Academy. Adventure. Whatever.
It's weird at my school
Weird at my school
Weird at my school
Weird at my school
Weird at my school
Weird at my school
Weird at my school
A school where adventure abounds, weirdness is everywhere, and anything that could happen, will happen. Teachers turning out to be villains, strange beings stalking the school grounds, random (or maybe not so random) students getting kidnapped while the Unlikely Hero has to chase after them... Never a dull day, no matter how boring the classes are.
The school is, simply put, a Weirdness Magnet, perfect for the budding kid adventurer or hero in disguise as a teacher. A school like this will often be rivals to the local Academy of Evil.
Generally, this tends to happen to any school the hero is enrolled in or teaching in, so it can be anything from a grade school to a college. See also City of Adventure and Building of Adventure. Just like there, contrast Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here. If the school explains its weirdness factor by having super powered students, monster students or magical classes, then it's either an Extranormal Institute (especially if it's a Superhero School), an All-Ghouls School or a Wizarding School, respectively. Such a school would often be a World of Mysteries.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Myoji Academy from Akuma no Riddle is filled with more danger than adventure.
- Beelzebub: The main setting for the first arc of the series, Ishiyama High, is famous for housing the city's worst delinquents, with a delinquency rate of 120%. There are always fights, no one seems to ever attend actual class, and the entire building is smashed up and covered in graffiti. And this was before Oga "adopted" Baby Beel.
- Blue Exorcist's True Cross Academy is this, due to being also a base for the Knights of the True Cross aka Exorcists and where the Japan Branch's cram school/training academy for budding exorcists is. Also, the Headmaster is a demon though more specifically one of the Demon Kings and second eldest Satanic son and our main (and titular) character is the bastard Son of Satan, aka the resident living Weirdness Magnet that amps up the weird.
- The Classroom of a Black Cat and a Witch has the royal Diana Academy, home to talented witches and magicians from all over the continent. It's when protagonist Spica Virgo enters this school that she's thrust into danger and adventure all the same with her rambunctious classmates.
- Digimon Ghost Game has Hazakura Academy, the private boarding school attended by the protagonists Hiro, Ruli, and Kiyo that's frequently besieged by hostile Digimon due to their Weirdness Magnet status.
- Two of the Eldoran Series anime, Matchless Raijin-Oh and Nekketsu Saikyo Gosaurer have this. The latter turns into a group of Giant Robots, and the former has them housed under them, with fifth-grade students piloting them.
- Gakuen Alice: An "Alice" is someone with a strange or paranormal talent. Any kid who is identified as having an Alice is legally required to go to the Alice Academy, and cannot leave the campus until graduating from high school at the age of 20. The campus is immense and includes forests and a town. All teachers and administration are Alices, and other staff/residents include robots or mutant animals created by Alices. The buildings include three heavily guarded and mysterious school buildings and residence buildings for students and three buildings belonging the three enigmatic headmasters, all of which are guarded with supernatural means. Most of the adventures in the story are set in and somehow related to the buildings and their peculiarities.
- Every high school in Ikki Tousen qualifies. One wonders how these institutions still attract students, considering all the mayhem that goes on there.
- Exaggerated (like everything else) in Kill la Kill with Honnouji Academy. Students wear uniforms that turn them into superpowered soldiers, club presidents (from boxing to tennis) have their talents amplified dramatically and weaponized, the committee chairs can turn their uniforms into Powered Armor and tanks, the student council president is an Evil Overlord, battles resulting in explosions that send hundreds of people flying happen daily, and that's just the beginning of it, even weirder since the villains run the academy, yet the protagonist is studying at it anyway.
- Little Witch Academia (2017): Luna Nova Academy, a Hogwarts expy, is naturally this. Given the nature of their mindboggling spells, encounters with monsters, and a professor that may or may not be experimenting with a Doomsday Device, it's safe to say Akko and her friends are in no shortage of adventure.
- In Medaka Box, there's ''Sandbox Academy". Teachers are conspicuously absent save for the Principal. And many students have a power level on the tier of avatars of Hindu Mythology. The protagonist is often compared to a god, and she might as well be one.
- Yuuei/U.A. High School serves this purpose in My Hero Academia. In normal circumstances, it's a school that allows future superheroes to train their powers up. Since the series has started, the students have fought off at least one supervillain attack and their sports festival is an even bigger event than the Olympics.
