The story revolves around the lives of two rough-and-tumble high school friends Kato Hiroshi and Nakama Toru, who seemed to make a habit of getting into trouble and starting up fights. In keeping with the spirit of the manga, Toru and Hiroshi sport slicked back 50's style perms and adopted exaggerated swaggers that made them comical and yet also oddly cool. The drama also features an assortment of outlandish characters who sport even weirder fashions and hairdos. To describe the action in this drama, think Fight Club meets The Breakfast Club.

Be-Bop Highschool won the 12th Kodansha Manga Award in the General category in 1988, along with Bonobono.

The manga was adapted into six Japanese live-action films from 1985 to 1988, a live-action TV series, and a 1988 video game released on the Nintendo Famicom developed by Data East.