This week on the #AniMangaPictureChallenge, we're starting our day in our:
🏫 Homeroom 🧑🏫
Class 3-2, Class 1-3, Class B-5, Class 1-C. There's so many exceptional homeroom classes in #anime and #manga that form the backbone of friend groups, romantic interests, culture festivals and more.
Show us your favorite homeroom class by submitting your entry using the hashtag #AniMangaFoundIt and by @-ing @apc.
Send in your pics by October 19th to be included in the weekly collage.
@apc So... Let us go on a journey. My first impulses I do not feel qualify here, but cover my "first" and my "formatives" and so are worthy of mention.
Lots of series have schools. Have classes where the leads make moon-eyes at each other. Have homerooms where the hijinks start, but do not feel so much like "a class" when all but the leads meld into the background without much notice. But they are worth of SOME notice...!
So they must be "homerooms" of course, and I feel if they don't have an identifiable number, should they even count? 🤔
We shall see.
So what, then, is my first real exposure?
What is MY first #AniMangaNOTCountIt ?
@apc My very first anime were sci-fi heavy, and distinctly NOT in high school. Or middle school. Or classrooms. Blasted hellscapes had few. The closest would come from... Gunbuster? Which, while it did introduce MANY tropes, would only really feed me "that damn chime" as far as school was concerned. 😝 Even the uniforms not so much, as they were switching to "pilot the robot" gymwear and the like. So it didn't really... stick.
However, my first official TV show DID sink its teeth well into the Japanese school trope well, and Kimagure Orange Road has featured in many APC before.
#homeroom 3-A is definitely delved into a lot, but for two primary tasks... For Kyousuke to interact with Madoka, and for Komatsu and Hatta to engage hijinks (characters who were only really in the anime)
@apc So while this is a useful homeroom for our main characters, it does not feel so much like a "class." Only four named characters represent, and much time is spent in all the other classrooms; music, the Kasuga sisters', Hikaru's, the roof... And eventually much less of KOR takes place in school as opposed to the town around, field trips, ski lodges, tennis camps... Fun places!
School is boring!
So I cannot in good conscience use this as "my favorite homeroom class" and must #AniMangaReleaseIt from contention for this week.
But you always remember your first.
@apc So what is pretty follow-up formative for #homerooms here?
Furinkan High School does have numbered classrooms, but honestly we get it a few times in the early chapters and then those kinda blur out and disappear, not terribly important.
We are introduced to Ramna and Akane's 1-F at the same time as Kuno and Nabiki's 2-E, because they are in direct conflict. (Both for fisticuffs, and Akane-dating-slash-fiance-hood.)
@apc Ranma 1/2 really ramped up the "wacky homeroom hijinks" starting in 1993, when I could start collecting the manga.
Wackier students will show up, but they tended to float around the school a lot, and not be solidified into "a homeroom class," and while various homeroom teachers will show up it's to screw with Ranma specifically, and the rest of the class to...
Gawk? At the least, they function mostly like a Greek Choir, reacting to new strangeness, adding humorous reactions, and occasionally context.
@apc I pick up plenty of JP school tropes, and their homerooms are the source of many a hijinks, but they are not ultimately much of a "class." Ranma and Akane's rogues' gallery of romantic interests are all in other classes or not at this school at all, so we meet them around town, and touring the country, and on many a training journey. There are plenty of fun school moments, but not a stable "homeroom class"
So alas here too we must #AniMangaReleaseIt from contention.
(And now I have to do more research 😝 )
@apc While "zany homeroom" feels right in many ways, it has not glued together so far. And while romcoms and romcombattlers bring together hearts and fists, perhaps more serious romance will bring more cohesiveness? What did my shoujouseis provide?
My "Highest Highs" selection had a good one, in fact. Boy meets girl. Boy meets boy. They form tight bonds, share loves, and make musics.
Sometimes the homeroom is the "inciting incident" and source of drama, such as in Hana Yori Dango. Also to introduce new rivals and future friends.
Sometimes, as in Fruits Basket, it cradles an established tight-knit group (TohruXArisaXSaki forever, screw them Soma boys!) and the key romantic partnering.
@apc Perhaps the strongest example comes from Kimi Ni Todoke, as Sadako (or is that Sawako?🤔 ) has some pre-establishment with her romantic-to-be partner Kazehaya, and the relationships grow through two friends she instead meets IN class instead of "since middle school" or such, and Kazehaya's friend(s) and other side romances are there as well. Plus, when the new rivals-to-be-turned-friends show up, it's mixed into the same class directly.
Perhaps the most-solid option from a "romance" perspective, but it still feels... not quite right? 🤔
We may return.
@apc I have been forgetting to continue the past few days, but it's put me in a "what brings a class together?" mood. Some classes are "cohesive" only in that they have a death game going on, and are... not quite a fun time.
But some have huge stakes and are leaned on in various ways, with the world on their shoulders... usually in some sci-fi sense.
How many, for instance, come to pilot fearsome mecha in Aldnoah.Zero?
My thinking lands on the Classroom Crisis crew, who I enjoyed a lot. They engineered together and rocketed together and piloted together, and had the world watching over their results.
