Anime at school

Back when I first started getting into anime about seven years ago, I never thought that you could bring your passion for anime into the realm of school work, at least not here in the US. Even though I think that some anime are complex and philosophical enough to be placed on the same level as the works of literature they teach about in high school and college, I never thought that there would be actual anime-centered classes at regular colleges and universities, nor that one would be able to relate anime to assigned school reports…

However, during my senior year of high school, I was able to relate anime to my school work for the first time. The assignment in my English class was to pick any media topic that has had an impact on America and discuss it. I probably wouldn’t have suggested anime if my partner for the assignment wasn’t an anime fan too, so that’s the topic we chose and we even got an A on it ^_^ I used most of what I had written in the report for the “Just What is Anime?” page of the site if you want to check it out.

After that, during my three years at community college, I never really had a chance to relate anime to school work again (except in my Japanese classes and a mention about anime in my Cultural Anthropology textbook) until my final semester. The assignment for my sociology class was to write about any topic as long as we could relate it to the sociology concepts of the class. Of course I wanted to use anime for my topic but I wasn’t sure at first if I would be able to relate it enough to the class material. But in the end, I was able to come out with a pretty good “Japanese Anime Influence on American Culture” report that I also got an A on. If you’re interested, you can read the report here. LOL, like most school reports, I’ll admit it’s a bit boring even though it is anime-related ^^

And now that I’m about to start at a university, I’m sure there’ll be more opportunities to relate my interest in anime to school work. I was really happy to discover that at my university, actual classes that revolve around anime are offered, such as “Anime and History,” which examines the historical and universal viewpoints of series’ such as Akira, Evangelion, and Princess Mononoke, and “Anime and Philosophy” which relates the philosophical ideas of series’ such as Full Metal Alchemist, Ghost in the Shell, and Lain to real philosophies. Unfortunately I missed both these courses and just my luck, I recently found out that the professor of the “Anime and History” class moved to another university and the professor of the “Anime and Philosophy” class will be off campus for the next year and a half getting his dissertation in Japan XP Just as I’m entering, both anime professors are leaving…what rotten luck on my part! >.< But hopefully other professors in the East Asian Cultures department will offer more anime-related classes sometime during my two-year attendance. Anyway, I'm really glad that over the years anime has become more well-known and examined here in the US for what it really is rather than just as "cartoons." Though it's pretty unlikely, maybe one day in regular colleges or even high schools we'll see class discussions and school reports on Evangelion and Death Note along with Aristotle and Shakespeare XD