Moving along, another thing one notices about anime is how orderly, peaceful and plain old “nice” most Japanese schools seem to be. Not just physically, but also as social communities. So:
2. Japanese schools are utopian “gardens of learning,” not social snake pits.
BT: Truth is, high school in Japan is like high school everywhere: cliquish, full of bullies, enjoyable if you fall into the right group of people or find the right interests, but otherwise forgettable to unlivable. Some manga and anime likes to make it a more idealized version of what audiences either remember about school, or are living with at that moment.
GBS: I keep on reading news reports about bullying in Japanese schools and it’s quite disturbing. Part of the cost of having a society where “conformity” is such an important value.
BT: It’s distressing. And while it’s particularly bad in Japan it’s also conversely what could make the setting more relatable to those also unfortunately familiar with bullying, if anime acknowledged it more often. Not that all anime ignores the hard truths of school life—but when it does acknowledge this stuff, it’s usually sending it up, like with over-the-top delinquent gang leaders who look like they’re in their 30s. Or evil student councils.
GBS: Most anime do tend to shy away from the nastier side of school.
BT: Some genres are more honest, however. Or maybe just more cynical. Shoujo and josei, stories more from the female perspective, seem more likely to me to include unsavory looks at the social jungle of middle and high school classrooms.
GBS: That’s a good point about shoujo/josei being more “realistic.” I think a good example of that less idealized side comes from Kimi ni Todoke. In that show, it’s not like someone waves a magic wand and outsider Sawako is suddenly accepted by her entire class. It is a long-term process and there are girls like Kurumi who actively seek to destroy their potential rivals–not head on, but through manipulating others.
BT: A shoujo show this season, Blue Spring Ride, spends its first arc having its heroine trying to extricate herself from so-called friends who are part of a clique that ridicules and alienates other kids in their class.
GBS: It was refreshingly honest compared to so many shows which present matters as if there’s one big happy class with no divisions (other than the division between the protagonists’ clique and the faceless extras that fill out the class).
BT: Yes, that particular interpretation more and more bugs me. More and more, of course, I fall away from the intended demographic, perhaps. But the “big happy family” view is unsettling, where the drama centers around a girl or boy who is outside of this—often of their own making—and needs to be brought into the fold. Shoujo stories, again, seem to me about finding one’s own place in the larger whole; while shonen/seinen-orientated shows seem to be about conforming to the whole, and eliminating independence.
GBS: It’s interesting, though, that there are so many shows set in school, especially high schools, but we see very little education taking place. Though we are told that college entrance exams are fierce in Japan (which is 100% true), oddly:
2a. High school students barely spend any time in the classroom learning.
We know why this is so: it would be boring if high school anime showed the true ratio of classroom learning time to free time/club time in school. But it’s all part of how high school is turned into a “fun” setting: they’ve removed all of the mind-numbingly boring parts.
BT: I think this is one trope many audiences can identify. Even shows that are made like after-school specials for being responsible about studying—like Seven of Seven, which is all about passing high school entrance exams—still spend most of the time actually talking about something else (young love, saving the town, in Seven of Seven’s case).
GBS: The funny thing is that I think we sometimes get more shots of empty classrooms (the main character goes back to get something; a classroom tryst between two characters; the graduate says “goodbye” to the classroom) than we do of full ones in some series.
BT: I think that’s true. Incidentally, I’m waiting for the high school show about a school that is in actuality nothing but club activities. (Learning would still exist—only you’d have to join, say, the “Science Class Club”.) Someone get on this.
GBS: What happens if the “Learning Club” has too few members?
