get to see what some of Kei's friends were all about, nor could I find more about Mizuho's parents. There are no fillers to speak of, which is great, and I find that every episode is meaningful to the plot. The ending is great, as it leaves us all with that 'happy ending' syndrome, and frankly, who wouldn't want that? The opening theme is trance-like, upbeat, and has a futuristic feel to it. The ending theme, I wouldn't know. I don't listen to that. And my friends, I leave Onegai Teacher with 4 well-deserved stars. It's missing 1 star because of the lack of compelling character development, otherwise, it would have been a perfect anime.

6. Olmanek

It's surprisingly tragic actually, with a very sombre depressing mood about itself, whether I am a simple masochist and like to see myself in pain, I found this to be an enjoyable element of the series, the realism of relationships, are rarely shown so bitterly and often trivially as here. Don't be deterred though, it does have a very obvious happy side, but when the main story is obviously character driven, it isn't going to go easy on you, for every happy moment there will inevitably be a sad moment.

5. X-MAN

It's a lot like Oh My Goddess... That's one way of putting it. Onegai Teacher had a well developing story. The series seems to lean towards the "living with happiness and sadness". How it's sometimes good for a couple to fight. To love someone hurts another is the theme of the story. The music was nothing special, the intro theme is catchy and I didn't care for the ending theme. The characters are explained with great detail during the story. Relationships create difficult problems between them. Getting to know the characters even more. The last few episodes are kind of surprising.

4. Kubo Takeshi

With the name "Onegai Teacher", the first thing that comes to mind is a hentai series with a naively seductive teacher and her beloved top student, credit" in the equipment shed after classes. This is NOT the case here. Far from being the hentai its name suggests, Onegai Teacher is a sweet and heartfelt story about love, trust, and coming to grips with the painful events of the past. And the fan service (rather sparse for a shounen series with such a pronounced bent) doesn't hurt either. What makes the central relationship refreshing is how it is approached - the two characters become a couple, and THEN learn to love each other. Watching Kei and Mizuho make the tentative steps to becoming husband and wife in truth is the driving force in the series, and one that makes it well worth watching. All the technical aspects of Onegai Teacher - art, character development, plot, music, pacing - are top-notch, The series' end, while perhaps a touch contrived, is no less sincere or fulfilling for that fact. All in all, this series has few serious flaws, and has an ending that is hard to top. I can't recommend Onegai Teacher enough.... unless you are looking for an excess of fan service, in which case I humbly direct you to Hanaukyo Maid Tai....

3. Yogi

This story is about a not-so-young boy who gets involved in a romantic relationship under... uhh ... "unusual circumstances" (I promised that this would be spoiler-free. It’s anime, use your imagination). As he struggles with his new relationship, there is another battle underway as he tries to "move forward" in his life instead of hiding in his own mind. This is primarily a comedy, though there are many sad moments. The characters are developed quite well, though the plot is a little on the bland and predicable side.

2. Tempy

When Kei Kusanagi finds out that his beautiful new teacher Mizuho Kazami is actually an alien sent to observe humans, his life turns upside down as he falls for her. Onegai Teacher is all about relationships, the happiness, and especially the hardships. Kei's classmate Koishi also has an interest in him, and relationships between other characters are examined as well. The show is quite funny at times, but it's mostly well-done melodrama. What makes Onegai Teacher a highly frustrating viewing experience at times is Kei's indecisiveness and wrong decision-making. He and other characters do develop nicely though (I guess you can only learn from mistakes). The plot device near the end of the show is something I wish they hadn't deployed though. One amusing thing in the show is that, at one point something happens which almost makes Onegai Teacher look like some kind of Oh My Goddess! ripoff, especially considering that Mizuho is voiced by Kikuko Inoue who also does Belldandy's voice in OMG. Unlike OMG or Tenchi, the main character's efforts do pay off.

1. weasl

Onegai Teacher starts off as your typical shounen romance anime, but as it delves deeper into its characters, it starts to steer in a slightly different direction then most romantic series. The story of an alien teacher forced to live with one of her students in order to keep her identity a secret provides a back story, but the majority of our time is spent dealing with how the cast of characters interact with each other as a whole, as well has how the actions of one can affect a whole group of friends. For the most part Onegai Teacher is a study in the interactions between a couple, and the emotions involved, some of which hit home fairly hard. An excellent show in both production values and story, Onegai Teacher manages to be less one-sided then most romances out there with it's theme of addressing the problems that are often attached to love.