After coming back to school from summer vacation, it’s customary for teachers in Japan to ask their students to write a short essay about what they did during their break. Many of the youngsters no doubt spent their extra leisure time watching TV and movies, and rather than upbraid his students for wasting their time on such idle activities, one Japanese educator even asks his students for their impressions of what they watched.
At first, this teacher sounds refreshingly flexible and in-touch with contemporary youth lifestyles…at least until he singles out one anime series he expressly forbids students from writing about.
We recently took a look at the tale of an English teacher in Japan whose student tried to pass off part of the hit anime Love Live! as his own life. But while that teacher handled the situation with a little light ribbing, another educator took a hard-line stance against the idol singer franchise.
It’s not clear what grade the teacher is teaching, nor what subject, although the nature of the worksheet seems to suggest it’s Japanese, English, or some other language-based class. The first question starts off on a universally accepting tone, asking “What were you really into this summer?”
The acceptable answers for Question 2, though, aren’t quite so wide open.
“If you watched any movies or DVDs during vacation, please list them along with your brief impressions.
(Warning: This question is about movies and DVDs other than Love Live)”
The inclusion of movies makes this particularly strict, as the first Love Live! theatrical feature opened in Japan in June and has gone on to be one of the most successful anime films of recent years. As such, the odds are pretty high that several students in the class went to see it, and for hard-core otaku it might even have been the highlight of their summer.
Also strange is that no other anime or broad hits are excluded. Spent vacation glued to your TV as you watched episodes of pervy comedy Prison School? Go ahead and wax poetic about its poop and urine gags. One of the millions of teens who watched Earth’s mightiest heroes battle Ultron on the big screen? Feel free to explain why Captain America is your favorite Avenger.
Even stranger is that the way the question is phrased implies that if the only thing you watched was Love Live!, you can skip answering it entirely. This really does seem to be a case of the teacher simply being personally sick of hearing about that particular franchise, rather than any sort of dim view he has of otaku entertainment in general. As a matter of fact, the worksheet’s third question asks what the students read, and specifically says they can talk about either books or manga.
But since this time the worksheet doesn’t specifically blacklist any individual title, we’re guessing a few disgruntled fans launched into a through description of the issues of the Love Live! manga they read,
Source: Jin, Twitter/@re6_x