Classroom Crisis

At the second episode, Classroom Crisis explains itself to us. The one big thing that strikes me as interesting, for better or worse, in episode 2, was the way it lays out a future of space travel and human expansion in the solar system by the means of a manufacturing company’s expansion. The focus of the show is a school system, that allows a rogue band of elite students to do their own thing as a way to make a breakthrough.

If you ever read the news on Japanese economy and social order, doesn’t this sound a little too close to home? I mean the reason why a bubble happened in the Japanese economy largely stems from its inability to shift gears from manufacturing to information. The Toyotas and Sonys of the country can match pace with the Fords and GEs of the world, but there is no equivalent of Apple or Microsoft in Japan. And with Google poised to be the next wave of things, in another 5-10 years Japan will be two revolutions behind, at least speaking in nationalist terms. (Although companies like Google are increasingly borderless…which can pose another problem for Japan.)

TL;DR – Japan was stuck as a manufacturing society in the 90s, unable to catch on to the information revolution. It may or may not be stuck today, but people’s minds sure still are.

I’m sorry. I weep for the geniuses who are groomed from a young age so they can work for some megacorp doing manufacturing. Shouldn’t they be, you know, doing something more scientifically advanced? Don’t they let robots make stuff in this future? Does Japan not believe in automation?

In that sense, this history of Classroom Crisis’s future is written like an old man’s pipe dream. It might as well talk about how the cave man rule the world with a magical club. I also think this setting just gave away the thematic thrust of the show, about youths and revolutions and what not.

And depends on your perspective, that too can be sort of a silly old man’s pipe dream. I deeply believe in the power of iteration; geniuses who grow older and grow more experienced in the right environment are, well, more potent and more revolution-causing than younger geniuses who has not have the education of experience. There is nothing magical about youth (other than practical reasons like sales of the series I guess). Physically, sure, there’s a biological factor, but as brilliant minds? Not really. In that sense, the culprit, if we want to point fingers, is not just human tendency of unable to see outside the box (which I just don’t think is something young or new people are better at inherently), but the oppressive and conforming environment, this institutional focus, in which defines a core component of Japanese society.

Which is to say the fact that they are in schools at all is hilarious. And since Classroom Crisis does not point fingers, let’s not.

PS. TrySail OP! New ClariS ED! Can’t throw money at screen hard enough.