“Forgotten” OAVs #16: “Ultimate Teacher” (1988)

Ultimate Teacher (Kyofu no Bio-Ningen: Saishuu Kyoushi [Fearsome Bio-Human: Ultimate Teacher]), directed by Toyoo Ashida. 56 minutes. February 6, 1988.

Toyoo Ashida started in 1965 with some of the earliest TV anime, but he became known to American anime fans during the 1980s for directing such TV series as Fist of the North Star and such movies/OAVs as the first Vampire Hunter D. He also did the character design for such anime TV series as the s-f Vifam and the little-witch Minky Momo. Ultimate Teacher, produced at the J.C. Staff studio, is one of his more forgotten works.

As I recall, anime fandom didn’t really know what to make of this gonzo comedy, but it was generally dismissed as too far-out and too in-your-face adult (or raunchy adolescent) – the OVA market letting its freedom from censorship get out of control. But it may have suffered from being too early. It appeared three years before The Ren & Stimpy Show, five years before Beavis and Butt-Head, and other TV animated series of the 1990s established animated comedy with adult themes, off-color humor, and super-violence as way-cool rather than eccchy.

1988. At a wedding reception at Baio Hall, “something” demolishes everything. The demolisher destroys everything in passages under the Hall as well. An official wants to call the police, the Self-Defense Force, anybody! “If he escapes into the city, anything could happen!” “No! That would blow our cover! The whole world would discover that we’re really a genetic experimental lab!”

1991. A rural town in the Kanto District. Demure Hinako Shiratori is walking to a bus stop to go to school when she is accosted by a hulking caped giant, Ganpachi Chabane, who approaches with a scuttling sound. He asks if this is the road to Emperor. Does he mean Emperor Prefectural High School? Yes, “the fool’s school – the worst school in the Kanto area. But things around here are gonna change! True, wholesome education is gonna come back to Emperor!” He scuttles off like a giant cockroach.

Note here and elsewhere in the OVA that the high school students include an American Indian with headdress, an African savage, and other “not usual” students, especially in violation of Japan’s school-uniform tradition. There are also camels and other crazy elements.

Emperor High looks like a cross between a junkyard and a prison. There’s a Graveyard of Teachers. Principal Suzuki is a crybaby wimp. “We’re the worst school in Kanto!” Ganpachi boasts that he will turn things around. He’s the Ultimate Teacher! He’ll take care of all the student delinquents! His body can withstand anything! Ganpachi scuttles along the walls so tightly that they crumble, spilling out the skeletons of former teachers, bats, and other vermin.

They come to the 2nd Year Homeroom. “They seem unusually bloodthirsty.” The principal says it’s the worst class at Emperor High. Ganpachi thrusts the principal in first to set off any booby traps. Ganpachi scuttles in to boast that he’s too smart for any traps, but the students sabotage him. A fight breaks out: Ganpacho vs. everybody. He wins. He says that he’ll force them to get educated in honor of the sweet young girl he met that morning – but she appears and announces that she’s Nako Shiratori, the leader of all the gangs at Emperor High. Ganpacho is disillusioned, but he won’t let her stop him from educating everybody. He’ll start by embarrassing her in front of everybody! He cramps her legs with a martial-arts hold, and throws himself at her, but she opens the window behind her and he sails out five stories up. The other students are sure he’s history, but he scuttles back to tell “Miss Hinako” to submit to “inspecting the unmentionables” – he’ll reveal her panties! She’s wearing blue panties with a Maneki-Neko emblem – her Lucky Kitty Gym Shorts! The whole school plus Ganpacho is freaked out by how cute they are.

The next day as Miss Hinako is walking through the schoolyard, she is confronted by Ganpacho wearing Lucky Kitty Gym Shorts over his hairy legs. Hinako’s henchmen Ryuichi Watanabe (wearing glasses) and Kansuke Matsuri (without glasses) try to remove his pants, but he’s wearing another pair – and another – and another. Finally Ganpachi is standing triumphantly atop a mountain of bright blue Lucky Kitty Gym Shorts. He brings in an army of his own; the students of rival Home Room High, all wearing Lucky Kitty Gym Shorts. Dwai Kan-Chen, their leader, says that he is tired of being shown up by Hinako, and he’ll support anything that will put her down. The Home Room High students strut in front of Hinako, emphasizing their panties and hairy legs. She runs off, humiliated.

That night, Hinako practices martial arts along a river. Ryuichi and Kansuke encourage her to stand up to Ganpachi, but she doesn’t want to discuss it. She wants to shop for dinner at a convenience store. The others go with her. At the store they are attacked by Dwai Kan-Chen and his stooges. They win, but at the cost of Ryuichi and Kansuke. They beg Hinako to return to Emperor High.

Under the ruins of Baio Hall, the government agents and genetic experimenters discuss Ganpachi’s background. A tough-looking man says he was a student rebel who one day siphoned the gasoline from a car, drank it, and passed out. The government agents and genetic experimenters took the opportunity to turn him into a human cockroach who could survive anything. But he escaped to do his own thing.

At Emperor High, the students led by Umekichi have retreated to the rooftops. They are taunted by Ganpachi and his Lucky Kitty Shiratori Pride Fashion Corps. Suddenly Hinako returns to confront them. When the Fashion Corps attack her with their Lucky Kitty Gym Shorts, she whips off her skirt to reveal that she’s wearing a different pair of panties – a girl’s white cotton dainties. The Corps retreats in humiliation. Hinako has won, but she tells Umekichi that Emperor High doesn’t need her any more. When she goes indoors to leave, she collapses. Umekichi tries to revive her, and she tells him her secret.

When she was three years old, she was super-strong, but she had one weakness: she got embarrassed when anyone saw her panties. She asked her mother to buy her some panties that wouldn’t embarrass her. Her mother got her some Lucky Kitty Gym Shorts. She became so used to them over the years that she couldn’t wear anything else. When she grew old enough to go to her aunt in Tokyo to enroll in high school, her aunt sent all her Lucky Kitty Gym Shorts to the laundry; and she did so poorly in her entrance exams that she was assigned to Emperor High. She asks Umekichi to get her Lucky Kitty Shorts from her locker, but Ganpachi has overheard everything. Ganpachi overpowers Umekichi, but he holds Ganpachi back for long enough for her to put on her shorts. She and Ganpachi fight through the wall and fall to the bottom of the school’s swimming pool which is freezing cold. Ganpachi appears to have won and Hinako drowned. He tells the students that they will all obey him from now on, but her body floats up into the air to a mysterious man on the diving board.

The mystery man is the tough man from under Baio Hall: Ganpachi’s old enemy, Assistant Professor Burei Karina of T Medical College, later from Study P-5. It was a top secret government study to combine the DNA of a cockroach with that of a human. Ganpachi was their greatest success as Number X-8, but he escaped. The others resigned from P-5, but Karina had his own DNA combined with a spider to turn into a costumed super-hero to hunt Ganpatchi down. They start to fight, but Hinako reappears to ask for the honor of fighting Ganpachi herself. Hinako and Karina kill Ganpachi together – but you can’t kill a cockroach. The climactic three-way battle would be tedious to describe in detail, but note how a sidewalk Ultraman children’s ride and Sato-chan, the plaster orange baby elephant statue outside every Japanese drug store (to advertise Sato Pharmaceuticals) are pressed into service.

Ultimate Teacher was licensed by Central Park Media and released as a U.S. Manga Corps VHS video on March 11, 1993. It is one of many titles that was not renewed or picked up by another company when its license expired.

Next week: “Forgotten OAVs #17”.