Huynh Botchan and Flying Meatballs

This week is about Botchan. The anime itself is fairly "old" by today's standards, with very simple drawings. The drawings are so simple that some of the background doesn't even move with the frame. The only time I see a moving background is in the beginning when he's on a boat and the clouds are constantly moving. This is a good trick because if you see it in the beginning, you expect the rest of the movie to be the same. The movements are also very choppy and aren't smooth, but given the time period and probably the budget of this animation, it's amazing what they did with so little.

Usually the cover art displays very detailed art that is completely overdone compared to the anime itself, but here it looks pretty modest.

Taken from House of Anime

The anime's main character, Botchan is a teacher who goes to the country to teach. The students ridicule him and constantly tease him, while the staff deceives him and enjoys it when he gets mad. There's only 1 person he can count on, and that's Yamaarashi who he calls Porcupine. This is a good representation of what goes on these days in classrooms and the sort. It may not happen in the big cities, but it still happens in the small town, local classes. We had some people like Bruson and Robbie who are in the class tell stories of their high school days where they'd play jokes on the teacher, pull pranks on one another, and made high school a memorable time for themselves. I, like them, am from around here and I also did the same thing in my classes. It's most likely because all 3 of us went to all-boys-Catholic-schools, so there's no girls, which usually means everyone gets along. This is not a sexist thing, it's just boys act differently in front of girls, so if you take them out of the equation, all guys get along and form a brotherhood. The classes in Botchan also showed only males, so that might be a large factor in why the students ridicule Botchan. Remember guys, flying meatballs.