HeavyMetal wrote:It is difficult to know what you are looking for without a reason for showing anime in class. Are trying to make them think about plots and story concepts or maybe a different culture?
Mostly it's entertainment. There are plenty of side benefits, for example; many of my students have a low reading level, by letting them watch something that they enjoy, they learn not only to read (from the subtitles) but also they learn to pick up the speed of their reading and that it can be a 'fun' activity.
Something that most textbooks leave out.
Once they get beyond simple entertainment, I teach them how to make AMV's from dvd source material, which gets them learning all sorts of other esoteric stuff like network navigation, video editing, script writing, file extentions.. the who nine yards. If I *must* I'll buy the disks myself, since for some reason the school is reluctant to let me spend hundreds of dollars on it. This last week for example I just purchased the region2 DVD's for Macross Zero at 5000 Yen each, out of pocket.
None of that works if the students don't have something that they find interesting in the first place.
Anime has some very distinct advantages over some other media types, since it's not only frequently very thought engaging, but well made, and being (of course) animated, free to interpretation through song. I personally get a kick out of seeing students totally engrossed in whatever they are into at the moment, whether it be 'Twin Spica' (an underated show for sure!), Fruits basket, or Naruto. The fact that students are working harder in other classes so that they can come to my class and finish an episode of 'whatever' makes it worth it to me to keep 150-200 gig of anime on site.
Fullmetal Alchemist? CUTE!? AND SWEET!!??