To quickly review what this series is about: Eikichi Onizuka, a former bike gang member, college karate champ, 22 years old and a bachelor, has taken it upon himself to be the world's greatest teacher. With little or no qualifications, he somehow gets accepted into a prestigious school, is assigned the worst class of delinquents and somehow has to control them.

Volume 9 picks up where the last left off: Onizuka has bluffed and pulled off funding a field trip for Holy Forest Academy to a posh hotel resort in Okinawa. "Field Trips" could've easily done without its first episode, a yawner revolving around the hammering of love interest Fuyutsuki's self-esteem as she overhears everyone's snide comments about her petite figure and not-quite-Pamela-Anderson-sized chest. It's pretty much a two-character episode, with the more ample-sized Nurse Kadena constantly, accidentally making Fuyutsuki more self-conscious as she tries to help her shop for a bathing suit. No one would have missed a beat if this episode had never existed.

Then the fun begins. The next three episodes revolve around two characters who made a small comeback in the last GTO offering: Anko Uehara and Yoshikawa--the bullying girl and bullied boy from Volume 2 (she led a group of three girls to constantly beat him up, and even strip him naked, draw on his body and take pictures). The bullying picks up again once the group touches down on Okinawa, something that doesn't slip by Onizuka, who has also grown keen to a story computer genius Kikuchi finds online about treasure buried in one of the surrounding islands.

As usual, Onizuka dribbles mayhem all over the situation, with two plot twisting schemes. First, he screws around with the room assignments to get Kanzaki in a room of Gundam Wing nerds, henchmen Murai and Kikuchi in a room with Miyabi's two henchwomen (she doesn't go), and Yoshikawa in a room with the three girls that have picked on him for as long as they've known him. Second, he steals the class on the pretense of a trip to dig for turtle eggs, all the while meaning to find the buried treasure. As expected, the room assignments clash more than a green hat with an orange bill, making Onizuka a magnet for the students ire. Yoshikawa is given his "room" by the three girls--the mosquito-infested balcony. With Onizuka's help, he pulls off a clever prank on the girls, but pays dearly with another beating. With the class sequestered from the rest of Holy Forest on Onizuka's wild-goose treasure hunt, Yoshikawa becomes easy pickin's for Uehara and her group on the deserted island. A few accidents, a few obstacles in a few plots, and the last three episodes of "Field Trips" become a chaotic ride with life-threatening implications.

This is one of the most balanced, and surprisingly simple, GTO's since Volume 4: "The Test." On one hand is Oniuzka's treasure hunting group, which turns on him and appropriately punishes him for misleading them; on the other, Yoshikawa and Uehara find themselves separated from everyone, as Yoshikawa dives after Uehara who falls into a treacherous tide cavern. It's as simple as that--the show cuts back and forth from the usual comedic moments from Onizuka's group, to the more poignant, emotionally-shifting situation with the two lost teens.

This volume also once more emphasizes why the Japanese, sub-titled version towers over the English dub. The difference can be as subtle as (Warning!: mini-spoiler) a sentence that reads "we can be together on our last night in Okinawa" to "we can be together *since it's* our last night in Okinawa." One is an offer based on love, the other based on a time limitation (the time limitation one is the English dub). The difference can also make a world of difference in terms of the mood. In the sequence showing the class waiting for Onizuka, Kanzaki, Yoshikawa and Uehara to return, the Japanese version maintains two sets of conversation simultaneously, with Kikuchi's conversation in the foreground, and the class picking on Murai in the background. In another sequence, the English dub shows a waiting, lonely, Uehara pounding the water furiously screaming "Come back, Yoshikawa! Come back!" while the Japanese version furthers the story more sorrowfully makes it appear instead as though she's tapping the water, saying "Yoshikawa" in sad, frightened tones.

If you're this far into the series, I won't even have to recommend it to you--you're almost required to buy it. To newcomers, this is the allure of the series, despite the lackluster fourth volume: a simple series that has a character every and anyone can associate with, along with a barrage of cliffhangers that make the wait for the next volume nearly unbearable. A great PG-13 series.