Happy to be from the West!

*May include spoilers. All media credits go to their owners*

Today I want to write about something that has always been on my mind whenever I watch anime or read something related to the Japanese culture - how differently society behaves here and there. And especially when watching anime, I find myself wondering whether the things they show there are really how things work. I mean, it's likely that school life is more or less exactly like it is pictured - children changing their shoes in the lobby, changing seating a few times per year and getting sorted into new classes once every couple of years. But is it really true that the most popular guy in school has food grades, is good at sports and acts nice to everyone?

When I think back to my high school times - which by the way ended like 5 years ago - I don't remember any of the cool kids being awesome at studying. Sure, there were athletes and yeah, there were nice guys too. But there were also random people who did nothing but drink and hang out doing, well - nothing, and their popularity was based mostly on being bad at school. Seriously, that gang in the back who never listened to anything the teachers said and played cards even during classes, that was "teh leetzor" gang to belong to. Now, I personally don't have a very vivid experience with the entire thing since we had 30 girls and 1 guy (poor dude) in the class - obviously the popularity contest can't really happen if there is no audience to compete before. The girls just formed groups based on interests or similarities and that's how it went. I also played in a rock band and liked playing video games so the fucks I gave about the entire girls-class thing was an absolute 0. But I did hang out with some of the cool kids from other classes because we had music to connect us and to be quite blunt - I don't think they were neither smart nor soulful.

Tomoya

Looking at school life in anime though, being a delinquent is generally looked down upon (which is completely the other way around here). Your grades should be at least a medium ranked to be able to charm anyone with your looks and kindness. Think about Tomoya from Clannad for a second. He was obviously rather handsome and evidently pretty kind and caring, but most of the people from their class still thought badly of him since he didn't care about studying. What kind of a society does it take to make kids think studying is awesome? In a sense, I think I would actually prefer that society. You are urged from an early age to strive for something and be someone. True, it will probably be challenging at times but by then you would already be used to it. You are constantly urged to form bonds, participate in events - student councils and committees are serious institutions and you actually get some credit for being the class rep. Then again, you would be competing with a mass of hard working ants who all aim for similar goals. Also, regardless of whether it's popular or not to study in the Western countries, if you do it well you'll probably have better shots at things. But to stand out from a mass of study bugs you'd have to be 100% dedicated to working your way through academics.

Here we come to another point that has always bothered me. The amount of dedication children in school settings are forced to put into things. I agree that one must be taught how to focus and reach goals, but do you really have to set goals for your entire life when you're 15? You don't even know who you are entirely and what you want or what you like. All you know is that people like parents, teachers etc have expectations and you need to set your aim in life to start working towards it with all your might. The day you walk out of high school you better have a new place to go to - otherwise you'll be kicked out of your parents place or thought of as a burden. Of course it's not any better to be dwindling about and not knowing where you are going in life for years and years after you finish your school life, like it happens around here a lot. But if you already set goals during puberty then it's rather likely you will wake up one day when you're 30, working on a meaningless post, and find yourself questioning whether you made any of the choices yourself or was your mind just molded to that direction by others. 
Young people actually need the time to fail and be free in order to find out what really matters to them in life. Can this really be accomplished by expecting them to choose when they're still children? I don't know. But I do know that there is a bunch of weird people in Japan who like to sniff girls panties and do extremely disgusting things to find some shelter from the iron setting the society has pressed upon them.

One last extremely important thing about being a teenager and finding out what is important to you is about love - and romance in general. In this sense I'm extremely glad that there are animes to sort of guide young people through it. Another thing I am glad about is how important they show the 'confession' part of the process to be. It's a climax point of the innocent love where you really need to pull yourself together and accomplish something. I admire the people who have the courage to face their crush in the broad daylight and confess their feelings. But that is not usually how it works around where I live and I believe it's more or less the same everywhere else in the West. 

Here people get together at someone's house -> get drunk -> start making out. After that it's probably pretty obvious one or both of the parties like the other. 
"I like you!" "Yeah, your tongue in my throat gave it away." 

Sure, I've witnessed some innocent love myself even, where the boy and the girl actually tell each other how they feel, go for walks, hold hands, kiss for the first time. But that ends with kids turning like 13-15 and finding out how easy it is to get someone to buy you alcohol. After that you don't really need to face your embarrassing feelings alone and if you lack courage you can supplement for it from the bottle. But that also makes it so much easier to go too far too easily. You get drunk and happen to sleep with a guy? Well now, no use crying over spilled milk, eh? The amount of sex that is shown on TV doesn't really help with the image what is good and what is not.

That's why I think that it's an important thing to actually face someone with no extra help from alcohol and tell them how you feel. Sure, it's embarrassing and sometimes useless since you might already know what the other is going to say. But to muster up your courage and go for it while knowing you might be both accepted or rejected is something you will remember for your entire life. It gives the whole business a meaning. Making out while drunk and then dating them cause you might as well, will turn into a mass of hazy memories when you're older, none of them really meaning anything. I sincerely believe that everyone should have to confess at least once as a teenager to know what it really means to try to reach someone with feelings

Yet, I don't think I would actually prefer living in the Japanese society. Regardless of how many good points the collective consciousness has, it's important to be free too. If you don't feel the direction you've chosen in life is right for you then all you have to do is take your life into your own hands and work for the things you really want. And people will support you. But in animes people seem to be so tightly set in their own tracks that when the time comes to change something, it seems to be the hardest thing in the world. True, there are people like that here too, but at least societies urge people to go for what they really want. There the world revolves around what the society wants...

Thank you for reading my blabber and hopefully some of my points have reached you.
Will be back next week!