Gokusen

Description

Fresh out of college, Kumiko "Yankumi" Yamaguchi becomes a math teacher at an all-boys high school. Unfortunately for her, she's assigned by the school board as the homeroom teacher for class 2-D, which happens to be the class of delinquent students. When the class attempts to make a living hell out of Yankumi's career, they fail as her persistence and aggression gain their respect. However, little does anyone in the school know that Yankumi is actually heir to the Kuroda Group - one of Tokyo's most powerful yakuza clans.

Gokusen Kanketsuhen consists of:

2008 special
2009 special
Ucchi chapter
Halloween special
4-koma segments

Type

Manga

Related Series

Deka Wanko (Alternate Version)

Associated Names

Гокусэн

ごくせん

極道鮮師

Groups Scanlating

Latest Release(s)

c.Ucchi + 4-koma Segments by Cozy Ahjumma Scans 5 months ago

c.Special 3 by Null & Bishounen Project 14 years ago

c.Special 2 by Null & Bishounen Project 15 years ago

Search for all releases of this series

Status in Country of Origin

15 Volumes + Gokusen Kanketsuhen (Complete)

Completely Scanlated?

Yes

Anime Start/End Chapter

Starts at Vol 1, Chap 1

Ends at Vol 7, Chap 7 Abridged

User Reviews

Gokusen by celinae

Forum

7 topics, 44 posts

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User Rating

Average: 8.7 / 10.0 (1482 votes)

Bayesian Average: 8.65 / 10.0

39%

24%

19%

11%

Last Updated

April 10th, 2025 7:49am PDT - 2 weeks ago

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Genre

Comedy Josei School Life Slice of Life
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Categories

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Category Recommendations

Kenka Banchou Otome - Koi no Battle Royal

Mushoku Tensei - Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu (Novel)

Recommendations

Author(s)

Artist(s)

Year

Original Publisher

Shueisha

Serialized In (magazine)

YOU (Shueisha)

Licensed (in English)

English Publisher

N/A

Activity Stats (vs. other series)

Weekly Pos #690

(-60)

Monthly Pos #1260

(-411)

3 Month Pos #2366

(-86)

6 Month Pos #2841

(+297)

Year Pos #2861

(+543)

List Stats

On 1792 reading lists

On 1518 wish lists

On 3082 completed lists

On 151 unfinished lists

On 751 custom lists

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Forum Posts Click to view the forum

A spoiler Question

12 years ago

Is this really not fully scanlated? pls answer

12 years ago

licensing

12 years ago

Awesomeness

13 years ago

need a little help re: Gokusen

13 years ago

User Comments [ Order by usefulness ]

flip flops but in the end, a solid story

by naianvx
1 year ago

Rating: 8.0 / 10.0

It's definitely an art style that might seem less stylized than current ones, but it also came from an era of manga where top lips were actually drawn. It reminds me of gag strips in older established series where characters were simplified as much as possible for a quick joke. Similar comparisons could be drawn to 28th Century Superfan.

As for the story itself, there are three central plots that take turns being fleshed out. MC's main love interest, main male lead's interest in MC, and MC's role as a teacher with yakuza ties in a Japan that still relied on dial phones. As a character, she feels somewhat one note, but in a story where her influence is mostly felt in the changes of characters around her, I believe it is good that her personality does not change drastically. I take away a few points just because the ending arc did feel a bit rushed in wrapping all three plot lines, but everything felt satisfying in the end.

