学園化[gakuenka]

June 29, 2008 at 12:05 pm (doujin(同人), otaku word)

 

 If you happen to follow doujinshi[fan-made comics] or such a video game, you would be sure of this. This is a primitive method for all the doujin fans to create doujin stuff. To get to the point, 学園[gakuen] means school and 化[ka] means to change sth in the certain way. Or else, it is to transform like something. 学園化[gakuenka] means to put all the characeters in the series into school setting. Can I say schoolnize? Anyway, why is this such a rule-of-thumb? No, this is not a doujin thing anymore because even the originals use it as a side story or something like that. Above is, yes, 3年Z組銀八先生[san'nen Z-gumi Ginpachi-sensei] which occasionally comes as an extra story in Gintama. In this story, Gintoki plays a role as a teacher, and other characters show as a student. Don’t care about their age! It’s a fantasy like yaoi.

 Anyone experinces a school life. There are a lot of kind of teachers or classmates, and it is pretty easier to fix your favorite characters up with a “job.” You can arrange as you like. Who should be a teacher? What kind of subject should he teach? How does he act as a teacher? Rude or humble? DelusionImagination never ends, so that this makes it easier to make a story. 

 Even if the original story takes place in a fantasy world and the characters do a totally unreal thing, those characters naturally get close to our real life by using this method, 学園化. I assume such is a fundamental reason why this is so popular.

 So, which anime do you want to schoolnize? 

2 Comments

  1. Sasa said,

    June 30, 2008 at 1:43 pm

    I never expected this phenomenon actually has a name, but I suppose it is rather popular, I even remember a short story with “Blame!” in a school setting, and “Gakuen Kino”, of course.

    I think science-fiction and mystery would make the best alternative universes to schools - like Planetes or Baccano, hehe.

  2. bangin said,

    June 30, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    Also, period piece is to be targeted because of this phenomenon. What if those characters in olden times came to our real world? How do they act? See? There must be a lot of stories!

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