But while A-TEC was a "class" were they a... #homeroom ? 🤔
@apc So where do we end up at here at the... end?
While I do not begrudge a "class shtick" that is is more extra-curricular in nature, and that pulls a class together as a cohesive whole, "homeroom" means more "purely school" to me, and so we shall not take to the stars. Also in some ways, to resemble our own "homerooms" of experience, we generally have our friend groups--or seatmates--in a tighter cluster, and "a bunch of people way over there" so "homeroom" feels more realistic NOT as a cohesive whole?
Really, it serves best as "a find group of chuckleheads" and so "com" feels most-at-home and "rom" not really needed.
I was considering making "a seating chart" a requirement, but...
So ultimately warm fuzzies, laughs, and a manga-first drive #AniMangaFoundIt in... Azumanga Daioh
@apc I feel like Azumanga Diaoh occupies oversized acknowledgement and appreciation in the community (certainly in the 2000s but I feel still now) for its small runtime (4 volumes from 99 to 02 / 26 episodes in 02), and probably introduced most people to the concept of "4 koma" due to the manga's strong presence (including one of the earliest omnibus I can recall?)
Even when others would follow later, such as K-on!, everyone knew the anime but so few the manga...
But you could feel the "4 koma-ness" eminating from AD, even in anime form. And it took shape in many fandom memes as the internet picked up.
For a 20+ year old series I bet every integrated GIF tool is still chock ablock with Chiyo and Osaka and cat-chomping. Awww yeeeaah, that's the stuff.
@apc So... what do we even have here?
Class 1-1 is comprised of a main group of five, some of whom were "class established" like tomboy Tomo, "the straight one" Koyomi, tall/aloof/outwardly-kuudere-but-inwardly-a-floofball Sakaki, and the quickly-introduced 10 year old genius Chiyo, and "girl from Osaka" Ayumu, who is actually from all over Japan and doesn't have Osaka stereotypes, but because she is from Osaka she will be nicknamed "Osaka" henceforth.
They are led by their homeroom and English teacher Tanizaki-sensei, who is rather more of a character than the rest of them combined.
...but she means well! (Occasionally.)
@apc We will return to more and fully-4koma strips in a moment, but I guess that brings one of the things to mind...
What's with it?
Anyone who picked up manga likely picked up "that which resembles US comic books like capestuff" but even intermixed in a shounen magazine like Dengeki Daioh which features manga like Bloom Into You, or the Gurren Lagann manga adaptation, White Album and So Ra NNo Wo To... you can also get series that "are like newspaper comic strips" instead.
Straight vertical strips formed into 4 equal panels, with setup-to-punchline contained in each one, with not a whole lot of narrative throughline going on. ("Continuity" and callbacks are for more line-punching.)
Kiyohiko Azuma is considered by some to be "a master of 4koma" and it is here he places his first stamp
@apc He is also by some (like me) to be considered "a master of the slow release schedule (like 110 chapters over 22 years) and pissing off fans of Yostuba by denying any anime adaptations!!!!"
...
--ahem--
We will leave that behind. Though I would say the skills he shows in Azumanga Daioh are really perfected in Yotsuba. EVERYONE READ YOTSUBA
...but you know, read this first.
As with light novel sources, there are a lot of anime that otaku don't really realize have 4koma sources:
K-on! and Bocchi the Rock!
Hidamari Sketch
Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun
even Kaguya-sama, Love is War
Some like Lucky Star are as overt as Azumanga, and some like GochiUsa are "oh yeah, I can see it"
But many are of the "wow, seriously?" sort. The anime adaptation steers its own course.
@apc I feel like Azumanga Daioh's anime adaptation "steered away" only in going "how can we best reflect the look and feel of 4koma in animated form"? 😝 And why it's stuck around so long in meme form.
So... why are these guys my chosen homeroom?
As stated in the beginning, it's just a joyful, quirky ride. The class will add some more members to "the funny ones" and Tanizaki-sensei is so tightly mixed with it all... There are some explorations of other locations, but it is by far and away mostly tied to school. Certainly sports days and festivals as well, but it feels more "homeroom"y to me than anything else.
And, outside of a fervent wish the Jefferson Bible this thing up and cut out Kimura-sensei excepting his creation of "waifu," it is just shit-eating grins the whole time.
@apc Basically, it's always a delight. And everyone should read it. And watch it. And share all the memes. And create more.
And then read Yotsuba. (Even though there are barely any #homerooms ) And then read Yotsuba again. And then share all THOSE memes. And then create more.
The End™️
@apc The add-ons
Not driven ultimately by "existence of seating chart," but helped along here, "Komi Can't Communicate" concentrates on our heroine making friends throughout her high school years, which means we interact with students almost the whole time, and thus primarily through the lens of her homeroom classes
@apc Of course homeroom is largely driven by "the most desired seat in school" so three cheers to farthest-back by the window! Whose focus is often... focused.
The least-attention from teacher, the least-ability to be seen by the rest of the students or passers-by in the hall, the most ability to look outside and dream of freedom... FREEDOM!!
Truly the true homeroom would be comprised entirely of this seat.
AniManga Picture Challenge
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Ragashingo
