Anime Talk: The Westerner Anime Character/"Half"... "Japanese high school is so easy"

                We all know that anime, manga, light novels, visual novels LOVE high school. Here’s a little table of the common high school anime types.

Genre	Description	Examples
Romance	“Boy meets girl” OR (AND) “Girl meets boy” stories… at high school.	Toradora! My Little Monster
Comedy	A bunch of laughs…at high school.	School Rumble Baka and Test
Harem	Guy gets ridiculous attention from the most attractive female peers…at high school.	Oreshura Mashiro iro Symphony: The Color of Lovers
Science Fiction	World’s most innovative technology is being presented…in high school.	Full Metal Panic! IS: Infinite Stratos
Fantasy	You see witches, warlocks, dragons, knights, giants, vampires… gathered at high school.	Vampire Rosario Zero no Tsukaima
Supernatural	Unprecedented and unexplained phenomena are occurring… at your high school.	Bakemonogatari Angel Beats
Slice of Life	You get to watch anime characters do the things you do every day… in a high school setting.	K-On! Haganai
Action	The deadliest battle royal is taking place…at a high school	Hidan no Aria Freezing
Drama	You get to see the most tear jerking stories…of high school students.	Anohana Kokoro Connect

 Note: Some of the mentioned anime above may fall into multiple genres.

               

                Thanks to the abundance of high school anime, we get a look into Japanese high school life. Sure, anime doesn’t provide a 100% accurate presentation of Japanese high schools, but it still gives us western viewers somewhat of an idea.

                Here are some things about Japanese high school life that anime features:

-         - Love letters in shoe locker

-         - Homeroom class

-          -Teachers enter students’ classroom, not students entering teacher’s classroom.

-          -Confession at the roof, classroom, back of school building

-          -Textbooks given to each student every year

-          -Annual athletic meet and cultural festival

-          -Maid cafes, haunted houses, and plays at cultural festival

-          -School uniforms

             -No school bus 

-          -Ridiculously short female school uniform skirts

-          -Academically, athletically, and physically (face and figure) superior westerner student

      

Notice the last one. When you watch a school based anime, it is not uncommon to find a half Japanese half white girl that happens to smart, fit, and beautiful.  Why is that? Why does anime do this? Because, the Japanese have a fantasy (overrate) for westerners.

Now, I have seen Koreans who think that Americans are perfect in every way. Since anime portrays westerners similarly (if not the same) with Koreans, I am inferring that there are Japanese people who believe that people from the west are flawless. Note that this does NOT mean that Koreans and Japanese are the same. Koreans and Japanese had and have a lot of cultural diffusion, so it is obvious that there are some mutual traits.

We have seen a good number of “half” chicks that are from Europe or (and) America in anime. Chitoge Kirisaki from Nisekoi, Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion (she’s in middle school, but you get the point), Ricca Morizono from Da Capo III, they all are mixed anime girls who have Japanese and white blood running through their veins. Not to mention they are all SMART.

Chitoge Kirisaki from Nisekoi

Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion

Ricca Morizono from Da Capo III

There are more smart “half” girls beyond the three that were mentioned. Seeing this quite often made me think, “I thought Japanese high schools were supposed to be extremely academic, far more academic than western schools.” What I mean is, I thought Japanese high schools grade students very harshly and give awfully difficult exam questions, so it would be unpleasantly difficult to obtain and maintain great grades. Despite this, some of the “half” anime girls consider Japanese high schools EASY. Of course, the character can be a genius (Asuka is close to a genius if not one).  But that’s not my point.

According to the OECD, the U.S.A’s average score in PISA 2012 is 492 and Japan got 540.3. Yes, U.S.A. isn’t the only western country, so here are other western country scores. United Kingdom got 502.3, Germany got 515.3, and France got 499.7. No western country scored a higher average score than Japan. This implies that the Japanese education system is more difficult than western nations. Wait, but isn’t 2012 PISA scores “old” information? Couldn’t western countries improved? Yes, western nations can improve their scores. However, Japan has scored higher than most western nations throughout the years. Also, anime is fiction, so statistics in reality might not apply. If that is the case, would that make this post pointless? No. I am just pointing out how some (if not many) Japanese view westerners.

(PISA scores are the combined average scores of reading, math, and science)

                Before we get any wrong ideas, I am not saying that Japanese are superior to westerners nor the other way around. I am just pointing out something that I noticed in anime.

                So to wrap things up, Japan scored higher PISA scores than any western nation in 2012, so we can reason that Japanese education must be more difficult than most western education. (If you have seen documentaries on Asian education, you would already know this.)