The Honnouji Academy has a very strange system: The Student Council has absolute power and the higher a student is in the class standings thanks to their extra curricular activities, the more power they have both in the school and in the city that surrounds it. Because of this, it isn’t easy to teach there. That’s why we can’t fault Aikuro Mikisugi from looking like the most useless and bored homeroom teacher in the world. His lectures are so long and boring that it’s a miracle there are students awake at the end. But there’s a lot more to him than meets the eye.

Aikuro is the leader of Nudist Beach, a terrorist organization devoted to the destruction of the Kiryuin Family who happen to control Honnouji Academy. He’s there to infiltrate the Kiryuin’s organization and make sure they can figure out their plans for world domination using Life Fibers and to guide and protect Ryuko Muto, the user of the last Kamui–living uniform-created by her father. While Ryuko never appreciates the way Aikuru gives her his advice, mostly because he does so while naked, she can’t deny that he’s part of the reason she is still alive.

Since he was a child, Yukio Okumura showed he was smart and talented. That was one of the reasons why his adoptive father, Shiro Fujimura, allowed him to become an exorcist at a very young age. This led Yukio to study hard and end up not only as a great exorcist on his own right, but also a teacher for younger students. And when his brother Rin finally enrolls in the school because he wants to avenge their father, Yukio becomes his homeroom teacher, much to Rin’s utter surprise. As one of the youngest Exorcists to date, Yukio doesn’t have enough experience dealing with students, but that doesn't mean he’s not good for the job.

Young teachers always have problems at first. The closer they are to their students’ age, the harder it is to make everyone respect them. Yukio has it a bit harder because Rin is not just his twin brother; he’s technically older so there’s not much respect for Yukio there in the first place. Now, Yukio is not a perfect teacher; he still carries a lot of guilt and resentment against Rin for what happened to their father and their upbringing, but even so, he's dedicated to teaching both Rin and his classmates how to make the best use of their abilities to fight for good.

Fujiwara no Sai was one of the Emperor’s Go Teachers back in the Heinan era. Although he was part of a noble family, he was quite patient and loved the game completely. Unfortunately, this made him the target of jealousy and one of his rivals framed him for cheating. This was so devastating that Sai killed himself, unable to continue playing his beloved game. However, the Gods of Go seemingly had mercy on him and allowed his spirit to live on in an ancient Go board, waiting for the right person to see him and let him continue playing and teaching the game. His first student was the real-life Go legend Hon’ibo Shusaku, and the second was Hikaru Shindo.

It’s in Hikaru where we can see what an amazing teacher Sai really is. At the beginning of the series, Hikaru has absolutely no interest in Go or having good grades, and in fact, was just looking for something to sell when he found the Go board where Sai’s spirit was anchored. But through Sai–and, let’s be honest, Akira Toya’s-enthusiasm for the game, Hikaru started to play himself, and Sai, despite knowing this would make it harder for him to play again, decided to teach Hikaru everything he knew. By the end of the series, Hikaru is a great player who could one day become the best in the world, and a more mature young man thanks Sai for everything he taught him.

At first glance, Ursula Callistis is not better or worse than the other teachers at the Lunar Nova School of Magic. As the youngest teacher in the faculty–being 20 while others are pushing 200-she usually gets the jobs no one wants as the other teachers use their age as an excuse. She teaches Astronomy and Astrology and is quite protective of Akko, a young girl who unlike most Lunar Nova students has no magical heritage in her family. Unknown to the students, Ursula has quite a few skeletons in her closet, which explains why she is so determined to help Akko despite her difficulties using magic. The dedication Ursula has for Akko is born of a bit of guilt, but also of her desire to help everyone reach their goals.

Ursula is a very interesting kind of teacher because even when she is dedicated to helping a new generation of witches and truly enjoys teaching, she is also using the school to hide from the mistakes of her past. At times, she seems to be quite clumsy, but it comes off as a show to those paying attention because she’s only clumsy when people are watching. In a surprising twist, the story in Little Witch Academia is about Ursula’s secrets as much as it is about Akko and the other students learning about magic. This makes the whole series more enjoyable to viewers, and Ursula a teacher that is quite different from the rest.

There are teachers that become famous among their students for their leniency. The teachers who will take it easy during the final weeks and try to get even the slower student to earn a passing grade; the teachers every student loves. On the other hand, there are the teachers who are legendary for being strict and not letting anyone with less than a perfect score pass their class. Kakashi Hatake is one of the latter group, as, before Sasuke Uchida, Sakura Haruno, and Naruto Uzumaki became Team 7 under his guidance, he had failed every single applicant that had come to train with him.

