Just a little.
I speak of School Days and Botchan of course. Both of these anime deal with school life in Japan...and none of it is pretty.
School Days deals with a young man named Kenkichi who is trying to get into college. It is a tough, competitive, and stressful process in which everyone must study and take a test. Of course, though, there are distractions, such as stupid siblings and stupid love. Long story short, while Kenkichi was studying, he meets the love of his life, or so he thinks. His little brother comes along to study for the same test, although he does not take it as seriously. He also steals Kenkichi's girl while he's at it. Kenkichi plans to marry the girl once he passes the test, except he doesn't really pass the test. And to add insult to injury, his little brother passes it AND gets the girl. So Kenkichi goes and kills himself.
SEPPUKU!!!!
I told you it was a little more lighthearted, didn't I?
Botchan is a little better.
Botchan is a school teacher who transfers from Tokyo to some hole in the road elsewhere in Japan. He is ridiculed by his students, and taken advantage of by some of his colleagues. The students play many different hi-jinks on him, provoked by the vice-principal unbeknownst to Botchan. After his colleagues get fired one by one, Botchan teams up with them to scare the you-know-what out of the bad colleagues. He then leaves afterwards. YOU GO BOTCHAN.
Considering that I went to a pretty bourgeois high school , I can't really relate to most of the stuff that goes on in both of these films, even in my freshman year, where my entire class was eleven people. I repeat--ELEVEN FRICKIN PEOPLE. However, we didn't really play tricks on the teachers or anything like that. And later on, after I changed schools, nothing really changed. I was just around more people.
Yeah, I had a pretty dull four years...
I will agree this time around the anime were less violent by far. Of the two I preferred Botchan, it was less depressing and rather humorous. Student Days just had me thinking WTF? I felt sorry for the guy. He did try rather hard to prepare for the test but he was distracted by some pretty silly things. Siblings… just ignore them and go study lol. As for the love… I personally think that wasn’t really love… more like that “love at first sight” cliché that is really just a crush, or even simple lust in some cases. Regardless… enough about the depressing film that is Student Days. The other film was more of a “light” in my busy college days. It was something amusing and mild to watch while also shedding light on how corruption is almost always in the top administration of school or government so far in our anime films. It is pretty silly to have teacher acting like high schoolers when it comes to all that drama. Nonetheless, the anime this week was different from our usual. It was nice to have a break from all the gore.
ReplyDeleteYay for lightheartedness! But yeah, I thought Student Days was really messed up too. Cause I mean, he killed himself and everything, but I kind of feel like that wouldn't happen in America. But like Britnee said above, I don't think Kenkichi was really in "love" with Sumiko either. He just liked her and confused it with love. But either way he could've done better. By the end of the movie I thought she was a bit "loose" jumping from brother to brother like that. Lame. But agreeing with both of you again, glad the gore was gone. And that was an alliteration. Kinda.
ReplyDeleteI already commented on someones once but I like everything you said about school days, and I do agree with you, so i have to comment again haha. It seems to me that Japanese education is a thousand times harder than it is here. I am not really sure why, maybe because in japan things are just done differently and we see it as being harder even though to them it's not as difficult as it seems, or maybe they know that it's more difficult. I don't know, i was curious as to what you thought really. But in my opinion, regardless which it is, yes it's hard, but this film was possibly the most over-dramatic thing I have ever seen in my life haha. I will give it props for being entertaining from a comical stand point, but almost all of the characters over-reacted to everything. It really is kind of funny. It still shocks me that even with the fact that he would have been able to take the test again, and would have been able to find another girlfriend, he kills himself. He knew the girl for what..like 2 days? I think that's completely ridiculous, but in actuality, school days did take a serious problem that happens today and display it in a much different way. Suicides to happen today and it's sad, school days does explain some of the reasons that people do through this anime.
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