- A standard setting for most My-HiME series.
- Fuuka Academy in the original. In the anime, the girls' identities as HiME are kept secret from the public. In the manga, the identities and the abilities of the girls are well-known, and all of the battles that take place within the school (sometimes between other students) are seen in full view of everyone, as is the resulting property damage.
- Garderobe Academy in My-Otome, a training ground for Magical Girl Warriors where potential Otome candidates are expected to show poise, grace, and fighting prowess almost in equal measures.
- Hoshinomiya Fuuka Academy in Mai-HiME Destiny, where most of the main characters possess Psychic Powers to some degree.
- Morobare High School in My Monster Secret has a surprisingly high density of strange students for a Rom Com, including a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire, a four-inch tall alien in a Mobile-Suit Human, a Grandkid from the Future, a Fallen Angel, and that's all before we get into the principal, who's an ancient but young-looking demon the epitome of a Troll. And it's been like this for some time, since several of these characters' parents attended the same school a generation before and helped inspire The Seven Mysteries.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi: At Mahora Academy, you need rock climbing gear to traverse the library, the School Festival involves Humongous Mecha and zeppelins, the majority of the staff (from what we've seen) are secretly wizards, the center of campus is the World Tree, and if a student there isn't supernatural, paranormal, superscience, or otherwise out of the ordinary, it probably means they have motivational issues. Even the Muggles are bizarre or unusual in mundane ways — like being the heir of a richer-than-an-entire-country family, being able to do way more with a gymnastics ribbon than one should, etc.
- Occult Academy in its entirety.
- In Pokémon the Series, the school on Melemele Island gets pretty interesting. It helps that Professor Kukui is adventurous and wants his students to have plenty of first-hand experience with all aspects of Pokémon.
- Chiral Royal Knight Academy from Reborn to Master the Blade specializes in training Knights, individuals who hold Runes that let them use powerful magical Artifacts, the only weapons capable of defeating the monstrous Prisma Beasts and other threats to the countries of Midland. The students are sent to or given permission to participate in dangerous activities like serving as bodyguards for traveling merchants, hunting Prism Beasts, or serving as extra members of law enforcement alongside the Knights who have already graduated.
- The Death Weapon Meister Academy in Soul Eater, where Death Weapon's train to become Lord Death's scythe, and Meister's aim to become stronger. Fights tend to happen their on the daily as well, though we only get to see this happen to the main characters.
- In Vampire Knight, at first, with Yuuki and Zero attempting to keep the peace between the Day and Night class. Later, this plot point is dashed in favor of focusing more on the vampires and their politics.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Duel Academy. Doesn't help that it's on an island, and thus almost the only setting where any dueling takes place... There's a lot of mysteries within the island, it houses lots of different Duel Spirits, including the Sangenma/Sacred Beasts, and the island attracts different factions of villains who use it as a playground for their evil schemes.
Comic Books
- America (2017): Sotomayor University has a ridiculous amount of amenities, despite apparently being an arts college. This includes a chamber that can create Hard Light technology for simulations. The school also accepts people from other dimensions, as well as people with superpowers.
- Berrybrook Middle School: 90% of all shenanigans occur at Berrybrook, though the adventures are more of the mundane variety.
- Fantastic Four: The Future Foundation, a Think Tank/school Reed Richards put together for genius or extremely gifted youth including his own children and other superheroes.
- Advanced Public School #001 (APS-001) in the Gold Digger (Antarctic Press) universe. In the "Tifanny & Charlotte" series, the title characters attend the school.
- Gotham Academy: The staff includes Kirk Langstrom and Hugo Strange, the headmaster has a costumed identity as The Custodian, and there are secret tunnels linking it to Arkham. The main character, Olive Silverlock, is descended from a long line of supervillains with some kind of link to the school.
- Locke & Key: The Lovecraft Academy. The main cast attend the school, and before them, so did their Dad. Needless to say, the main 'big' mystery of the series revolves around what happened to their father and his friends during their school days.
- PS238: This is the setting for the series, which is about an Adventure Elementary School filled with superpowered children. Despite their best efforts, they don't do that great a job of keeping the super powered danger away.
- Robin (1993): Brentwood Academy gets attacked by demons, has students running an illegal gambling ring and has Man-Bats hiding in the old belfry. Lampshaded by Tim himself when he comments on the weirdness of the school.
