Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Anime Students Always Sit In The Same Seat?
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
|
|||||||||
I think you guys are misunderstanding the point of the question. It's not "why aren't they sitting in different positions each lesson?"; it's made perfectly clear in plenty of anime that it's assigned seating, which as noted by many posters here is a thing in plenty of other schools around the world. It's "why are the main characters always in the back by the window?". |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
CBongo
 Posts: 43 Location: Minneapolis, MN |
|
|||||||||
Not to mention it allows for some nice shot framing with pretty sky backgrounds. But yeah, less moving parts seems like the most compelling reason to go with this angle. Still curious about why the windows are on the class' left (is this actually how most schools are, or is it just anime being the same for convenience's sake?). |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
nDroae
 Posts: 382 |
|
|||||||||
Answers from Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/vpowd/the_windows_are_always_on_the_left_side_of_the/c56jloc/
https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/vpowd/the_windows_are_always_on_the_left_side_of_the/c56o6f1/
This Redditor seems to suggest that placing windows on the left was once standard in schools worldwide. (Was it, though?) https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/2j4gfm/is_there_a_reason_that_classroom_scenes_always/cl8a0mt/ The Onion-type satirical article: https://www.animemaru.com/high-school-to-experiment-with-windows-on-other-side-of-classroom/ |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Frenzie
Posts: 11 |
|
|||||||||
Really, you get assigned seats in high school? Not in the Benelux (in secondary education)… I mean, some schools might do that but that's really not a thing that happens based on personal experience across various schools (mainly as a teacher/observer) and TV shows. I definitely wonder where "most … in the EU" is supposed to be. But now that I think about it, classrooms are typically arranged so that windows are on the left. Definitely not always though. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Violynne
Posts: 128 |
|
|||||||||
|
Articles like this amuse me. In the past, I've also questioned why "that seat" (and the left side windows) were always "popular" in school anime. To see someone else ask about it shows this community gets smaller by the day. Get out of my head!
I had both situations where we could pick our seat or were assigned. Thankfully, most teachers accommodated friends who wanted to sit together in assigned seating. Anyone who wanted the same seat had to participate in a lottery. I was "that student" who, thanks to my last name, was afforded the back row in every class (whether assigned or chosen). Thinking back... if given a chance to do it all over again... hell no. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
chronos02
Posts: 267 |
|
|||||||||
Deffinitely not missing the point, do not confuse a "why are MCs always seating near a window in the far back" with what was asked. The fact MCs sit in the far back is pretty obvious, it serves as both an artistic and story driving element vs seating anywhere else in the class, but the real question is "why is this possible" hence the question that was actually asked, which makes little sense given the fact schools assign seating based on what they believe is best for their students (and themselves), which applies to both Japan and a big chunk of the west; we use the very same systems after all. There are schools in Japan with free seating, they are much rarer mind you, but the same applies here, albeit with a larger amount of school, but less frequently than pre-assigned seating ones. The reasons are quite obvious: it's orderly, it prevents fights among the students, it's easier for teachers to keep track of specific students, and it's a way to force students to mingle in ways they wouldn't, among many other advantages, vs free seating which is generally chaotic. Rearranging seating is also something both Japan and part of the west do in a very similar way, with clear objetives in mind: making bad students pay more attention in class, increasing the mingling among different kinds of students (less chances to get students to become isolated), normalizing the distribution of knowledge in class (making slower students be next to more advanced ones so they can focus more), etc. Free seating is generally frowned upon since it increases the chances for students to become isolated, lazier students tend to go to the back and smarter ones to the front which is pretty bad since it increases the gap in levels, this can also generate noisy classrooms since friends seat next to eachother and talk more often, and a long, very long etc. It also has benefits, such as favoring student independence, but the cons are far, FAR larger in the big picture for the school. I remember someone telling me that "it's good to have 10 students with full marks, but it's better to have 11 students with very good marks" as a way of telling me free seating favors the "normies" but it's generally very bad for people with even a few social interaction problems, for it accentuates them. Anyway, what I meant to say is that the question is silly because both the west and japan share very similar systems when it comes to how classes and student arrangement are organized, we both group students of similar age together, we assign someone to teach each subject, we do so in a specific place, etc. @Frenzie I have had the chance, or bad luck, depends on how you look at it, of going through many schools in my life, both as a student and as a guest for several things, and seating arrangement, as well as the decisions that lead to it, are always among the first things students ask when moving to a new school, and the vast majority of the schools I have been to had pre-arranged seats based on various things, as well as a seating rearrangement frequency of about 3 to 6 times a year. I only noticed a slight change on high-schools, they moved students from room to room for each subject (about halfish of them), but seating arrangement remained the same on each room (either per room or the same throughout all of them). I must also mention they were all private schools and semi-private. The countries I have seen this in include most of the western EU (FR, BE, IT, SP, PB, DE), as well as Switzerland, and Andorra. I never moved to the UK, so I have no idea what it's like over there, and I haven't treaded much through Eastern EU. but in terms of population, the west has a higher concetration of the total population (quite a bit more than half) compared to the east, hence the "majority". |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Showsni
 Posts: 641 |
|
|||||||||
From what I recall, we'd pick our seats for each class at the start of the year, and then stick with them. Think Harry Potter  . Had the usual system of teachers staying put whilst students moved around between periods. The classrooms had different layouts depending on where in the building they were, but I think the first floor (F) classrooms seemed to match the anime standard of windows on the left. The new quad (Q) buildings had a floor to ceiling wall of window at the back, the old ground floor (G) rooms varied wildly but generally didn't have particularly accessible windows, nor did the (L) labs, whilst the (E) Elliott buildings had a few small windows overlooking the car park. We certainly never had any seating plan given out by the teachers that we had to stick to.
