School based anime and raising/ look after children

School based anime and raising/ look after children

  • Like School based/ Moe anime: look after children

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Like School based/ Moe anime: don't look after children

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Don't like School based/ Moe anime: don't look after children

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Don't like School based/ Moe anime: look after children

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    0
H

hopeful_monster

Thousand Master
While at a con with one of my friends we had our normal banter about Moe shows and School based anime. I generally don't like it, he does. We both have our reasons, and mine is I work with children. I used to do environmental education and taught kids from 5 to 18, now I', a student teacher teaching secondary science. Because of this moe and school based anime is like someone from wieght watchers watching an anime about a food that tastes like chocolate and has no calories. Nice idea, pity reality is so different.
Wondered if this was the same for other people. Can you like this stuff while looking after the irriating little brats.
 
I don't look after children (other than on occasion my little brother, who is an angel but too young to be relevant to the question) yet I find cutesy school settings pretty tedious too ^^;

In my case it's more that I absolutely hated every second of school when I was there, so seeing it romanticised has a similar effect to the one you describe. If a show is interesting I can tolerate it but if the main point of a series is to wallow in the nostalgic school atmosphere, it usually makes my skin crawl.

R
 
If anything, cutesy school settings are so over-used, they're boring now. It's kind of acceptable in some situations, where the cast are all minors, as they would most likely do most of their social interaction at school, as long as there's a story beyond the school.

I have to agree with Rui that at the time, I hated school. As someone who has left school and entered a very uncertain world (unemployment, money troubles etc) sometimes watching the romantic view of school days can actually make me feel very homesick - missing something I never actually had (Saying that though, I was incredibly unpopular at school).

Also, one thing that pisses me off is how school trips are always portrayed. In actuality, you're just being led from one place to another by your teacher to learn about something in the field rather than a classroom. Rarely any fun involved. Also, I sure as hell wish I had school trips to places people in anime go to.[/i]
 
I have no strong feelings one way or the other.

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I have to add my voice to those criticising of the portrayal of school / childhood in anime. It's such a fantasy. Maybe it's different in Japan. Perhaps there students and teachers have some respect for each other and kids still have some innocence past the age of about four; but here kids are abusive little sh*ts, teachers have little respect for their students and school is awful. The delinquent school in Akira is more accurate.

That said, I still like AzuDai. But that's surreal anyway, so I guess I find it easier to overlook it's overly positive view of high school life (even when you factor in Kimura he's only a benign pervert).

I think mainly though, as I enter the second half of my third decade alive I just find school age kids ever harder to empathise with. Anime starring mainly adult characters seems to be thin on the ground at the moment. But then perhaps it always has been.
 
I guess this might class as one of the stranger polls I've seen on an anime forum. ^^; Very much number 2 for me.

Rui said:
In my case it's more that I absolutely hated every second of school when I was there, so seeing it romanticised has a similar effect to the one you describe.
Click to expand...
I have totally the opposite reaction: I hated going to school (although mainly because I didn't and don't like such structured methods of study, I didn't actually have a "bad" experience over the course of my school life) so seeing anime versions of JP high schools has a similar effect to watching grand adventures in fantasy lands, or implausibly awesome stories of sporting triumph.
 
Good thread.

Definitely the last option for me: I don't like the exploitative, cutesy, brain cell destroying typical secondary school anime aka "moe"or whatever its called.

I have worked with children in a number of different settings, and I suppose this only strengthens that view. My biggest problems with these shows is that they are clearly aimed at children yet they are more often than not only display a super stereotypical/idealised view which is very unrelatable for children anywhere in the world including Japan (in some ways especially Japan, given the typical appearance of the characters). The lead characters are always wafer thin with massive eyes and often completely indistinguishable from 80% of other school set anime protagonists, in other words have no believable character or charm. As Ill already pointed out they often only portray a "fantasy land" of school life. But how does this make the children feel, whose school life isn't a "fantasy land" and who aren't anything like the unrealistic and popular protagonists that dominate these shows. I will admit there are some shows that do try to convey more poignant messages of loneliness ect, ect, but all too often I find that these shows handle these issues very poorly.


