/anime_backup/ - Old Anime board

>>7837
School represents the last time people could have fun without having any responsibility other than studying. Many Japanese didn't have a nice time in high school due the pressure of exams and getting into university, then there's bullying, heartbreaks and so on. An idealized high school life might be entertaining to watch, both for adults who slave away every day and for teenagers, after all there a lot of different genre you can set in a school, it's a very versatile setting.
Personally, I wish there were more anime and manga set during university years because that's actually when Japanese people have fun: they can finally drink, smoke, drive and have all kind without too much pressure (no one studies in university in Japan, unless they study medicine). I'd even appreciate more work settings if they weren't so boring and repetitive.

The malleability of school setting to appropriate any other setting or genre.
Another reason is we don't really have any many places of Socialization outside of school setting in modern world.

Nostalgia.

>Do anime ever make more than passing attempts at portraying so called "adulthood" as a future to be excited about?
There's plenty.

>>7837
The japanese government wants to keep their citizens complacent
so they keep having japan forcing the school setting into everything

>>7837
>It cannot just be that the target audience is mostly children
children don't want to watch some office worker typing on a computer, shuffling papers, attending meetings or making phone calls all day. who would want to watch that?

>>7873
But the target audience for a lot of anime is teenagers and young adults.

To relive their happiest years.

>>7880
High school is considered your most formative life stage in Japan, I've heard. Sounds awful, like everything after is just a mediocre dessert

>no one studies in university in Japan
how does that even make sense?

Maybe because Japan has such an oppressive work culture that the student life is seen as the prime of their life in terms of freedom from expected responsibility. Even when it's fetishized it's for the same reason.

>>7882
When I found out about it I was shocked as well.

Presumably, the hardest parts are the college entrance exams in high school, so it could be that once actually in university, college, or other higher education it gets much more relaxed for mostly everyone.

>>7886
Exactly.
When I talked to Japanese about university they all said it was easy and relaxed, with very high (90-99%) passing rates for exams. I only had one exam that was this easy in my career, they were shocked to hear that I had exams with 30% passing rate (in humanities!)

>>7837
>>7886
Actually, the high school years there are said to be quite stressful and difficult, so perhaps it is a kind of cope, although school is probably a happier time than adulthood for the most part as it seems it is everywhere.

>>7888
Sort of a fantasy rebellion then maybe?

>>7906
Yeah, perhaps that may be part of it.

No one said pedophilia yet, in the thread, which is a little bit of a surprise.

>>9182
Because most SoL and school shit is set in High School, where there are no lolis and so no pedoshit.

>>9460
Did this post get deleted or what?

Adulthood is misery until you are old and then you're even more miserable because your body degrades into a prison. Thank God we die.

I love the suburb setting with ramen stores and manga shops
And the homes are so cozy with that heater everybody sits together at

School setting is so fucking boring

Is there a term for this sort of nostalgia for stuff, regardless of whether it even portrays the reality accurately, from the past that hasn't even been personally experienced?

Sometimes it seems that the ostensibly new popular culture these days just doesn't have any content that is actually new and does any actual progressive shit, besides that of the most superficial.

That's perhaps what a lot of this school themed crap and similar fare comes from, as a sort of, even anachronistic at times, romantic idealization of an imagined time in which the uncertainty and misery of the present day had weighed less on lives.

Is it any more than escapist opiate, in the end? Because it'd be somewhat sad if it only amounted to so.