Gakuen
5The Turn · 23Also written: school life, school setting, gakuen-mono
The school setting, especially high school, used by a huge share of manga across every genre.
5Five — change. That is the reduction of this term, and the shelf it is read from.
What it means
Gakuen means "academy" or "school", and is used for stories set in a school, usually a high school. It is less a genre than a setting, and a very large share of manga in every genre take place in one.
Why schools
Most manga readers are or have been students, so school is familiar to everyone. A school gives a story a ready-made cast of classmates, teachers, clubs and rivals, a calendar of exams, festivals and trips, and a natural ending at graduation.
Its range
Kimi ni Todoke is a gentle school romance. Ouran High School Host Club parodies the elite academy. Assassination Classroom sets a comedy and action story in a class of misfits. Soul Eater turns school into a training ground for battle.
Why it matters
The school setting is one of manga's most important conventions. It shapes the rhythm of countless stories and is a large part of what international readers think of as Japanese pop culture.
The term by its numbers
Every letter here carries a digit; together they make 23, which folds down to 5.
Five is freedom seeker — freedom, disruption, and restless movement. The reference files it as a turn. Read that way, what the entry is really recording is the 5's restlessness and hunger for change.
The vowels alone reduce to 9, the consonants to 5. Reckoning underneath, change on the surface. The gap between them is where the subject is most interesting.
The 5 moves for the sake of moving. Not every break documented here led anywhere, and the reference says so where it did not. What the 5 still asks is that you ask what was abandoned, and whether it deserved to be. The other entries that reduce to 5 are collected on The Turn.
Seen in
- Assassination ClassroomA smiling, octopus-like creature that has destroyed most of the Moon becomes a class's teacher, and gives them a year to kill him before he destroys the Earth.
- Ouran High School Host ClubA scholarship student breaks an expensive vase at an elite school and must pay off the debt by working in the boys' host club, where everyone takes her for a boy.
- Kimi ni TodokeA sweet, shy girl whom classmates nickname after a horror-film ghost slowly makes friends and falls in love.
- Soul EaterAt a school run by Death himself, students who can turn into weapons and the partners who wield them hunt corrupted souls.