September 26, 2023 7:45 am
The author of GTO Tohru Fujisawa attacked publisher Kodansha with an angry rant on Twitter.
While many of the famous 90s anime franchises now find themselves completely forgotten by fans and abandoned by the owners, some can easily maintain both the fanbase and the cultural relevance. One such case is definitely GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka) — originally aired between 1997 and 2002, it is now looking to make a powerful comeback as a live-action TV special titled GTO Revival.
But strangely enough not everybody ended up being happy with the news. The author of the original series, Tohru Fujisawa, found himself incredibly frustrated with the GTO’s publisher and rights owner Kodansha and took his anger to Twitter.
In his irritated rant, he informed about his unhappiness with Kodansha’s decision to basically freeze the publishing of GTO’s ongoing final manga arc (GTO: Paradise Lost) while the live-action TV show is being greenlit and prioritized ahead of it. He also pretty much openly stated that his project has been ‘booted’ from Kodansha’s Weekly Young Magazine and its future is now entirely uncertain with his sole hope lying with the possibility of the manga rights being acquired by another publisher who will do the series justice.
And while the official Kodansha is yet to respond to Fujisawa’s attack, the writing — at least for the time being — seems to be on the wall as originally this hiatus was supposed to end by summer of 2023 — but, as of now, GTO: Paradise Lost still did not make a return in Weekly Young Magazine. The reasoning behind Kodansha’s actions is somewhat unclear as GTO, despite being an almost thirty year old franchise, still continues to enjoy considerable popularity both in Japan and in the US. The fans, however, speculate that this decision might have to do with the time that it is taking Fujisawa to complete the project as at this point it has been almost four years since he started working on GTO: Paradise Lost and the end is still nowhere in sight.
According to Tohru Fujisawa, GTO: Paradise Lost is intended to be the final chapter in the GTO story after which he intends to switch to other projects, including some of his unfinished earlier works.
The author of GTO Tohru Fujisawa attacked publisher Kodansha with an angry rant on Twitter.
While many of the famous 90s anime franchises now find themselves completely forgotten by fans and abandoned by the owners, some can easily maintain both the fanbase and the cultural relevance. One such case is definitely GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka) — originally aired between 1997 and 2002, it is now looking to make a powerful comeback as a live-action TV special titled GTO Revival.
But strangely enough not everybody ended up being happy with the news. The author of the original series, Tohru Fujisawa, found himself incredibly frustrated with the GTO’s publisher and rights owner Kodansha and took his anger to Twitter.
In his irritated rant, he informed about his unhappiness with Kodansha’s decision to basically freeze the publishing of GTO’s ongoing final manga arc (GTO: Paradise Lost) while the live-action TV show is being greenlit and prioritized ahead of it. He also pretty much openly stated that his project has been ‘booted’ from Kodansha’s Weekly Young Magazine and its future is now entirely uncertain with his sole hope lying with the possibility of the manga rights being acquired by another publisher who will do the series justice.
And while the official Kodansha is yet to respond to Fujisawa’s attack, the writing — at least for the time being — seems to be on the wall as originally this hiatus was supposed to end by summer of 2023 — but, as of now, GTO: Paradise Lost still did not make a return in Weekly Young Magazine. The reasoning behind Kodansha’s actions is somewhat unclear as GTO, despite being an almost thirty year old franchise, still continues to enjoy considerable popularity both in Japan and in the US. The fans, however, speculate that this decision might have to do with the time that it is taking Fujisawa to complete the project as at this point it has been almost four years since he started working on GTO: Paradise Lost and the end is still nowhere in sight.
According to Tohru Fujisawa, GTO: Paradise Lost is intended to be the final chapter in the GTO story after which he intends to switch to other projects, including some of his unfinished earlier works.
