The List

7 Worst School Teachers

It's the final week of summer, although most retail stores skipped straight to pumpkin season a few weeks ago. Deny it all you want, but the back-to-school grind is here which means notebooks, packed community college parking lots, and a handful of new instructors trying to make you care about the War of 1812 and the differences between Descartes and Kant. (Helpful tip, don't let your teacher see you smirk every time she says "Kant.") If you're lucky, your worst instructor will just have a cantankerous attitude and wear dated sweaters, and with any luck, you won't have tutors as terrible as the ones on this list...

SPOILER WARNING: This column reveals the main plot twist for ERASED.

Kimura (Azumanga Daioh) A self-proclaimed pervert, Mr. Kimura serves as a source of awkward comedic relief. His face is sunken and worn, presumably from a career of disappointment that he cannot legally shack up with his pupils. His favorite period is swim class for all the reprehensible reasons you can imagine. The cast is surprised to find out that Kimura is not a lonesome bachelor, but the husband of an attractive wife and father of an elementary-aged girl. What's most amazing about Kimura is that he still has a job at all. This guy isn't attempting to fool anyone about his motives for teaching high school.

Yoshiyuki Terada/Kaho Mizuki (Card Captor Sakura) Mr. Terada and Ms. Mizuki are another variation on Mr. Kimura, except they aren't played for laughs. The characters' creation was a misguided attempt by CLAMP to build on the show's theme of different kinds of love, which apparently meant glazing over two teacher-student relationships: Touya and Kaho Mizuki when she was his middle school teacher and Terada's engagement to 10-year-old Rika Sasaki. Terada is in his mid-thirties, and as much as I'd want to believe this is some leftover example of arranged marriages for prestige or business reasons, it's not. Terada is blushy and gushy over his child bride, and Kaho only broke things off with her 13-year-old boyfriend because she had college aspirations.

Gakuhō Asano (Assassination Classroom) The idea of classes separated by academic achievement isn't new. There's plenty of anime and manga that play with this idea, like ItaKiss, Special A, and Baka and Test to name a few. Rarely, however, is the "lower" class treated as poorly as the delinquents in Assassination Classroom, all thanks to former teacher and principal Gakuhō Asano. Calm and collected, Mr. Asano is instrumental in coming up with the "Class E" system that ships underachievers off to a dilapidated building to ensure that they're ostracized by their peers, all in the name of motivating the rest of the student population. He's a proponent of social eugenics and even fixes the school's academic system to make sure there's always a group the rest can kick around.

Kōichi Shidō (Highschool of the Dead) In Shidō's defense, seeing the world suddenly get overrun by zombies is a uniquely terrifying situation, so he's hardly the only person to adopt an "every man for himself" approach. That said, there's definitely a line between ruthless self-preservation and actively sacrificing your students to a cannibalistic mob. Shidō takes the world's extreme circumstances to turn his philosophy of survival of the fittest into a student cult that he hopes to rule over. Ultimately, Shidō is an insecure man full of hatred from living in his father's shadow. The elder Shidō is a powerful politician, and his son wants nothing more than to succeed him, even if it means brainwashing a bunch of terrified kids.

Mr. Takeuchi (A Silent Voice) Ideally, a teacher should have a child's back when bullying takes place, but tragically, that that isn't always the case. The homeroom teacher at Shoya's elementary school takes things a step further by turning a blind eye when classmates begin tormenting the new transfer student Shoko, who is deaf. Mr. Takeuchi is unsympathetic when Shoko's expensive hearing aid is tossed in the school pond and sees her academic needs as a burden on the rest of the class. When the truth of her bullying comes to light, he's quick to absolve himself of all responsibility, instead motivating the class to turn on Shoya for instigating the bullying they all participated in.

Akane Minagawa (Scum's Wish) This beautiful music teacher is a complicated nut to crack, and while the series spends a fair amount of time analyzing the psyche behind why Akane is an awful human being, the short version is that her need for control over her life is tied to how she perceives her self-worth through the attention of men. She actively manipulates the trust of those around her to harm her own students and men who are attracted to her. She lacks sincere romantic interest in Narumi Kanai, but she knows that Hanabi Yasuraoka loves him, which is a good enough reason to date him so she can rub it in the girl's face. She simultaneously enjoys stringing along her student Mugi Awaya while being intimidated by his acceptance of the ugliness under her facade.

Gaku Yashiro (ERASED) Mr. Yashiro seemed like an okay guy. He took an active interest in helping his time-travelling student Satoru save Kayo Hinazuki from the abuse of her mother, and Kayo wasn't the only potential victim during that year in Hokkaido. In fact, several other elementary school kids had disappeared, and it's not until Satoru begins investigating that the Mr. Yashiro's mask starts slipping to reveal a sadistic predator underneath. There's no real rhyme or reason behind his motivation to kill children. The manga gives him more comprehensive motivation, explaining Gaku's relationship with his abusive older brother, but apparently just witnessing a hamster's struggle to survive drowning causes him to finally snap.

The new poll: What Fall 2017 anime series are you most looking forward to watching?

The old poll: Now that summer convention season is winding down, how many anime conventions did you attend this year?

1. None, but I would like to attend an anime convention 41.1%
2. 1 24.4%
3. None, I have no interest in going to anime conventions 16.6%
4. 2 9.1%
5. 4 or more 4.2%
6. 3 3.7%