The List
6 Bizarre School Clubs
by Lynzee Loveridge,
Schools in anime get all the interesting clubs. Sure, there's the average sport teams, traditional arts, and the book clubs but they also get robot building, card games, and equestrian clubs. Still, for every robot club there's a paranormal club run by an actual ghost or a social club full of jerks. This week's list counts down all weird clubs you missed out on during high school.
6. Neighbor's Club (Haganai) Making friends is the most basic reason behind joining an after school club. Clubs allow individuals with similar interests to meet one another when they might otherwise not. What if the only common attribute between the members is that they don't have any friends? What if they reason they don't have any friends is because they're kinda jerks? Then you have the members of The Neighbor's Club.
5. Eyeglasses Club (Meganebu!) Akira is convinced that there is nothing better in the world than glasses. Dedicated to spread his appreciation throughout his rural school, he stars a club for other bespectacled classmates to compare styles, prescriptions, and everything else related to glasses. Besides that, what is there for a glasses club to do? Are there conventions for this kind of thing? Maybe they heckle the local LensCrafters for lack of style options?
4. S.O.S. Brigade (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) Paranormal clubs are pretty common in anime, and for the most part The S.O.S. Brigade is no exception. What sets it apart is that, with the possible exception of the narrator, all the members are themselves paranormal. The club brings together at time-traveler, an ESPer, an artificial human, and Haruhi who can manipulate subconsciously manipulate reality.
3. Host Club (Ouran High School Host Club) Ouran High School's host club only works because it barely operates like its real-word counterpart. Real host clubs are part of Japan's "water trade" which includes the country's seedier sex work establishments. Even though, Haruhi's club doesn't provide copious amounts of alcohol or off-site dating, how it was approved by any sane student council is beyond me.
2. Holstein Club (Silver Spoon) Livestock shows for exemplary animals are country fair staples. A club focusing on the husbandry of Holstein cattle is right at home at a farming high school. But, don't the members seem a little "excited" by the whole procedure? Hachiken barely escaped their clutches when he first encounters the members excitedly skimming a "naughty" cow magazine.
1. Light Club (Lychee Light Club) The Light Club in Usamaru Furuya's manga is the most bizarre and disturbing club I've encountered in written form. The middle school students corrupt an innocent club for boys into a Nazi-esque club focused on building an intelligent robot to capture the perfect girl. The club combines normal adolescent sexual exploration with megalomania and extreme violence. I'll stick to Robotics;Notes for my school robot club, thanks.
The new poll: Time to settle the score once and for all. Which is it, Kimba or Simba? For those not privy, the question refers to the debate that Disney knocked off Tezuka's Kimba the White Lion (Jungle Emperor Leo) when making The Lion King. If you agree that Disney borrowed from Tezuka, choose "Kimba!" if you think The Lion King is just an animated retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet, choose "Simba!"
The old poll: The last poll asked which of fall anime series are you most looking forward to. The hype behind Studio Trigger and former Gurren-Lagann staff seems to be working. Kill la Kill is in the top spot followed by Kuroko's Basketball. Here's the full results (note: titles not listed received less than 1% of votes):
- Kill la Kill 14.4%
- Kuroko's Basketball Season 2 7.8%
- Infinite Stratos 2 7.1%
- Magi: The Kingdom of Magic Season 2 6.6%
- Kyōkai no Kanata 5.4%
- Valvrave the Liberator Season 2 5.3%
- Little Busters! Refrain 5.0%
- BlazBlue Alter Memory 4.8%
- Samurai Flamenco 4.4%
- Hajime no Ippo Rising 4.1%
- Pocket Monsters XY 3.5%
- Golden Time 2.7%
- Meganebu! 2.4%
- Coppelion 2.4%
- Freezing Vibration 2.3%
- Gundam Build Fighters 1.9%
- Diabolik Lovers 1.9%
- Kyousogiga 1.8%
- Unbreakable Machine-Doll 1.6%
- Arpeggio of Blue Steel 1.6%
- Pupa 1.6%
- Yozakura Quartet ~Hana no Uta~ 1.1%
- Galilei Donna - Storia di tre sorelle a caccia di un mistero 1.1%
- Nagi no Asukara 1.1%
- Gingitsune 1.0%
When she isn't compiling lists of tropes, topics, and characters, Lynzee works as Associate Editor for Anime News Network, blogs about women and LBGT topics in anime and manga on her blog Engendered Dilemma, and posts pictures of her son on Twitter @ANN_Lynzee.
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