Bombing the trigonometry final, taking a dodgeball to the face, realizing one's crush is infatuated with the quarterback — experiences like these can sour students towards school. Yet for all the stress that it can bring, school can be magical. It has its glorious moments: making friends, nailing classwork that once seemed impossible, and summoning the courage to step out on stage and be the best Hamlet that 200-person auditorium has ever seen. That makes it all worth it.
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Whether elementary, high school, or college, the schools in these anime become breeding grounds for new experiences. They draw shy characters out of their shells, test the mettle of the bravest jocks, and once in a while even force fierce rivals to consider becoming friends.
From Me To You
15-year-old high school freshman Sawako Kuronuma has always struggled to make friends, because she looks like the villainous Sadako from The Ring horror franchise. Others brand her with that cruel nickname and shy away from her, not giving the timid girl a chance to how sweet she is.
When Sawako meets Shouta, the most outgoing and popular boy in class, she is immediately drawn to his kindness and ability to be the center of attention. The romance that blossoms between the two is delicately and beautifully portrayed. From Me to You succeeds as much for its depiction of young love as it does for Sawako's emotional evolution as she grows closer to other students in this exquisite slice-of-life anime.
Monthly Girls' Nozaki-Kun
Chiyo has a crush, and it seems too good to be true when she learns that her crush Nozaki is a famous artist who wants to use their relationship as inspiration for his romantic manga. After a series of misunderstandings, Chiyo winds up as Nozaki's manga assistant, working side by side to help him in the hope that he will one day appreciate the depth of her feelings.
It might not have the most breathtaking visuals, but Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun is a funny, self-aware anime. It doesn't rely on fanservice to attract viewers, and doesn't use cheap plot gimmicks to keep them.
Great Teacher Onizuka
Onizuka is a 22-year-old virgin, pervert, and former member of a biker gang. After a chance meeting convinces Onizuka that he should become a teacher for the influence that role will grant him, he (barely) earns his teaching degree at a second-rate college.
Fortunately, when the time comes to teach, Onizuka discovers that he actually has a conscience. Instead of preying upon his pupils, he starts scheming on their mothers while teaching students life lessons with his own brand of unorthodox methods. Great Teacher Onizuka invigorates classwork and learning in ways that few anime do, even if Onizuka himself is a highly suspect role model in what is certainly not an anime for kids.
Angel Beats!
Some high schools are more unconventional than others, as the afterlife high school in Angel Beats! proves. 13-year-old Otonashi dies, loses all memories of his life, and arrives in the afterlife only to be immediately enrolled in high school.
Things get even more complicated for Otonashi when a girl named Yuri invites him into the Afterlife Battlefront. She leads this organization in battle against Angel, the student council president, a girl with magical powers. The story is all over the place, and its short 13-episode run leaves some plots unresolved, but Angel Beats! is a fun romp through a very different kind of school, a significant departure from most offerings of the genre.
Nichijou
Even with the best teachers, classes, and cafeteria food, school can be a miserable experience without friends. Nichijou is about the lives of three high school friends, Mio, Yuuko, and Mai, whose lives become entangled with an eccentric trio: the young genius Hakase, her talking cat Sakamoto, and Hakase's robot caretaker Nano.
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The action veers from pedestrian activities (joking with friends on the walk to school) to the surreal (watching the principal suplex a deer in the school courtyard). When Nichijou gets weird, it gets very weird. It's for the best, because most of the best moments come when the series dives into the surreal.
Fruits Basket
Young orphan Tohru is living in a tent so as not to be a bother, but the children of the Sohma family let her move into their house in exchange for doing housework. That's when Tohru learns that the family is cursed. Each family member is possessed by a member of the Chinese zodiac, and transforms into their animal form if put under great stress or if they embrace a member of a different gender.
Tohru is an excellent protagonist, always pressing forward through the adversity she faces. The strong art and music lift an already excellent (and quite funny) anime to even greater heights. Fruits Basket borrows key techniques from comedy anime, ensuring laughs from the audience.
Assassination Classroom
What if instead of learning geometry, students learned knife-throwing and fireteam support tactics to assassinate their teacher? Assassination Classroom has a brilliantly weird premise, and manages to live up to the promised excitement and absurdity at every turn.
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Every character in Class 3-E is given room to develop, but the series star is unquestionably the teacher himself. The smiley-faced alien octopoid Koro-sensei challenges his students, trying to coax the best from them in the hopes that one day they will be strong enough to kill him. Intense, funny, and imaginative, Assassination Classwork is school anime approaching its best.
My Hero Academia
The juggernaut of the genre, My Hero Academia is a cultural staple at this point, and that spot is well-deserved. Izuku Midoriya is born without superpowers in a world where they are common, yet he vows to become a hero like his favorite, All-Might. When that same hero grants Midoriya his power, the boy enrolls at U.A. High School to begin his training in earnest.
The powers are surprising, and every hero is given plenty of screentime to develop their personalities and backstories. The occasional misstep in pacing is more than made up for by the show's perfect understanding of how to blend the elements that make anime great. My Hero Academia is amongst the best in the genre.
Ouran High School Host Club
At Ouran Academy, a high pedigree is the accepted standard. Haruhi is a brilliant student from an ordinary background, attending the school on scholarship. In search of a quiet place to study, Haruhi stumbles upon the Host Club, a place where cute boys with too much free time entertain Ouran's female students. Haruhi breaks a vase in her rush to leave, and the club recruits her as their errand-runner to pay off her debt, later bringing her into their ranks as full-time host.
With its delicious blend of romance and comedy, Ouran High School Host Club makes the most of its school setting and the students that populate it. It might not have been a blockbuster anime, but Ouran High School Host Club deserves every accolade it gets.
Another
In Another, Kouichi Sakakibara transfers to Yomiyama Middle School only to be drawn into the enigmatic web of eyepatch-wearing Mei and the series of gruesome deaths that plague the school. Another is a psychological horror anime as well as a school anime, and it remains dark at every step.
Highly atmospheric, creepy, and exceptionally violent, Another doesn't look much like most school anime, but that's all the more reason for aficionados to take a look. The series pushes the boundaries of what viewers expect from the genre, and though it isn't to everyone's taste, Another is a must-see for those that want the complete school anime experience.