Reviews in Brief: Mieko Koide's After School in the Teacher's Lounge (anime)

After School in the Teacher's Lounge is one of those YouTube finds that I happened across by chance and was captivated by. I dont know if I can honestly call what follows a "review," but I'm going to try to give you an idea of what it's like.

It's a short piece, two episodes, all taken up with the somewhat surreal courtship between two middle-school teachers, Kawase Mitsuro, who teaches art, and his older colleague Kazawa Toshiaki. The story opens with Kawase staring out the window after classes at Kazawa, who is swimming in the school's outdoor pool. Kawase's students, who all seem to be girls, are ribbing him about his fascination, which he vehemently denies. But in flashback, we learn that on his twenty-third birthday, Kazawa asked him out to dinner and proposed that they have a relationship. Kawase, not taking him seriously, said "Sure. Why not?"

The tension in this story all comes from Kawase's refusal to believe that Kazawa is serious and Kazawa's determination to prove that he is, even in the face of the principal's matchmaking efforts with Kazawa on behalf of a friend's daughter and a bit of jealousy from Kawase's brother. Characters are vivid -- Kawase is somewhat shy, quiet, fairly innocent, and quite passive. He finds it difficult to trust Kazawa. Kazawa comes off as quite self-confident, breezy, casual, and direct about his feelings, even though Kawase can't take him seriously.

The graphics are highly stylized, which I think is one thing that appeals to me. It's worth noting that the feel of the drawing in the second episode is much different than the first, a little softer, a little more finished, although I found the drawing in the first half perfectly acceptable and even appealing. The artists have used a fairly exaggerated bishounen type for the men, tall, very thin (but also muscular, as we see from Kazawa in his very brief swimsuit), with extraordinarily broad shoulders.

The music makes a great contribution to the feel, I think. It's also fairly unusual, at least in terms of the anime I've seen, in which titles are likely to be pop-song-inspired and the incidental music generally occurs only as needed. In After School, one is given an almost constant soft-jazz piano accompaniment which blends right into the title music and is quite beautiful in itself. It adds, I think, to the dreamlike quality of the piece and, in its sparse angularity, adds a sense of open space, even in intimate interior scenes, which, with the spare and sometimes elliptical dialogue and fragmentary scenes, reinforces the feeling of a dream.

I think it's the dreamlike quality that appeals to me the most. It's a work that could very easily seem choppy, confusing, and unfinished, but -- and perhaps it's the music acting as a constant here -- instead I read it as episodic, inferential, elliptical, and fairly powerful. There's a dream sequence at the beginning of episode two that encapsulates my feelings about this anime: rendered in green, black and white, it portrays a conversation between Kawase and Kazawa that is repeated in real life later in the episode. It plays a key part in both incarnations in bringing Kawase to the realization that Kazawa is, indeed, serious about him and sets up the final resolution, and it's stunning -- abstract, spare, intense, and very beautiful.

I have to give this one high marks -- it's unique and, to me at least, very appealing. The one drawback so far is that, as is too often the case with YouTube, you take what you can get -- in this case, the middle section of episode two is only available subtitled in Spanish, which is not a language in which I have a great deal of facility.

Not licensed in the U.S., unfortunately, and old enough (1994) that it's not likely to be. It's available online via AnimeGLore.com and, I believe, Aarinfantasy.com, and there is a manga series, also not licensed in English, but also available, at least in part, online.

Crew:

Director: Kazuyoshi Hirose
Music: Norihiro Tsuru
Original creator: Mieko Koide
Producer: Masaru Fukuda

Cast:

Hikaru Midorikawa as Kawase Mitsurou
Kiyoyuki Yanada as Kazama Toshiaki
Jun'ichi Kanemaru as Natsuhiko
Toshiyuki Morikawa as Kawase Hitoshi
Niina Kumagaya as Shizuka