Kakashi is also a great example of a teacher who never leaves their students floundering. Even after the time skip between Naruto and Naruto Shippuden, when he was more of a companion than a teacher, he was always ready to give advice to Naruto and Sakura, and never lost hope that Sasuke would return to the team. Even after Naruto found himself a different teacher because Kakashi couldn’t teach him what he needed, he was still there for the young ninja during the hardest battles, ready to fight next to his student and lead him when needed.

Teachers usually are the ones who form a student's sense of morality, right and wrong. However, Elias Ainsworth is completely unprepared for that part of the job, as he is a supernatural creature who doesn’t understand human emotions, much less why he should protect people he doesn’t quite care about. He got engaged to a human, whom he took as his student, not out of love, but out of curiosity; he decided to teach her magic just to see what would happen. He is a very talented magician, and as such, he is very qualified to teach Chise and help her come into her own power, but at the same time, he is open-minded enough to let her teach him about human feelings.

That is what makes Elias a good teacher despite his shortcomings: he is not arrogant enough to think he doesn’t have anything to learn. While at times he does things without telling Chise and that hurts their relationship, he tries to understand why those actions anger Chise. Not only that, he tries to stop himself from repeating them. So he’s both a teacher and a student, which makes him memorable.

When strict teachers are good, they are remembered either with respect when the student realizes how much they learned, or with pure, unadulterated fear. In the case of Izumi Curtis, she manages to inspire both feelings in her former students, Ed and Al Elric, for good reason. She’s not just strict, her training seems to teeter the edge between life and death. She fights them, abandons them on desert islands, and makes sure they know that even if they can do Alchemy, it doesn’t mean they should use it for everything that can be handled normally. More importantly, she always reminds them that she’s not an alchemist or a teacher; she’s a housewife.

She’s also one of the very few people her students truly fear. Ed and Al have faced untold dangers: Ed has seen the Truth and Al’s armor body renders him practically indestructible, and yet, the mere idea of visiting Izumi fills them both with dread. What makes this more important, and makes Izumi one of the best teachers one can find in anime, is that they aren’t afraid just of her strength but because they know they have disappointed her by joining the State Alchemists. They can handle her punches and her physical punishment, but they are defenseless against her anger.

The Death Weapon Meister Academy is one of the strangest schools you will ever see because that’s where “Death Scythes”– human hybrids who can transform into demon weapons-go to study and become stronger together with their meisters, the shinigami who use them in battle. With that kind of curriculum, one can expect the faculty to be legendary; and there’s none more impressive than the head of the school, Shinigami-sama, better known as Lord Death. If you think your principal is scary, just picture having the Grim Reaper himself as your teacher’s boss and school founder.

At first glance, Lord Death seems like the worst possible person to be in charge of anyone's education: he is rarely serious and most of the time seems to be living in his own reality. This is actually evidence of how good he is at teaching since the reason he acts that way is because he's aware that as Death, children normally fear him. So in order to teach them effectively, he changed both his looks and his personality to make them feel more comfortable, even if at times he ends up being disrespected by every student, including his son.

When training the next generation of heroes, it is important to have both field experience and teaching experience. Shouta Aizawa, also known as the hero Eraserhead, has both and it shows; even when the first time the students meet their homeroom teacher he is in his sleeping bag and seems absolutely uninterested in giving the kids a class. But once he gets serious, we can see why he is a great teacher: As he can erase other people quirks, he understands that every future hero should be trained to be able to fight without powers. He is also very blunt and never sugarcoats things for his class because he knows being a hero is not an easy job and one has to be ready for disaster at all times.

He's one of the less flashy heroes in the faculty and has a reputation for flunking anyone who doesn't show any potential to be a good hero. This is not because he thinks all heroes should be perfect, but because he knows that people with no potential are the ones in most danger out in the real world. Unlike other teachers on this list, he doesn't like when his students break the rules even for a good cause: when they disobey older heroes, Aizawa is quick to tell them that he doesn’t trust them anymore and he is not afraid of punishing them as needed, all in order to teach them to be better.

As the population in the world increases, so does a teacher's workload. Bigger classrooms mean more students and less time to devote to each one individually and so, some students fall behind. When this happens at Kunugigaoka Junior High School, said students are sent to Class E and other students are told to bully and ignore them in order to make them an example and push everyone else to do their best. And while this may help those in Classes A to D, it’s quite unfair to Class E. Enter Koro-sensei, a strange octopus-like alien who destroyed 70% of the moon and then made a deal with the Earth government: they have one year to kill him or he will destroy the Earth and they can try to do so as long as Koro-sensei can teach Class 3-E during that year.

Despite being an alien killer, and having his students try to kill him every day, Koro-sensei is devoted to his work as a teacher. Thanks to his abilities, he can focus on each student individually, and tries to modify his methods to help each of them in the areas they need him instead of just following the subject guides blindly. The students take some time to realize this but it soon is obvious to them that he will do whatever it takes to protect them and to help them realize their dreams.