Culture
An American Says Anime Loves High Schools Because 'That Was Japan's Peak.' Japanese Fans Say No, It's Just Craft
A well-known American anime YouTuber argued that Japanese anime is set in high school so often because high school was the peak of most Japanese people's lives and they want to escape the grim reality of adulthood. The take spread to Japanese boards, where the dominant response was not agreement but a set of craft-based counterarguments: high school is a shared experience that lets writers skip world-building, student life simply has more usable events than office life, and there is straightforward demand for high-school-girl characters. A few conceded that adult working life really is bleak, but most framed the overseas theory as a shallow read of what is really a practical creative choice.