Doki Doki School Hours


Doki Doki School Hours 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, 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 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.

Plot

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, what's a person to do but hope?

Characters

;Mika Suzuki, also known as "Mika-sensei"
;Minako "Tommy" Tominaga
;Akane Kobayashi
;Shizuka Nagare, also known as "Chairman "
;Rio Kitagawa
;Kenta Suetake
;Yuichi Kudo
;Jyoji Seki
;Takumi "Watabe" Watanabe
;Gen Nakamura, also known as "Old Man "
;Linda Matsumoto
;Chinatsu Nakayama
;Anthony M. Chamberlain

Episode list

  1. Here Comes Class 2A Of Okitsu High School
  2. Measuring and Throwing and Hitting
  3. Swimsuits and Exams! Something Drops!
  4. Mika-Sensei's Summer Story
  5. Summer Ends and Artistic Autumn Arrives
  6. The Culture Festival Is The Festival of Culture
  7. Santa Girl and New Years' Fun
  8. Winter Has Come and Spring Is Around The Corner
  9. The Tearful Graduation Ceremony
  10. The Kyoto Field Trip Incident of Love and Hate!
  11. Sunshine After Rain, Partially Student Teacher
  12. Frightening experiences, Summer Activities
  13. Summer in Shonan: The Don't Say Goodbye Episode
  14. The Exchange Student and Okitsu, The Dark City
  15. Sports Festival Special
  16. The Big Family and The Elusive Pork Ramen, Big Sister Mika Is Running Away
  17. Beast Buster Ekaterina Nagare A.K.A. Iincho
  18. SF Magical Period Drama Doki Doki Version: The Okitsu Millennium Battle!
  19. The Culture Festival Operation
  20. The Small One Departs Okitsu

    Reception

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.