HighWire: [Footnotes] Why Highschool Works

Hello people of "The Wired", my name is Quan, and wow, I enjoy being a hypocrite. First of all, it gets people angry, which can be funny, but also, when I'm being a hypocrite, it also usually means that I've reevaluated my stance on a certain thing. Now don't get me wrong, I hate being wrong or having an opinion I thought I had finally solidified change once more; it makes me feel stupid, or oblivious, which is isn't pleasant to say the least, but what being wrong can do from an analytical stand-point is open the door to a whole different way of thinking about anime. With that, let's get into the topic at hand.

Now, I may have said a "couple" of times on this blog that I hate slice-of-life and school anime. That I can't stand them; that are the lowest ring of anime; that they are the anti-Christ even, but careful readers of the evolution of this blog may have noticed that viewpoint shifting over time. This was most likely me jumping on the band-wagon of hating these kinds of anime, which I will say I'm ashamed of and apologize for. Now however, some of my favorite anime are ones that occupy the slice-of-life genre, hell, one of the highest scores I've ever officially given an anime a score on this blog was at the end of my review of Toradora, which is pretty much as "school/romance/comedy" as you can possibly get. And yes, I admit it, I like my school rom-coms now, and there's not a lot more things I enjoy than watching a good anime high-school drama. But my misplaced values aside, I wasn't so much as interested in the reasons why I like those things as much as I was in why my opinion of such anime changed so drastically. So, let's try to find out shall we?

I guess the first thing to talk about is what makes this genre appealing, so let me tell me tell you something you already know: people like anime they can relate personally. Viewers still enjoy the action spectacle of such shows as Attack on Titan because its entertaining, and they like things like Paranoia Agent because they like interesting and thematically complex stories, but connecting to a viewer on a personal level typically yields a deeper connection with that story, and thus a higher enjoyment of it. School-life anime can scratch this particular itch because of the setting and tools for dramatic effect, instead of the conflict being "oh, we need to beat this bad guy or the whole universe will explode", conflicts in school-life anime are always things that we all have probably experienced at least once in our lives. A fight with a close friend. A personal heart-ache. Not being able to live up to the expectations set by your peers. The scope is so broad because, hey, we all are or were teenagers at some point, and everyone knows how confusing and messed up that time in your life is, when you're still just figuring out who you are and what you want to do. That's where value and truly good story-telling can lie, in fact, my current favorite anime of all time: The Tatami Galaxy, deals with that very latter topic(even if that show technically takes place in college, but tomato/tamato), and just by the very existence of that show can I appreciate how amazing narratives can be if they handle these personal themes correctly. For instance, one of my favorite school-life anime is My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, and while the thematic value of that particular anime is very high, I can't lie to myself, likely the reason I enjoy that anime so much is because it's about loners and social dynamics, something I relate to personally being a socially-inept asshole myself. And if you think that's getting personal, well, there's the trick this genre plays on your emotions. Not to say that's a bad thing, I guess.

Because life is uneventful, thus so are these anime.

Where I think my initial hate for this genre came from is the over-saturation of it. See, anime studios, especially in the last few years, appear to have caught on that they can more directly reach their audience with a high-school setting, whether they portray it correctly or not. See, with over-saturation comes a plethora of disposable slice-of-life/school garbage, that captures the feelings of high-school about as well as scissors make good hands. It's really amusing actually, the idealistic vision that these anime portray, with situations that are beyond ridiculous when you compare them to real life. I don't know about any of you guys, but during my high-school career, I've never had a harem of girls at my beck-and-call, or met a boy who dresses and acts like a girl, or had a fateful encounter with a girl as I ran late for my first day of school. But despite all of that, the personal connection remains intact simply because of the setting, which means there will always, always, be a niche of people who enjoy these kind of anime. That's not a bad thing, not at all, but the problem comes when there is just too much of it, which leads to resentment for other genres being ignored, which leads to hate, which leads to the genre's less-than-positive stance in the anime community it holds today. That's true with anything; too much of a certain thing leads to a steady dip of quality and creativity, and eventually means that the core of the genre that at first made it appealing, turns into a gimmick that strays further and further away from the very feelings it was trying to convey. And that's why today, we have so many school-life anime that are just... so bad.
This pattern is by no means exclusive to the recent school-life trend. Remember after Madoka Magica changed the landscape of magical-girl anime in 2011, and the spawn of inferior imitators that followed? Or how we got nothing but moe-shows for like, 3 years after K-On! first aired? It's the same principle: imitating ideas won't work if you don't understand what makes that idea work, and the more imitators there are, the harder it becomes to remember what that thing that worked in the first place was. After Madoka's and K-On's respective trends ended, it took a couple of years for those ideas to feel fresh again, so studios could have another go at the cores of those ideas. Just last year, Yuki Yuna is a Hero came out, possibly the first "dark-magical-girl anime" since Madoka Magica that actually worked, because it understood it wasn't just being a "dark-magical-girl anime" that made Madoka good, but rather: exciting and concise storytelling, a good set of characters, and a slow reveal of the true nature of its world that eventually leads to a dramatic revelation about the themes of the narrative, ever enhanced by the stereotypical assumptions of the genre. Just one year after K-On aired, Sound of the Sky was released, not copying the setting or characters of K-On, but used the intended effect of the art-style to push forward the moral of its narrative, and hell, if you're watching Hibike! Euphonium this season, that anime is using the art-style in a fantastic way as well.

I've touched upon a lot of different things during this post, but if I were to swing it all around for a conclusion it would be this: I by no means want school-life anime to die out. Of course I don't. But as anime viewers, we as a fandom have access to one of, in my humble opinion, most creative and awesomely weird mediums in the modern landscape, and the last thing I want is for it to grow samey, or stale, or fall into a cozy pace. I want more slice-of-life anime, but I also want more space-operas, more action, more romance, more giant robots, more tsundere girls, more psychological mindf*cks, more horror, and more things I can't possibly imagine right now. Make things better than the classics, Then things better than those. So make it good. Hell, make it bad. Make it fun. Make it different. Touch on not just personal emotions, but every emotion we have, because that, is what makes our experiences as anime watchers... what's the word? Whole.

Goodbye for now guys.

My Footnotes on Monogatari and Sensuality is here.

An anime review of Higurashi no naku koro ni Kai is located here.

A countdown of My Top Ten Best Anime Endings is here.

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