Doki Doki School Hours



Mika-sensei, what are you doing getting stuck in the middle of all the first-years?

Doki Doki School Hours (known as Sensei no Ojikan in Japan) is a manga by Tamami Momose, depicting the adventures of 27-year old Suzuki Mika, homeroom teacher of class 2A of Okitsu High School. Because of her diminutive size she often feels overwhelmed by the antics of her students. They form quite an eccentric bunch: we have our fashion-victim, an otaku, a lesbian student with a crush on her teacher, a narcissistic crossdresser and a gay guy obsessing over a classmate who doesn't have a clue and only thinks of sports.

To make things worse, Mika is often quite ditzy herself, so she is not always on top of things. The fact that she still lives with her parents and is spoiled terribly by her father doesn't help much either. Still, the students love her and hold her in high esteem, so things manage to work out most of the time.

The anime series, produced by JC Staff and broadcast in 2004, starts out with typical high school fare, like festivals, sports events and the ever-dreaded "Measuring Day". Later on there is a change of pace, leading to a series of genre spoofs vaguely reminiscent of Excel Saga, only to have things become very serious again by the last episode. The mood and animation style are very loose and cartoonish and seems to have been influenced by Azumanga Daioh quite a bit, even though the manga it is based on actually pre-dates Azumanga Daioh by a few years. Doki Doki School Hours is highly recommended for viewers who love bizarre characters and dry humour interpersed with some genuinely touching moments.

This series contains examples of:

 * Adult Child: Mika - and not only in appearance.
 * Anime Accent Absence: Anthony speaks perfect Japanese.
 * Arranged Marriage
 * Artistic Age
 * Bishie Sparkle: Kudo
 * Camp Straight: Seki
 * Christmas Cake: ... Though, Christmas muffin(or shortcake) is more fitting.
 * Christmas Episode
 * Class Representative: Shizuka.
 * Class Trip: To Honnoji, the last stand of Oda Nobunaga. Suetake riffs on some historically accurate Ho Yay.
 * Cross Dresser: Seki. Interestingly, the role of the gay classmate is given to another fairly standard male character.
 * The Ditz: Mika, Akane.
 * Foreign Sounding Gibberish: When Minako converses with a Phenotype Stereotype-afflicted female tourist in Kyoto, what is actually heard is "pera-pera-pera", used to indicate that Minako speaks the woman's language fluently.
 * Genki Girl: Akane and Chinatsu.
 * Gratuitous English - Iincho's love for Koro-chan overflows the shores of the Japanese language.
 * For some reason, Anthony rarely if ever spoke English
 * Hair Colors: Unusually, hair colours are limited to various shades of brown, while basically everyone has dark green eyes. Except the blue-eyed and blonde foreigners.
 * High School
 * Idiots Cannot Catch Colds: Suetake, being a jock, puts this down to being healthy. But since he's a dumb jock, he doesn't even get the implications.
 * Late for School: Mika usually is.
 * Marshmallow Hell: Sometimes Kitagawa's feelings for Mika get the better of her.
 * Measuring Day
 * Meganekko: Shizuka.
 * Mood Whiplash
 * Naughty Tentacles: Seki becomes half boy, half-octopus, all-cheerleader at one point. Scarily, Kitagawa wasn't too fazed...
 * Nerd Glasses: Takumi and Mika's father.
 * New Transfer Student
 * Occidental Otaku: Anthony
 * Older Than They Look- Mika, who is 27, but looks much younger.
 * Otaku: Takumi, Chinatsu, Anthony.
 * Parody Episode: A few of them.
 * Phenotype Stereotype: Anthony, the tourist woman in Kyoto.
 * Relax O Vision
 * Schoolgirl Lesbians/Hot for Teacher: Voluptuous Kitagawa has a crush on petite Mika, but it's mostly played for laughs.
 * Schoolgirl Series: The predecessor to pretty much all of them. Coed, but the elements are all there.
 * School Festival
 * School Play
 * Sensei-chan
 * Ship Tease: A fairly large proportion of the jokes involve someone expressing affection for someone else, with the other characters reacting "is this it?", and of course it's not ...
 * Slice of Life
 * Straight Gay: Kudo.
 * The Ojou: Apparently Minako, given that her family home is huge.
 * Team Shot
 * Tsundere: Minako.
 * Verbal Tic: Chinatsu Nakayama
 * Visible Silence
 * Wacky Homeroom
 * Wise Beyond Their Years/Younger Than They Look: Gen, AKA "Oyaji", who looks and acts like he is in his forties despite being only seventeen.