Doki Doki School Hours (せんせいのお時間, Sensei no Ojikan; "Teacher's Time") 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 to June 27, 2004. An OVA series, titled Sensei no Ojikan Gold (せんせいのお時間 ご～るど), 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, but 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 (who only looks about half her age) 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, but the original manga predates Azumanga Daioh by two years. Additionally, before the recent anime incarnation, the manga spawned a series of drama CDs.
Contents
Plot
A very short 27-year-old teacher has an interesting time trying to teach her class and she has to deal with the eccentricities of her students as they present themselves over the school year.
Characters
Mika Suzuki (鈴木みか, Suzuki Mika), also known as "Mika-sensei"
Voiced by: Omi Minami (Japanese); Angie Beers (English)
The 27-year old homeroom teacher of Class 2A who is unusually short, she is usually addressed, as given the nickname "Mika-sensei". Her short stature and generally "cute" appearance causes people to think her more childish than she is. Even so, she is not especially mature, still lives with her parents and dreads "measuring day". Mika also has a tendency to cry when things do not go her way.
Minako "Tommy" Tominaga (富永美奈子, Tominaga Minako)
Voiced by: Kana Ueda (Japanese); Carol-Anne Day (English)
A brutally honest student who belongs to the cooking club, she is often shown moaning about being surrounded by idiots in her class, or telling people off. She loves slasher films.
Akane Kobayashi (小林あかね, Kobayashi Akane)
Voiced by: Tomoko Kawakami (Japanese); Mariette Sluyter (English)
A girl who likes to sleep in class but outside of school she holds a part-time job as she loves to make money. She has also shown great concern about her appearance and weight, causing her to put herself on crash diets. She is very ditzy sometimes, like when she walked into the classroom and Anthony (an American exchange student) said "Hello!" in English: she came to the instant conclusion she had woken up in America.
Shizuka Nagare (流静, Nagare Shizuka), also known as "Chairman (Iincho)"
Voiced by: Ikue Ohtani (Japanese); Leda Davies (English)
The Class President of Class 2A, she wanted to be class president due to her favorite pop star stating that he liked class presidents: she decided to be class president for the rest of her life. She is highly intelligent and friendly, but is seem at times being brutal to people, especially when they somehow insult her idol.
Episode list
Here Comes Class 2A Of Okitsu High School
Measuring and Throwing and Hitting
Swimsuits and Exams! Something Drops!
Mika-Sensei's Summer Story
Summer Ends and Artistic Autumn Arrives
The Culture Festival Is The Festival of Culture
Santa Girl and New Years' Fun
Winter Has Come and Spring Is Around The Corner
The Tearful Graduation Ceremony
The Kyoto Field Trip Incident of Love and Hate!
Sunshine After Rain, Partially Student Teacher
Frightening experiences, Summer Activities
Summer in Shonan: The Don't Say Goodbye Episode
The Exchange Student and Okitsu, The Dark City
Sports Festival Special
The Big Family and The Elusive Pork Ramen, Big Sister Mika Is Running Away
Beast Buster Ekaterina Nagare A.K.A. Iincho
SF Magical Period Drama Doki Doki Version: The Okitsu Millennium Battle!
The Culture Festival Operation
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 criticized 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 that 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.