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@Zalis116, I also think that plays an important role. Personally I don't look back on high school in any particular light. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't some fantastic experience either. I think, however, for most Americans the regret of high school focuses on the way bad choices and decisions impacted their future; didn't study and got in fights, so college was harder. Didn't make lasting friendships, so had to start that over from college. Went away for college so was distanced from friends/family.

I would also add that it has a lot to do with the way in which the two cultures tend to frame problems and their solutions. In short, save a few prominent examples on either end, the US in particular tends to put all its faith in logic and money, while Japan tends to put it in luck and determination. Rhetoric to either hand has been changing over the recent years (US stories placing more emphasis on luck and determination, Japanese putting more emphasis on logic and money), but these two approaches tend to win out more often than not.

Last edited by CoreSignal on Tue Feb 09, 2016 2:12 am; edited 1 time in total

@WingKing, ah, I forgot about C: The Money of Soul. I'm probably in the minority since I acutally liked the show but agreed, the college setting gave it a more grounded feel.

walw6pK4Alo wrote:

I like the college-aged anime because it allows characters to have a bit more freedom in terms of stuff like drinking or owning cars. I guess I still need to check out Golden Time, but most anime I've watched involving college students tend to be ones I like.

I feel like with college-age anime you get the best of both worlds: characters doing adult stuff but also a school setting.

@Merengues.Pop and DRosencraft, I think the whole idea that adolescence is naturally richer in themes is a bit of an exaggeration. If you look at lists on the greatest works of literature or the greatest novels, many of those titles are about adult characters and the majority of them don't have a school or high school setting so I don't really buy the fact that adolescence or high school makes for a more compelling story.

Zalis116 wrote:

I accept the preponderance of HS characters and settings as something that "goes with the territory" of the anime medium, much like giant robots that would collapse under their own weight in real life, or male characters getting beaten up by females for the slightest of real or imagined sexual infractions.

Agreed. As anime fans, we've become so used to the high school setting or high schoolers that we're becoming convinced that it's the ideal setting for an anime.

I just thought of this now, and it might be a good chunk of the answer.

I think It's something about broader appeal. Not everyone has been to college. Not everyone has worked in the chemical industry, or what have you. But, pretty much everyone has gone to highschool. Any of these things would have some inferential distance from those who have not experienced them, but almost everyone will have experienced high school. And in HS as opposed to elementary school, the people are mostly complete: they're not completely dependent on their parents, they're largely socially awakened, so there's a lot more room for interpersonal and intergroup conflicts, as well as romance.

It's a little lame ultimately, since I don't really care about inferential distances and seeing something I don't initially understand or know about is exciting rather than off-putting to me.

As for my own high school experiences, there were certainly plusses and minuses. As I am now I know I couldn't go back there, but only really because I'm way past that stage at this point. I've tasted adult life and know what it's like to do things that actually accomplish something, so I couldn't go back to tests and homework (which I hated even then, but still).

Rideback also takes place in college. The fact that we're able to pick out the few anime titles whose characters are in college says a lot all by itself.

Galap wrote:

Not everyone has been to college.

Now there's something I never thought about. I honestly have no clue what percentage of Japan goes on to college/university. When the issue pops up (largely in shoujo, it seems) that one character who decides to work after high school always seems to be the odd one out.

As the article states, maybe it is due to us, non-Japanese people focusing on a particular content that it seems like it's the majority of The Perfect Dream are in those high-school days, but that's probably just a portion of a larger social portrayals that natives don't pay much heed to. but that's still a lot of content centered around high-/middle-school years/characters.

@whiskeyii I think the question is also what percentage go to vocational schools versus universities. I had heard that there are a much larger number of vocational schools and that those outside the top 10% in H.S. go to those.

As for H.S., I got to be in the Rose Parade, endured three years with bullies that made 4th period miserable, had two romances that ended, did well enough to get into my university of choice (top 10 in US). University was tough and I screwed up, but after that, I've done some things people said couldn't be done. @Galap, I'm with you .That to say that I think there can be some really interesting "slice of life" stories that can be told about people's trajectories outside H.S. and I'd like to see that. Clannad A.S. was one of my favorites for that reason.

GeneStriker wrote:

Oddly enough, the plus for you is a minus for me. Everyone is boring now, and I wish I could go back to when the people around me were interesting, or at least shared my interests. It sucks because after suffering through 3 years of high school awfulness, and despite some nasty emotional stuff ruining the first semester, the second semester of my senior year was the first time I had ever truly felt like I had somewhere I could be myself. Somewhere I felt I belonged. And now it's gone. I don't see my friends anymore. I can't make new friends because I'm too busy 'preparing for my future,' and so is everyone else. College has been draining the life out of me, and I can hardly stand it, but I have to, because if I don't, I can't get the job I want. It doesn't help that the only people who seem to share my interests are either horrible people I don't want to be around, or friends from their high school who don't want to add any more to their group.

For me, I preferred my years in college because everyone was so much nicer. While I didn't make a lot of friends in college, I at least got along with almost everybody I met there. They weren't preparing to hate me the moment I met them.