If the second from the back window seat is the main character, then the protagonist of Negima is... Mana? 
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Tripple-A
 Posts: 383 Location: Hamburg, Germany |
|
|||||||||
|
It's pretty obvious why the protagonist usually has the window seat in the back, but isn't the real question why it's usually 2nd to last and not the last seat? Maybe so it looks like he's still in class, seeing another student behind him doesn't put him completely out of it.
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
|
|||||||||
Thing is, it always seemed way more obvious to me that assigned seating is the reason they're in the same spot lesson to lesson; the storytelling advantages of having the main character at the back by the window are not as obvious. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Kadmos1
 Posts: 13552 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
|
|||||||||
It would be interesting to see an isekai harem light novel or an isekai harem original anime that makes thorough use of such clichés. Of course, the hero/heroine goes to another world after meeting Truck-kun. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
configspace
Posts: 3717 |
|
|||||||||
|
@nDroae
thanks for those references. The shadow and right-handedness makes perfect sense. Kinda amusing even the temp teacher didn't realize. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||||||
Most of the troublemaking kids preferred the back rows of the classrooms in my schools too, but that's only where it's applicable. Sometimes, the classroom is divided in half with the space for the teacher halfway, and sometimes the classroom seating took on an amphitheater format, with students gathered in a U shape facing the middle where the teacher would be located. There were a few of said troublemakers who preferred the front seats though, as they wanted to get reactions out of their teachers. Particularly at my middle school, it was something of a badge of honor to get in trouble with a teacher. As for your 4th grade teacher, a "dreamer" typically refers to someone with grand aspirations and big goals. Either your teacher had something else in mind (I'm guessing "daydreamer"), or they're one of those sad people so terrified of failure that they don't want anyone around them taking risks either.
How does that work? Based on my experiences, the opposite tends to happen: The slower students tend to pull down everyone else around them due to their tendency to be distracting as typically, they're not taking the class seriously or have atypical learning techniques. I've been on both sides, and it wasn't pleasant. I've had cases where the "slow" students preferred to learn by socialization, so they tended to be loud and chatty in class, and I've had cases where I was considered slow and I was quickly socially ostracized from the people next to me. Neither wound up being that helpful. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Shiflan
 Posts: 418 |
|
|||||||||
I'm not sure if it actually works or it's a matter of people thinking that it works! When I was in the lower grades the teacher would often split up people who were chatting with their neighbors instead of doing their work or paying attention. I must admit that affected me a couple times, but I certainly wasn't "learning by socialization", I was chatting with a friend sitting near me about things that had nothing to do with school because we both already understood the lesson and were bored our of our minds. Troublemakers were often sent to the front of the class, presumably so the teacher could keep a better eye on them. (Anyone remember the opening credits of War in the Pocket?) I studied engineering in college and for the first couple of years we had a fairly rigid system: on or around the first day of class all the students were given a test covering various subjects, and after the tests were graded the professors assigned students into teams of 4 using those test scores. By design there was one high-achieving student, two average students, and one low-achieving student in each team, and this was explained to the class from the get-go. Part of our grades for the semester came from individual work, but projects and exams assigned to the team represented a majority of one's grade. I suppose the idea was that everyone learned to work well with others, and that the higher achieving students would help the lower achieving students to learn. I don't know how much that helped, but I can tell you that most students soon became incredibly frustrated that their grades were tied to another student who simply didn't perform. I can recall that a couple of my teams were constantly frustrated with one student who was basically a slacker: they didn't do their share of the homework. They didn't show up to class, study, or work sessions on time (if at all), and the work that they did on behalf of the team (be it mathematics, physics, programming, writing a report, etc.) could not be trusted to be on time, complete, or correct. It actually took the rest of us more time and effort to drag the underachiever along than it would have taken to proceed as a 3-person team instead. Personally I thought that system was unfair because it dragged down the grades of the higher performing students while artificially inflating the grades of the underperforming ones. In other words, it destroyed any confidence in the idea that one's grades were an accurate measure of one's abilities or learning. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
|
|||||||||
|
For the same reason they do in the manga. Simples!
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
enurtsol
 Posts: 14761 |
|
|||||||||
|
Also, Japan drives in the left side of the road. The right-hand side is the passing side, while the left-hand side is the entrance and exit ramps.
They do the same thing with escalators. They're used to the left side being the slow or resting side, keeping the right-hand side clear for passing. So, if the flow direction is towards where the blackboard is, then the classrooms are designed to be on the left-hand side, while the entrance and exit doors are on the left-hand side of the hallways. And running in the hallways is on the right-hand side - but no running in the hallways! |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group