I thought both Botchan and Student Days were messed up films. In Botchan, you have this teacher from Tokyo who moves to the west to teach kids. Once he arrives there he’s welcomed by the faculty and gains respect for one of the math teachers. As the film goes on, Botchan realizes that the students are very cruel and unfocused. They harass him constantly and show no interest in their education. Not only do they disrespect him in the classroom, but they also mistreat him outside the class. One scene in particular where they annoyed him was when they were stopping on the floor above him as he was trying to go to sleep. After living in the town for a while, the vice principle mentions that someone is probably manipulating the kids to do those things towards him. With this piece of information, Botchan assumes that the other math teacher in controlling the kids. Botchan confronts him and later learns that it’s not him, but it’s the vice principle whose advising the students to act the way they do. Eventually, the two teachers spy on the vice principle and catches him talking about how he tries to get rid of the two. Once hearing this, the teachers let him know that that are aware of his plan and that justice will be serve. So, they start to fight him and his sidekick, who is nicknamed buffoon by Botchan. At the end of the movie, the two teachers leave the town and go their separate ways. In Student Days, this student tries to pass this exam in order to get accepted in to school. After failing the first time, he tries to study harder so he can do really well. As the movie goes on, a love interest is introduced in the film. He really liked this girl and planned on proposing to her after he passed the exam. Later, the film reveals that he has a younger brother who also plans on taking the test. However, the younger brother is not as serious as the older one because he’s using the first exam as a practice run. The older brother eventually gets annoyed by the younger one because he’s studying really hard, while the younger one is just carelessly over looking some information. This causes the older brother to go study somewhere else. While he’s gone, his love interest comes over looking for him. Since he’s not there, she starts to spend time with the younger brother. At first he doesn’t think anything of it because the younger brother knew how he felt for her. After the exam, the older brother discovers that he failed again, but his brother past. So, he goes home and catches his brother and the girl in the room together. They were cuddling and he overheard his brother telling her that he wished that his older brother passed. The girl reply back by saying the older brother wasn’t as smart as he was. This makes the elder brother highly upset and he goes out to get drunk, and at the end of the film, he drowns himself. Personally, I thought that the teachings and leanings in the two films weren’t present in the film. In Botchan, the students were being too out of control and over whelming for Botchan to really teach them. The students in this film really didn’t care about their education because they were too busy being control by the vice principle. In Student days, no one was teaching the students how to prepare for the exam. The students were on their own and had to find their own method of studying. To me, it seemed that the eldest brother was the only character who was actually studying. Everyone else was just going with the flow. For example, the older brother’s friend didn’t study and failed the exam; however, the younger brother also didn’t study as much and still passed. So, in both films education wasn’t heavily expressed in the two movies. My high school experience was a little similar to Botchan. Just like the students messed with Botchan, the students at my school did as well. If any teacher was a push over, then they might as well be prepared to get targeted. One teacher that I can remember was my sophomore adviser. He was a biology teacher and a relatively nice guy. The students took advantage of his kindness and did a lot of horrible things to him. One thing I remember that they did was stealing the mouse off of the school computers in the classroom and on top of that, they stole his personal laptop. He eventually quiet because he couldn’t handle his class. I felt bad for the guy, but you had to be tough to teach at my school.
You pointed out something very interesting that I had not even noticed. Education, as in actual learning, plays almost no role in School Days or Botchan. Kenkichi studies his butt off the entire fill, even neglecting his new love interest somewhat. Still after all that effort, he fails and his brother, who does not even seem to know how to study, passes with flying colors. It should also be noted that his brother was incredibly sick during the test. That is majorly messed up and showed studying was not much help. Botchan does not even get a chance to teach his students, as you stated, due to him being constantly pranked. The students did not seem to care for their own education either. So yeah, that is kind of funny how these two films about school showed actual learning playing a very small role. You would think anime about school would make the pursuit of knowledge rather important.
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