In high school, I was caught in the unfortunate slice of being towards the bottom of a magnet program. The students not in that magnet program hated me for being in it, and the students in the magnet program hated me for not being as useful to them as a higher achiever could be. In addition, it was a ghetto school, so geeks, nerds, and other non-athletic people were particularly despised by those not in a magnet program, and while I had myself a small group of friends within the program and a few from without, it hurt not being able to be in group projects if none of them were in the same class as me as everyone else formed their own groups instantly, leaving me as always part of the leftover group. The teachers later randomly assigned students for group projects, which turned out to be even worse as whatever group I would wind up in usually told me to stay out of their way so they could succeed, but because students were graded individually based on their contributions, I most often failed these group projects because the others wouldn't let me do anything.

In other words, cliques were VERY strong at my high school, and every aspect of social life revolved around them. From what I hear about life in prison, my school life was a lot like it (not just high school, but middle and a bit of elementary too).

I bet that this sort of experience is not uncommon. Stories about school life that really catch on in the American mainstream, like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Amazing World of Gumball, and The Fairly OddParents, are mostly about the loser kids, the ones who aren't in any sort of prestigious clique and rarely get perfect grades, and they have a decidedly negative view on students higher up in the social ladder. Kim Possible may be part of the cheerleading squad, but she gets antagonized in it, and I think it's not accidental that throughout the series, Kim is well respected everywhere except at her school.

whiskeyii wrote:

Galap wrote:

Not everyone has been to college.

Now there's something I never thought about. I honestly have no clue what percentage of Japan goes on to college/university. When the issue pops up (largely in shoujo, it seems) that one character who decides to work after high school always seems to be the odd one out.

Yeah, come to think of it, at my high school when I was in it, about 50% of incoming freshmen would have eventually dropped out. The school always published numbers of each grade, and the senior class was around 60% the size of the freshman class, with a bunch of the seniors dropping out between then and the end of the year. A lot of it was because they moved and had to attend another school, but in even more cases, they just couldn't fulfill the graduation requirements.

Of the ones who DID graduate, however, nearly all of them chose to go to college. In my class, only four did not (out of about 250).

I remember, in my high school years, being confronted by someone who accused me of being "a college student." This was not a sign of envy, as it turned out (I became friends with him for a brief time when he realized I'd help him with his problems), but that he thought college was a place where nerds who can't get enough school upon graduation can pay to have more school.

There were probably a few cases where they didn't go to college because of family-related reasons though, like students whose parents run a business and put them into the business as soon as they finish school. Some of them were pulled out of high school early to help run the family business. My high school was a real ethnic melting pot of different backgrounds, and some of the students had parents from countries where a college education isn't worth much, so their parents would not support any plans for college.

I'd imagine stories about college would make these people feel inadequate (if they couldn't meet those requirements) or just otherwise resentful (if they intentionally chose not to graduate from high school or to go to college).

Zalis116 wrote:

I accept the preponderance of HS characters and settings as something that "goes with the territory" of the anime medium, much like giant robots that would collapse under their own weight in real life, or male characters getting beaten up by females for the slightest of real or imagined sexual infractions. Though I don't automatically avoid/drop shows from the HS category, I wouldn't mind a few more college/university settings once in a while. As others have said, having older characters allows for elements like traveling/driving cars, drinking real alcohol, or having somewhat more mature relationships. There is the soul-crushing 4th-year job search to contend with, but if HS anime can sidestep entrance exams as much as they do, surely college titles can avoid the job search by keeping the main characters younger and just limiting appearances by a senpai side character who's looking for work.

But again, that's looking at it from the adult/college perspective of "Why aren't there more shows MY age? Or are they making them for frustrated adults who want to relive their high school years?"

I think I can answer both questions by answering the second: THEY'RE NOT.
In a country where there is enforced social terror of not deviating the slightest from acting your age, Japanese adults do not watch TV anime. You may find artsy anime features at Tokyo theaters, and gushy twentysomething women who watch western Disney and sing along with Frozen, but outside of otaku culture--whom no one in Japan wants to associate with--no one over the age of teenage wants to publicly admit watching anime. (In fact, this might very well be the reason for the flood of live-action manga adaptations we've been getting lately in addition to the anime series--Manga titles want the exposure, but no non-fans would dare risk the public stigma of watching the anime of it, so we get the socially approved "real" J-drama versions of My Love Story or Nodame Cantabile.)
So, since there's "no one" besides teenagers watching it, why should Japanese producers make it for anyone else?

We could have saved about four pages if this point was grasped earlier, but we spent too much time trying to grasp anime from a Western-animation perspective, in a country where you're allowed to watch any darn show you want.
Or, from the perspective of saying "I remember my high school years long ago before I went to college...", which could only come from that perspective where you can watch other age-groups' shows without fear of retribution.

DRosencraft wrote:

[T]he US in particular tends to put all its faith in logic and money

And guns. Lots and lots of guns.

Heavy viewers of police procedurals on television estimate that murders occurs at a rate 2.5 times reality and believe that attorneys and police officers make up 16-18% of the US workforce. The actual figure is around 1%.

