Manga 129871 Worst Gaiden Zetton-sensei

Going into “Worst Gaiden: Zetton-sensei” I had no idea what to expect. I found it while randomly scrolling for new manga, so I had very little context going in. What I got was an adequately written comedy about a delinquent becoming a schoolteacher.

The art is decent, giving adequate weight to its comedy. The characters are simplistic, but not bad. The story is fine, following a linear path from its beginning. It’s clear that the whole manga will be about Zetton-sensei endearing himself to students one at a time, eventually reforming the problem class. It’s not a fantastic manga, but adequate.

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That would be the ... end of the story, but after submitting my rating into MAL, I found information that was far more interesting than the actual manga itself. Apparently, this is not a standalone story, but a sequel to two delinquent manga named “Worst” and “Crows”, written by mangaka Takahashi Hiroshi.

I’m not familiar with Takahashi’s work on these delinquent manga, but its clear he is not apart of this project. The story and art are handled by two new mangaka, unconnected to the original as far as I can tell. While this makes it appear like a relatively innocent spinoff, its subject matter makes me this it’s possible that Shounen Champion was attempting to emulate Fujisawa Tohru’s “Great Teacher Onizuka”.

GTO is a story that follows an ex-delinquent attempting to become a schoolteacher, itself a sequel to a delinquent manga titled “Shonan Junai Gumi!” written in the early 90’s. However, unlike “Worst Gaiden: Zetton-sensei”, “Shonan Junai Gumi!” and its sequel are both written by the same author, allowing for a degree of cohesion that allows for the two manga to flow into each other better. As it stands, due to its different authorship, “Worst Gaiden: Zetton-sensei” feels like an outlier in its own series, making it feel like a lame spin-off. It’s not a bad manga, just derivative.