To add to this there is also the problem of over sexualisation and panty shots galore in some of these shows. This does raise the issue of who these shows are really aimed at (why include such scenes in anime that on the whole are aimed at children?), and the fact that the creators of the show are completely morally bankrupt. This somewhat detracts from the enjoyment of the show for me.

As someone who has worked in schools I can't enjoy shows that are so obviously created only as a cash in and which would often only provide confusing or just plain wrong messages to the children. I want to see more anime that goes against the grain and that would really try and empower children instead.

All that being said there are some genuinely brilliant Japanese anime that are set in school, however they are unfortunately just a whole lot of crap ones as well. Some are so bad that I genuinely can't understand how any grown person can actually enjoy them. Honestly compared to some of the school anime which do quite well (even in the west) there are BBC children's school set dramas or comedies that are absolutely brilliant in comparison, with more involving storytelling and characterisation. So why wouldn't I just watch that instead, what am I actually missing out on? The bug eyes?
 
I went for B, though I've not seen a whole ton of school-based moe stuff. But I fear your question will suffer from being a tad loaded. Not to stereotype, but us anime folk tend to be teens to twenties on average and thus I don't know how many of us would look after kids regularly, so I don't know that the lack of answers for option A would reflect acurrately.
 
Hopeful monster! (Did you find a place to hang that poster you bought at the expo the other year?)

Unsure which to pick, i liked Azumanga Daioh because it was easy to watch and had funny moments but haven't seen many other shows with kids in school, i guess the whole slice of life has little interest for me for the most part, As ayase said the whole portrayal of school life is a farce, my personal experience of highschool was laid back and easygoing until anything to do with running was involved. Got on with most people and teachers but unlike IRL Anime tries to show the kids and teachers to have a respect for each other and things are a cake walk. This is where it differs too much for my liking – I’m willing to watch anime where people turn into death scythes, where people are half androids and even where clapping your hands together then touching things can change the structure and texture of anything is believable for me…. But a high school where the kids are all respectful and nice to each other and there isn’t a group of amoeba stood behind the bike shed smoking weed… pfft that’s too far from reality for me thanks.



The past year i've had to look after a kid whenever round the gf's house (he's a foster kid but he was only 2, just turned 3 the other week) so unsure if that counts or not, either way i'm not really a fan of Moe, i think its nice to have a cute character but i don't love the stuff like some (looks at ryo :lol: ) I think looking after a kid will no doubt have an inpact on the way you view moe.

So i chose option C
 
I'm a sucker for cute things, but when it comes to anime I guess I have a double standard.

I find children to be annoying much like Dr Grant (and I've yet to have an adventure through a dinosaur park to change my opinion) and spend as little time around them as possible but when it comes to anime sometimes I can be ensnared by the cuteness. Hanamaru Kindergarten was one of the cutest shows I watched last(?) year and Yotsuba remains one of my favourite manga. I'm also enjoying Usagi drop at the moment.

I guess I just find it easy to find the idealised, cute but not irritating version found in anime to be adorable to watch...but then again outside of those examples listed above it's hard to think of any others.
 
I like high school based anime when they have things like school festivals and stuff on, they're really fun episodes but couldn't say I'm a big fan. Also don't like moe but I do like it when little girls are portrayed realistically and not all "I'M SO KAWAII" like Rin from Usagi Drop or Pino from Ergo Proxy (even though she's an android)

I don't look after kids, but do sometimes care for niece. So yeah. Don't think there's a choice to fit the criteria.
 
I like Moe/School shows, and I doubt my opinion on it will change when if I end up looking after kids, unless you count my lil' brother who is only 5 years younger than me, but has ADHD
 
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