Back on topic, as a 66-year-old anime viewer I am most certainly tired of the emphasis on high-school programs. That's why my seasonal viewing rate now runs 2-4 series. Each season I survey the array of new offerings and can rarely find even half-a-dozen intended to appeal to adult viewers. It's just a fact of life about anime that I've come to accept, but I can't say I like it.

Having started watching anime in the mid-2000's, with shows like Monster, Bartender, Hataraki Man, Oh! Edo Rocket, Black Lagoon, Seirei no Moribito, Baccano! and the like, the contrast with the much more limited array of offerings today is striking. The industry still seems to be dealing with the post-recession contraction when producers would only invest in sure things, which largely meant high-school comedies.

I imagine most Japanese adults really pine for those days when they were younger and less weighed down with things like getting a job and worrying about the future. Maybe that's likely why anime where the main protagonists are younger than the viewers are make them envious, whereas anime with adult protagonists, like Big O, apparently flop in Japan because nobody wants to see a serious adult's life and be reminded of their own. If we keep going back in age further from high school, it's no wonder adults actually enjoy kids anime like Doraemon; they'll never be children again and have the kind of whimsical imagination they once used to.

Part of me wants to say Japan simply wants to ignore its increasingly "gray" demographics by immersing itself in youthful entertainment. Call a midlife crisis on a national scale.

As far as my High School days go, I largely look back on them with fondness. Sure, I wasn't popular at all back then, but I didn't really care about the socialization pecking order much. It helped that I recognized dating as a waste of time at that age and focused on my education and hobbies. I wasn't a social outcast, though, and got along with my classmates, and I even still hang out with one friend from High School on a fairly regular basis.

I like the way Justin Sevakis draws a parallel between "seishun" and the classic American superhero. This speaks to what I see as a major difference between American and Japanese culture.

Part of the reason kids admire the classic American superhero is that they basically symbolize freedom that many kids don't feel they have. Those superheroes get to do whatever they want, they're always in the right, and they look cool. Compared to being forced to go to school, listening to teachers, dealing with overprotective parents, and even hormones - the superhero life looks amazing. Those superheroes are also generally portrayed as adults. It's another reason for kids in the west to yearn for adulthood rather than youth or childhood, and is related to the desire by many to learn to drive ASAP.

This appears to contrast starkly with the Japanese way of life. While I'm not Japanese, I've read from previous posts that Japanese kids are actually quite independent compared to their American counterparts. For starters, they can travel to many different places without a car so their mobility isn't as restricted. In fact, students often take public transit to get to school. Also, Japanese parents are apparently not as insecure about their children's safety because Japan is a relatively safe place to live. This means that they have more freedom to go where they want or need to go. Japanese adulthood, on the other hand, is comparatively restrictive. Salarymen spend the majority of their time at work, while mothers spend the majority of their time at home, according to social expectations. I imagine adulthood in Japan offering fewer opportunities to engage in personal interests, or just unwinding from the daily grind, which makes the lives of youth more attractive by comparison.

In a way, both groups yearn for a more well-rounded, fulfilling life. It's just that one group sees more opportunity in adulthood, while another sees more opportunity in youth.

whiskeyii wrote:

Man, I must've had it backwards. High school was a highlight for me, with the struggles of college making it a mostly dark time, with a few very bright spots peppered throughout. Oh well!

While my experience doesn't quite match this one to a T, I will say that my experiences with school don't match up with Justin's or the seeming vast majority here.

Personally, I was fine with high school. I was always a bit of a loner growing up, so high school was where I started to open up. I started eating more lunches with some other people, I joined the school's robotics team & had a blast with my teammates, and I met my two best friends, who I still hang out with today, during my senior year of high school. Along with that, I knew most of my fellow classmates, mainly because we all had to grow up together from elementary & middle school, so while I wasn't exactly "friends" with most of my class, I at least wasn't picked on by them come high school, and some of them even came to me for help if they had a question about something from a class, since I tended to be good with that stuff.

College, in comparison, wasn't much to me outside of higher education. Sure, I met plenty of other people, and they tended to be very nice people, but while I would occasionally see them on campus outside of classes, I never really befriended any of them. I'll completely admit that such problems are mostly on me in that regard, but as a whole I have much fonder memories of high school than college. College, for me, was simply a place for me to learn more & hone my skills. At the very least, finishing high school didn't require me to have to take multivariable calculus (screw that class!), so that's a bonus point for the lower education life, too.

Therefore, I'm fine with anime focusing on high school more than something like college (though I personally couldn't care less in general, as long as the overall product is enjoyable). If I had to guess, maybe my personal experiences just happen to coincide with Japan's general school experience... Maybe.

I do not remember high school fondly. Most classes had the same group of people that I hated dealing with: quite a few drug addicts (some of which are now dead), even more a-holes that loved to pick fights/get a kick out of starting trouble (terrorizing the teachers and other students). The place was a hellhole and I'm glad those years are behind me.

Having said that I don't have any problem watching Anime about Japanese High School kids as long as the show is actually good.

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