Haruaki Abe badly wants to be a schoolteacher, but within the first thirty minutes of his first day of work a delinquent welcomes him with “What the hell are you staring at, huh?” and he goes straight home and stays there…for a year! But his second try is going to be different. The school is a quiet academy on Hyakki Island, it uses the traditional sailor uniforms that he loves, and the headmaster is a friend of his family. Sure, it’s odd that he wears a wooden mask, but okay. Abe-sensei enters his classroom full of resolutions to be a wonderful teacher. Only, his class is full of yokai with multiple arms, long necks, blank faces, or fishtails! The headmaster has to force him in. The teary teacher then hides under his table and stays there for forty minutes. Sano-kun, a student, has to go convince him to come out and teach. But oh no! When he helps our protagonist, his clothes explode, and now he is in his underwear! You see, Sano-kun is a yakubyougami, a yokai that brings misfortune when annoyed (a power Abe-sensei is lucky I do not have. Good grief!). After class (and some more shenanigans) the teacher decides to help a female student who has become a shut-in go back to school. Let’s not get too excited, though: his motivation is that she’s a yokai that brings good luck. Hopefully, he will manage to do it without tripping on her bra or something.

Yeah, not a big fan of this one. Anime has no shortage of fascinating teachers, whether smart, comical, inspiring, or lazy: Onizuka, Eraserhead, Koro-sensei, Sakurai, Hiratsuka, Pin, frightful Mr. Tanabe and chronically single Yuri-san come to mind. The concept was promising: for a shy teacher, leading a class of teenagers can be a rocky path: they might indeed feel as alien as these yokai. But Abe-sensei is not just shy. He is frustratingly unable to provide any semblance of discipline, or even try. He breaks down in tears, curls up in a ball, and begs his students for good behavior, telling them he hasn’t ever had a friend, or anyone who would take pity on him; that delinquents would come after him, and sometimes grade school kids made him cry (which doesn’t seem to fit with his backstory, or are these his school years he’s recalling?). The cutesy art direction and the high-pitched voice of our hero do not do any favors to this character, nor does the revelation that he is secretly OP. This is a teacher whose headmaster has to bribe him with a schoolgirl uniform catalog, a gag that gets real old real quick. As for the “oh, no, I lost my pants in front of the girls” joke, it was born old. Not cool, Abe-sensei. What’s wrong with being a baker, anyway?

A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School! is available on Crunchyroll.