Доки Доки Мектеп Сағаты

2004 anime

Doki Doki School Hours (せんせいのお時間) is a Japanese four panel manga series by Tamami Momose. The manga was serialized in Manga Life and published by Takeshobo from 1997 to 2013. An anime television series adaptation was animated by J. C. Staff and aired on TV Tokyo from April 4, 2004 to June 27, 2004. An OVA series, titled Sensei no Ojikan Gold (せんせいのお時間 ご～るど), was also animated by J. C. Staff and continued from where the TV series left off. These episodes were released onto the DVDs of the TV series, one episode for each DVD. Both the TV series and OVA were dubbed into English by Ocean Productions using their Blue Water Studios and have been licensed for release in North America by Geneon Entertainment. However, the OVA was folded onto the TV series and released together as simply Doki Doki School Hours. Thus, for the release in that region, the 14th episode is actually the first episode of the OVA and so on. The series is centered on 27 year old homeroom teacher Mika Suzuki (who only looks about half her age) and the eccentric and colorful students of her class. The anime, coming two years after J. C. Staff had success with Azumanga Daioh, inherits a lot stylistically from that series, however the original manga predates Azumanga Daioh by two years. Additionally, before the recent anime incarnation, the manga spawned a series of drama CDs.

A very short 27 year old teacher has an interesting time trying to teach her class. She has to deal with the eccentricities of her students as they present themselves over the school year. When you have an insane class (which includes a cross dressing narcissist, an otaku, a dumb jock, a boy band obsessed girl, a lesbian in love with the teacher, a homosexual in love with the jock, a guy who looks like a middle aged man, a girl obsessed with material items and the vain rich girl), what's a person to do but hope?

Tim Jones of THEM Anime Reviews said the series is "quite an interesting series upon first glance", with three of the main characters coming out of nowhere,doing a bad job of introducing characters unlike a series like Azumanga Daioh, meaning that they embody stereotypes. He also criticizes Mika being the "target of sexual advances of one of her students", a student named Kitakawa who is "a lesbian lolicon lover", a character he called one of the most shallow, and annoying character he had ever "seen in the history of animation". He also noted that there is a gay man who only thinks of his male crush, "sometimes to the point of getting nosebleeds" and said his love interest had one of the most annoying voices, and added that the series has problems when "a guy who draws half naked anime girls is one of the best characters". He further called the animation "horrible" and doesn't understand how it ran for 20 episodes. Carlos Santos of Anime News Network said that the anime is "a cute diversion that will leave you mildly happy rather than annoyed or offended" and said the series has "shadows of hilarity". He also said that the series is "lighthearted", and called the series "far from perfect". He concluded that there are "some genuinely cute and funny moments but said that it has the "same jokes, same structure" which gets boring.