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found family galore

by noveon
2 years ago

Rating: 10.0 / 10.0

i usually only rate manga as 10/10 if it had a lasting impression on me or something, and i think this qualifies. it just feels so nostalgic, simple, and genuine, plus i'm a sucker for the found family trope and that's in here a lottt with both the kuroda family and kumiko's homeroom class. overall just a hilarious and heartwarming good time. very sweet last bonus chapter too for those who like romance

... Last updated 2 years ago

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underwhelming

by hellooowwww
3 years ago

Rating: N/A

The art was underwhelming to say the least, but since it's a comedy series made in the 90s, I wasn't expecting too much. The characters are fairly likeable but forgettable. I wish the students development towards yankumi was better and I wish the students could have had more distinct personalities. Yankumi's crush on the lawyer should have ended sooner imo. Shin was your typical cool boy which felt a bit cliche to me. His personality was shown a bit more in the special chapters with Fuji and towards the end, which I enjoyed. I wish we could've seen how the lawyer was doing back home. Shin's feelings towards Yankumi was well down and the readers could tell he had an interest in her from the start. I dislike age-gap and student-teacher relationships and this couple didn'y change my mind about it. I feel like Shin could've been a teacher and the story would've been the exact same. I didn't find it believable that Yankumi reincorporated Shin's feelings so fast at the end. This series is a josei series but it felt more like a shoneun. I also felt like the jokes ran a bit flat a lot but that might just be me. This series remined me of Hinamatsuri. Maybe my expectations are too high for a comedy series though. I felt like this series could have been done better but I would still recommend it if you like reading the comics on a newspaper

... Last updated 3 years ago

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I luv the story the plot the chara

by Miachann
5 years ago

Rating: N/A

i just love everything from this manga, but the ending still makes me sad uhuhu my ship sinking

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Great read for high school comedy w/o romance shenanigans

by ILoveEpicTits
5 years ago

Rating: N/A

Won't lie I still haven't a chance to read manga, but anime was great. Really refreshing and different from your typical diligent manga. Somehow similar to GTO, which is classics by now.

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Unexceptional.

by MondSemmel
6 years ago

Rating: 7.3 / 10.0

Gokusen is light reading. There's some fun humor, moments of drama, and even some understated romance, but overall it's rather unexceptional.

Most importantly, it's a 15-volume story with ~150 chapters, most of which are episodic, end abruptly, and have zero effect on the plot. There's also tons of repetition - characters getting girlfriends only to break up 1-2 chapters later; a truly absurd number of kidnappings; various villains of the week; etc. The repetitive episodes aren't exactly bad, but you could easily skip 5+ volumes in the middle of the story and hardly notice it.

The character development is also a bit lacking; there's an entirely half-baked love triangle; and the last volume is full of entirely unnecessary and artificial drama.

As a manga about yakuza, there's obviously a lot of violence, but the art style can't really support that.

The comedy is good and probably the strongest part of the story, but not the exclusive focus.

In conclusion: There are better manga about yakuza, like Raise wa Tanin ga ii, and better manga about untypical teachers, like Assassination Classroom. Gokusen itself is okay but unexceptional.

... Last updated 6 years ago

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Funny and Refreshing

by gloriousmangalover
6 years ago

Rating: 9.0 / 10.0

As a reader who absolutely adores josei/shoujo as long as it's done well, this is probably one of my favorite josei manga I've read. Ever. It's honestly purely hilarious and full of life and energy. Plus, one of my favorite characters ever is the female lead! Yamaguchi is so great. Though she's painfully unaware of everything to a point, she somehow is also extraordinarily cool and mature. She's very well-fleshed out as well, and though her intentions at certain points are mysterious, she still makes for a really awesome character. I wouldn't say that there was a huge amount of character development, but it is pretty obvious that she changes into a more mature role while also being the funny teacher/yakuza that she is. This is truly a strong female-lead-driven manga, and that's probably why I adore it so much.

Besides the fact that she's an absolute BAMF and awesome, I actually really liked the male lead in this one. Shin is really cool, but he is a bit of the stereotypical "cool" guy, and I don't know, I think it would have been cooler if he was at least a little bit insecure about the fact that Yamaguchi was older, because wouldn't anyone be?

He does get a little insecure at one point when another "love interest" is introduced as the "second guy", but it's pretty clear that she would end up with him in the end. Even though I really don't approve of teacher-student relationships in manga, this was done somewhat well. However, I felt that the romantic development was really very slow, despite the fact that you could tell that Shin liked her from the start. The author pulled one of those "romance only happens at the very end" moves that I'm not a fan of, but this manga isn't really focused on romance, per se.

