School settings are incredibly common in Japanese manga and anime for both marketing and cultural reasons. On one hand, most manga and anime are marketed for children or teenagers, meaning the main characters need to be relatable to their target audiences. On the other hand, school days have a nostalgic quality for many people that makes school-based anime a concept that all ages can get appreciate.
As a result, there’s an overwhelming amount of anime that feature school students in some capacity. But even though school is linked with the halcyon days of youth, there are still some downsides to being a school student – especially in anime, where anything can happen.
10 HARSH REALITY: Japanese Students Sometimes Attend School On Saturdays
Although it’s lost popularity in recent years, for a long while, most Japanese students were expected to go to school six days a week. Granted, Saturday classes were typically only half the day and consisted of extracurricular activities or studying, but it was nevertheless a requirement at many schools. Anime students of all ages have been seen attending Saturday classes in several different anime, including My Hero Academia, where it’s an official U.A. High School rule for its students to attend Saturday instruction.
9 PERK: Anime School Students Sometimes Have Superpowers
School settings are popular in many anime, including those that have supernatural or science fiction worlds. Izuku Midoriya attends a prestigious superhero academy in My Hero Academia and Yuji Itadori attends Tokyo Jujutsu High, a special school that trains students to be jujutsu sorcerers in Jujutsu Kaisen. Both these series have fun, action-packed, and occasionally scary confrontations between characters who have impressive, awe-inspiring superpowers or magical abilities. The schools that these characters attend teach them how to responsibly use their skills so they don’t accidentally harm themselves or others.
8 HARSH REALITY: They Might Have To Fight Monsters, Demons, Or Villains
Usagi Tsukino from Sailor Moon, Yuji Itadori from Jujutsu Kaisen, and Izuku Midoriya from My Hero Academia all have at least two important things in common. First, they’re all anime school students; and second, they all fight against forces of evil.
Living a regular teenager’s life isn’t possible for these characters because they’re expected to protect society from dangerous influences. What’s worse is that these kinds of characters need to be careful with whom they associate with, to prevent innocent lives from getting involved in their conflicts.
7 PERK: They Usually Have Club Activities That Can Be Fun
It’s very common for Japanese schools to have a plethora of after-school extracurricular activities that most students are expected to participate in. Some school-based anime, like Fruits Basket, don’t quite focus on club activities… but others, like Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, focus on club activities after school hours and on days off. The Love Live! and K-ON! franchises are two more examples with anime school students having a blast during club activities. Club activities in anime are often environments where students bond and build friendships.
6 HARSH REALITY: They Might Have To Deal With Club Activities Even If They Don’t Want To
Some anime school characters are less than enthusiastic about being dragged into extracurricular activities. Kyon in the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is an example of an anime school student who initially seems frustrated and put off by having to join the SOS Brigade. He does eventually learn that he enjoys being a member of the SOS Brigade, but he’s nevertheless exasperated by the “club activities” that Haruhi drags him into.
5 PERK: They Very Frequently Have A Shot At Romance
Any main character of a school-based series is bound to attract the attention of at least one person. Whether the protagonist wants to return their feelings or not depends on the series, with characters like Kae Serinuma from Kiss Him, Not Me being initially uninterested in gaining any of the male characters’ attention. Series like Toradora! have more than one teenage romance at stake, and Kimi ni Todoke follows a tender budding romance between its two main characters. It’s pretty common for anime school students to fall in love.
4 HARSH REALITY: Romantic Situations Might Be Unwanted Or Overly Complicated
Being an anime school student doesn’t necessarily mean they’re always in a school setting. In series like Inuyasha, for example, Kagome Higurashi falls in love with the feudal era half-demon Inuyasha.
This unintentionally makes her romantic situation pretty complicated, since she has to decide which world she wants to live in. Toradora! is a romance drama all about love triangles and school characters learning how to express their feelings. School is an especially tumultuous time for budding romances, making it ripe for romantic dilemmas.
3 PERK: The Main Characters Probably Look Unique Or Cool Compared To Their Classmates
Character design is very important when it comes to animation since the characters’ appearance is typically the first thing people notice about a series. In school-based anime, it’s not uncommon for the main cast to have colorful or exciting appearances compared to other characters. The main cast in Lucky Star, for example, all have bright and colorful hair colors when compared to classmates. And in series like Yu-Gi-Oh!, the protagonist almost always has a unique hairstyle and color that set them apart from others.
2 HARSH REALITY: They Might Be Bogged Down With Extracurriculars
Outside of club activity, it’s pretty common for anime school students to become involved with certain projects over the school year. The school cultural festival is a commonly used trope in school-based anime and there might be an entire arc devoted to putting together the protagonist’s classroom’s particular project. In Fruits Basket, Tohru Honda’s class put on a custom play based on the Cinderella story. Students were expected to make the costumes and props, write the script, assign and practice their roles, and direct the play themselves.
1 PERK: They Probably Have A Special Skill
Outside of something extraordinary like superpowers or magical abilities, many anime school students have some kind of special skill that sets them apart. Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto features the eponymous Sakamoto acting flawlessly in everything he does on a daily basis, suggesting he’s an extremely talented person. Yui Hirasawa is another example of a character who possesses natural talent, as she was able to pick up a guitar in K-ON! and learn to play quickly and without much formal instruction, suggesting she’s a prodigy with the guitar. She’s also shown to have perfect pitch.
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