Wednesday 2 April 2003

Pic of the day: Screenshot from the anime. The male is the one to the right, I trust you could guess from the expression if nothing else. (Also to the right and in the background is his visiting older sister and a stuffed toy penguin.)

Happy lessons

The current retro anime featured on AnimeSuki.com is called Happy Lesson. It is based on a Japanese animated TV series. Light-hearted, fast-paced and filled with Japanese cultural references, it is hard to pass judgment on. However, the first judgment that comes to mind is probably wrong.

When a young man lives with five women who are not his relatives, you would be excused to think something ecchi (indecent) might be going on. Except all five are high school teachers. His high school teachers. After the untimely demise of his parents, five of his teachers band together to make sure he gets enough tender loving care, healthy food, and studying. They also insist that he call them Mama.

Unfortunately for our young hero, none of his new "Mama"s have any experience in motherhood. They are also wildly different in size, shape, interest and temperament. This being a humor series, it is all exaggerated, some of it greatly and some less so. But the basic premise seems realistic even though the details don't. Like my own failed attempt at a novel last November, "What Daydreams Don't Tell", this series butchers daydreams for the sheer fun of it. And Happy Lesson is definitely the more decent of the two, although there are a few nosebleed situations. Whenever the borderlines of decency come within sight, the drawing style becomes rapidly less realistic, to make the characters look less attractive. And anyway, I don't think many young minds would be corrupted. Certainly not high school boys – they will probably be morally improved by watching this instead of just sitting with their hands in their laps.

***

I am probably not unique in this, but it bears mention that I never had a crush on any of my teachers. Not even in grade school. For the most part, though, I got along well with teachers. I believe they genuinely liked me, even though I talked back and generally treated them like equals. For the most part, there is a core of idealism in teachers, although it may be hidden under years of wage slavery. Seeing someone intelligent and genuinely curious wakes up the Inner Teacher in most of them.

The teachers were in fact the next to best part of school, second only to the library. It may be just my conceited sense of ego, but I felt for the last half or so of my education that I belonged more to their group than among my fellow pupils / students. Toward the end, I started to act like it too, more and more. Until, during college, the teacher would occasionally just hand out papers and walk away, while I tried to explain the papers to the class. (With one of the profs, popularly called "the berry", this was probably a good thing too, since several students had an irrational dislike for her.)

Later I spent quite a bit of my work time as instructor when we got computers and stuff at the workplace. As late as today I was complimented on my entertaining courses, although it is now quite a while ago. It was kinda fun too, except for the traveling part. I don't think I could be a teacher in primary / grade school, or even high school, as their role is more one of caregiver and prison warden. But if I had been born rich and taken a higher education, I would probably have been teaching some obscure topic at a college somewhere. And probably hated every day of it ... except when I lucked to find a genuinely curious student.

Happy lesson, indeed.