A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School

A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School (妖怪学校の先生はじめました!) is a 26 episode comedy series based on the manga of the same name by Tanaka Mai.  The series aired between the Fall of 2024 and the Winter of 2025.

     Abe Haruaki dreams of becoming a teacher, but his first experience as one leaves him less than encouraged.  Haruaki is easily intimidated and when attempts to scold delinquent students backfires he quits teaching.  He is encouraged to try again, this time at a school on a remote island.  Uneasy about the position, he is warmly welcomed by the administrator.  This new assignment isn't exactly what he expected it to be.  He has been contracted to be the only human at a school exclusively for yokai around the nation.  The school its self is located on an isolated island that is only populated by yokai as well.  Being a human among monsters is the least of his worries.  His class has zero respect for him, largely due to his flighty nature and concerning passion for women/girls uniforms.

    Haruaki decides to continue his job, even in the face of unusual circumstances and mortal danger.  As his tenure proceeds he begins to earn the respect of his rowdy class, often selflessly endangering himself to help them.  The reason he was chosen for this position is due to his paternal lineage.  He is the descendant of a powerful  Heian era onmyouji, Abe no Seimei.  He possess his ancestors ability to dispel yokai but he is unable to control that ability.  The schools administrators have knowingly brought a dangerous person in their midst in hopes of being able to keep track of him and prevent anything problematic from happening.  Fortunately for them, Haruaki is lovable, gullible and recklessly passive.

 

    Over all this was an amusing series that didn't fall into repetitive patterns.  The cast of goofy characters ws enjoyable and covered a wide breadth of yokai, complete with brief descriptions.   A lot of the charm with the series is the frequent shifting of character design to enhance the comedy.  In reality there isn't much of an over arching story that unfolds.  Over the course of the series you learn about the backgrounds and motivations for a number of the students, some of the other teachers and of course Haruaki.  It didn't dawn on my until I was done watching it but this is pretty much a yokai spin on Great Teacher Onizuka.  I did enjoy the series and was happy when it got extended into a second cour.  Halfway through the second cour I started to lose interest in the shows apparent meandering but was snapped back in when the final half dozen episodes coalesced into a plot.

    This was a fun and hectic comedy that just so happened to use the absurd backdrop of an all yokai school too add some extra flavour to its delivery.   Over the decades I have come to really appreciate manzai style comedy and this series offers that in excess.  Haruaki is the classic kind hearted idiot.  A lot of his students are serious and ruthless in their interactions with him.  Almost all of the cast being yokai does well to help explain away the absurdity throughout the show.  There was one episode in the second cour though that almost made me quit the series due its rather blatant and unfortunate racism towards people of Chinese decent.  It was...alarming, something one would expect from an older anime.  Its unfortunate that publishers and production teams are still accepting of that type of sentiment.

The series is available on Crunchyroll.