Schools in Anime
10 Reasons for Why So Many Anime have Schools in Them
Popularity: It works because most anime fans are children and teenagers. It’s easy bucks and free popularity.
Familiarity: Anyone can relate to something they personally went through. Whether you are still a student or graduated decades ago, school is a place you are both familiar with and very easy to identify with.
Skipping Explanations: Everybody knows about mundane things. You don’t need to waste time in explain anything. Schools are self-explanatory.
Controlled Chaos: It is very easy to work with teenager characters because you can make them act in a dozen different ways, and it won’t seem like you are rewriting them anyway you feel like it at the moment. You can excuse it as them being full of chaotic emotions. Having no consistency in the way they behave is normal all of a sudden. But you also can’t let them do any crazy shit they like all the time because the plot will have no structure. So, you throw them in a school where they do not make any sense on one hand, yet are still following school regulations on the other.
Daily Routine: If people are free to program their daily schedule, they would do different things every day, or wouldn’t do anything at all. The chances of the same people meeting on a daily basis becomes very low this way, and also very hard to have a story where the same people need to interact on a daily basis. So, you have them doing a daily routine. What is the most common mandatory thing all people do for at least a dozen years, regardless of how good they are at it? Going to school. And now you have a story that guarantees interaction, without having to take into account dismissal in case they don’t perform that well.
Low Effort in Planning: Since schools have specific events that automatically happen every year, not only the characters have a daily routine, but also have no need to plan their own events. A school competition will happen even if they don’t do anything about it. There will be tests, and there will be clubs, and there will be trips to other places. If there is a school in your story, you don’t need to think of events that will happen in it. The story will write itself.
Low Stakes: Nothing of significance ever happens in schools. No matter how important they try to make stuff like good grades, or bullying, or club activities to seem, there is still close to no actual penalty or reward no matter what happens. Students are never truly held responsible, and most of the times they are not even trying to be responsible. It’s the adults who have to clean their mess, and many times they are not even shown in the series. It’s all a mind trick to not stress the audience, regardless of how important the objective seems to be.
Dreamy Period: Because the stakes are low and responsibilities mean very little, school life is considered to be the best period of time, for all Japanese people. And even if schools suck in real life, they are idealized in anime, and made to seem like the coolest shit ever.
Sexualization: Most men are attracted to young girls, and Japanese laws are very lax when it comes to animated fan service. What easier way is there to have lots of sexy girls in one place if not a classroom?
Militarization: Do you know the Japanese school uniform dress code is based on military uniforms? Do you also know how all the forced school events and the huge mental pressure students go through there, are part of making them obedient to the authorities? Do you even know how all major Japanese companies are owned by the same major families that were powerful warlords during the warring state period? Having schools in anime is a way to brainwash people into accepting the status quo as something normal and mandatory.