I think one of the selling points of this manga is more about its storytelling/plot development. It's addictive and absolutely refreshing and original. It doesn't focus too much on romance, but that's exactly what makes it so unique in comparison to other josei and shoujo. Though it is a bit unrealistic, I really adored the yakuza portions of the manga, because it was so interesting! Yamaguchi's second life was well-explored, and the people in her "other life" were some of the most heartwarming, wholesome, and hilarious characters I've read in a while.

Finally, I've seen a couple of reviewers complain a little bit about the art. Every manga reader has their preferences, and I know that 90's art isn't usually well-loved, but I thought it was nice, simplistic. It wasn't too hard to see anything or distinguish things. And I mean this as a reader that finds it very hard to read manga with bad art, like the beginning of Basara. Perhaps it is a little different from the whole "beautiful" and "clean" shoujo scene, but I felt that the art really did fit the storytelling. Yamaguchi and the other characters aren't supposed to be super beautiful and such, but that's the point.

TL;DR: Overall, I felt that the romantic development was much too sluggish. On that note, this manga isn't necessarily focused on that, and that's what makes it so different and interesting. It's a character-focused and plot-focused manga with convoluted arcs and some of my favorite characters ever. The female lead is not only strong emotionally and physically, but she also serves for some of the best comedy relief. Therefore, 9/10.

... Last updated 6 years ago

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Everyday is hilarious!

by jackalan
6 years ago

Rating: 9.0 / 10.0

Got a recommendation from my friend. Took some time to actually read it. And I finished it twice (or thrice).

For me, it's a super fun manga, not much of a serious plot although the mangaka does not make light of some matters presented/discussed. Still, the way it approaches these personal dilemmas and developments with humour is breezy, creative and strangely it sticks.

It's a fun ride from beginning to end. A weird fun ride, but not that weird 🙂

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A fun read

by wishing_star
8 years ago

Rating: 9.0 / 10.0

I remember putting this series on hold a while back, but really looking past the art, the serie is a fun read and has quirky characters. If you're looking for a serie with a strong female lead, Yankumi is really awesome! Some drawbacks, the extra chapters with Shin and Fuji, the dog, weren't really interesting to me and I wish that there were more romance, but I guess that it fits in the context of their characters.

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The Thing is...

by bine
9 years ago

Rating: 10.0 / 10.0

This is my favourite manga. I'm saying this first, because it doesn't have a lot of features that bring people to read manga. The art is very different and reminiscent of older shounen manga, even though it is obviously written for a female audience. The guys are mainly ugly bruisers.

The main couple doesn't even kiss.

There are a lot of omakes that don't make any sense at all (There's suddenly a dog wearing clothes. He's in many of the extras, and I have no idea why.)

However:
This manga is about outcasts and societies rejects.
It's about the problems you face when you look different, behave differently, have an accent, or a dialect. It's about how people that have let you down, should not have.
It's about hope in the face of prejudice.
Every single character in this manga has a different face, different mannerism, and you can tell. The art may be simplified, but it makes the ugly bruiser that much more distinct from each other, and also other manga. The main love interests are pretty to look at, but they get plenty of backlash from that anyway.

This is a manga that makes friendship and love between characters obvious, without resorting to telling

(or showing, to reiterate: The main couple does not even kiss. But despite that, there's absolutely no doubt that they end up together.)

Of course, there's plenty of high-school shenanigans and (dirty, sometimes funny, but most often really hilarious) jokes, but there's also the trouble of going to university, finding a job, being accused of yakuza, actually becoming a criminal -- there is so much depth in every page (and then they draw a beard with marker on their sensei. Or photoshop a hot bod on their headshot picture)

I have so much love for this goddamn manga. I loved it when I was 14, and I love it now that I'm 24. And it was definitely written just for me.

Just so you know: Of course I watched all of the adaptions. And there are some touching moments, and all the live-action stars are pretty cute. But the manga made me cry and a page later laugh out loud in hilarity.

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