Brouillette- Botchan: Keeping Up Appearances

Watching Botchan was a definitely a new experience; not one I was particularly entertained by, but there were a few things to take away from it. It is obviously a very traditional anime in every sense of the word, portraying Japan's recent past that still effects its culture today. On the surface I saw it as a simplistic, silly story of a man and his misadventures as a teacher in the Japanese school system, but underneath that it is yet another critique of the way a part of Japanese society functions. In the two other films we watched there were also underlying criticisms of these functions. The way the Japanese use stories and animation to reach its viewers about social issues is an inventive idea; a story always tends to stay in one's mind rather than a blatant argument against something. In Botchan we see in interesting satire of the corruption and shortcomings of the school system in Japan and how people simply acting like the imperfect, selfish creatures they are causes it.

Within a society that is so rigid and strict, human nature always finds little cracks to seep through. In Botchan we see it come through the actions of the story's flawed characters. Botchan himself is a rather flustered guy. The students at the school find it easy to anger him and so they take advantage of that; the teachers seem to pick up on this as well, making him their target. He is new to the town he comes to work in, straight from Tokyo, and so is treated as somewhat of an outsider because of that. His rash, impulsive personality clashes with the people of the town. This puts him in several bad situations, including being forced out of the house he was living in for being accused of flirting with the landlord's wife. The way Botchan reacts aggressively when things turn against him only eggs on his tormentors. The bullying behavior displayed by the young men as well as the adults shows that, underneath their professional appearance, the grown men are still self-centered and immature. The crafty Red-Shirt is a prime example of corruption in the film. He uses his sly ways to manipulate those around him to get what he wants. His pawns are the people around him and he is never punished for his actions because of his status, until Botchan stands up to him. Status plays a big role in their society and ultimately creates a hierarchy where those lower on the food chain are easily pushed around by their higher-ups(the teacher, 'Weakling', for example is denied the woman he loves because of Red-Shirt's greed. He is taken advantage of because of his lower status.) This only illustrates how easy it is for a system that looks stable and sure of its goal to educate can be easily polluted by an imbalance of power.