- Spider-Man:
- Peter Parker went to both an Adventure High School and Adventure College, and generally continued to do so in every adaptation of the character. As a matter of fact, several of his most memorable villains and allies were either students (Harry Osborn, the second Green Goblin), introduced through students (for example, Molten Man), or as teachers/professors (for example, The Jackal), but even the everyday goings on of the school have a bit of adventure to them. Later on, he becomes a teacher at the same high school, which inevitably becomes an Adventure School again, even after he resigns.
- In particular, his college Empire State University, is a huge Adventure School that has since extended far beyond involving just Peter Parker. Just look at the notable faculty/students list
, which involves X-Men, villains of every kind, and the Human Torch! Things are rarely boring there.
- Static: It's justified in that the chemical explosion that caused the "Bang Babies" happened at a popular local gang hangout near Virgil's school.
- Supergirl:
- Stanhope Elementary in Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade. Environmental hazards include: a superhero who is the universe's biggest Weirdness Magnet; a student who happens to be a xenophobic Mad Scientist training to be a super-villain; an Alpha Bitch who is a super-villain; jerkass students who somehow become even bigger jerks every time they occasionally win super-powers; superpowered animals; tyrannical and uncaring teachers who are really trickster dimensional gods in disguise; and a sadistic, morale-undermining Principal who is an evil, dimensional god in disguise.
- Supergirl: Crucible has superhero interplanetary academy Crucible. Homework includes battle training and overthrowing world conquerors.
- Wonder Woman Vol 1: Holliday College is a women's college near Washington D.C. which Wonder Woman frequently visited, and where there were frequent attacks by Nazis, pirates, masked villains, and extraterrestrials which the vast majority of the student body absolutely loved fighting off. Many of the Holliday Girls were trained in Amazonian martial arts and Steve Trevor was just as happy to rely on Etta Candy and her Holliday Girls paramilitary club to watch his back during missions as he was to have other USAAF personnel along.
- X-Men:
- The Xavier Institute is an example of both this and Superhero School; its students are constantly involved in adventures and attacks by villains and such because its entire faculty and student body are mutants, and, in order to deal with the constant threat of danger, among other things, there's a jet, the Danger Room, etc and the faculty/senior students double as a Super Hero team on the grounds. The school's been leveled so many times by these threats, it's been lampshaded by the cast.
- After the above school is destroyed, Wolverine opens the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. Its students include a brood, and one of the teachers is the time-traveling child of the namesake Jean Grey. Homework is basically training for adventuring, e.g jetpacking and snowball fights.
- Cyclops opens the New Xavier Institute. It is located at the old Weapon X Facility, the place that gave Wolverine his unbreakable skeleton and sharp-ass claws, and the students regularly go out on missions with the teachers. Said teachers consist of: A mutant revolutionary who shoots lasers from his eyes, and is wanted for the murder of Charles Xavier, a mutant telepath who can turn her skin into diamond and wears Stripperific outfits, a mutant Nazi-survivor who can control magnetic fields and a sociopathic mutant sorceress who regularly takes the students through limbo when teleporting and time travels.
Fan Works
- Autobot Academy is the source of a lot of adventures, including lab accidents that spawn clones, training missions with pro heroes, time travellers trying to change the future, and Decepticon infiltration.
- The canonical setting of the Assassins' Guild School in the Discworld is expanded on in the fictions of A.A. Pessimal. In-canon, it has expanded to become co-educational. Pessimal also reasoned that in the modern Discworld, with an effective City Watch and a more centralised Government overseeing things tightly, and with the scrutiny of a free Press, the Guild has had to "liberalise" somewhat and change its educational approach in the modern age. It can't get away with, er, attrition in student numbers any more. Nor can it continue as an exclusive school for the sons of gentlemen, advancing a relatively small number of them to graduation. Also, with so many more students these days, the School has expanded to other sites in and around Ankh-Morpork, each with a different specialised emphasis on what it takes to become an Assassin.note Given that Ankh-Morpork is built on previous incarnations of Ankh-Morpork, the School also exploits a vertical dimension and goes a fairly long way down below its Filigree Street site. The result may not be quite as hazardous as it once was, but it still promises to be an Academy of Adventure for its students, offering a variety of life-affirming experiences. note
- The Artemis Kuroshi School, which is the eponymous school for The Mysterious School. All of the people attending/teaching there have magic, including Dragon Slayer Magic (courtesy of Natsu's random appearance).
- Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!: In addition to U.A. and the other hero schools mentioned in the original My Hero Academia, Gotham Academy and the Lex Luthor Institution of Accelerated Humanity are both schools in the United States that are said to be on par with U.A.
- The Imperial Naval Academy in The Odyssey definitely qualifies as this. It's run by an incredibly ancient Dragon-Blooded and designed to prepare the students for all of the threats they might encounter on the high seas. Under the new leadership, it's meritocratic, and death can be a consequence of failure.
- The University of Wisconsin becomes the site of several battles in Power Rangers GPX. The other battles take place off-campus in Madison. Southern Illinois University in Carbondale serves a similar purpose in an AU fic.
- In A Saga of Parallel Worlds, the Game Boy Nova Metroidvania known as Spy School is set in an academy with labyrinthine mazes, a laser trap training room and many different items to collect.
- The eponymous school in the Skyhold Academy Yearbook series qualifies, in its own weird way. It's a sort of non-magical version of Hogwarts, run by the Second Inquisition of Thedas (and some friends), and almost anything seems to be possible. The adventures are benign most of the time; the place is just sort of wacky.
- Both Furinkan and Hogwarts in Top Dog. At Hogwarts, it's because it's a political football that is politically neutral in all disputes, and members of species and cultures that are furiously at war both attend; at Furinkan, it's more a function of poor faculty judgment in approving projects. (The tokamak in the physics building ended up blowing up, and the biology projects routinely escape and eat people.)
- The Baleful Bureau: The main setting is the Trench Memorial International School, an Elevator School in New York accepting students from preschool all the way to college. Members of the student body include the Baudelaire Orphans, Coraline Jones and Wyborne Lovat, Shiore Phantomhive, Hibiki Kuze, and Anya Forger. It’s staff, meanwhile, include at least one member of the Brotherhood of the Assassins, who was selected by the Federal Bureau of Control, who are the backers of said academy, which is both a Place of Power and a Genius Loci.
Film — Live Action
- Horror film 5ive Girls takes place entirely inside St. Mark's: a Catholic Boarding School of Horrors for girls.
- The martial arts movie The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is partly about the foundation of such a school. Initially, the Shaolin monastery only has 35 Chambers of Kung fu, which are emphatically not this trope: they teach incredible kung fu skills, but graduates of the program are expected to stick around as instructors and, this being a monastery, live cloistered lives of seclusion. However, the movie's hero, San Te, insists that the monastery's knowledge could be put to better use, and at the end of the movie he establishes the 36th Chamber, where he teaches kung fu to laymen, allowing them to go and have adventures of their own outside of Shaolin.
Literature
- Aria the Scarlet Ammo: The students of Butei High are trained to be armed detectives.
- The Asterisk War: Deconstructed . Super-powered school children are turned into the prize-fighters of annual Tournament Arcs.
- Every bigger town has at least few of these in Atharon books, thanks to MMORPG -like setting. One of main characters Nick goes into one.
- Chrome Shelled Regios: Academic Cities which are giant walking cities run and populated entirely by students and specialized for education and providing for students' needs, like a giant university town. Combines this with City of Adventure.
- Divine Blood Novels: Bravura Academy is more or less a normal boarding school that boasts both a college and high school campus. The high school level kids are already learning college level courses. While the school itself is focused on normal student hijinks it is the focus of several power groups. Bravura itself is sponsored by Avalon who also uses a front company security organization to test potential recruits. Then there's the students, which include an Avalon soldier, a "Visionary", a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, three demi-gods, a Demoness, and a werewolf.
- Doom Valley Prep School: The entire point of tutoring in either The School of Righteousness and Honor or Doom Valley Prep School is to teach the students how to be effective warriors, but with the latter, the students don't just have to worry about whatever Training from Hell the teachers think up, but they have to worry about each other, as the bullies have no qualms going as far as straight-up murder to hobble the competition, as long as they don't get caught.
- Durarara!!: Raira Academy had a reputation for this thanks to the antics of Shizuo Heiwajima and Izaya Orihara — Shinra can list off half a dozen Noodle Incidents at any given time. It was bad enough that, after their graduation, Raira had to merge with another school and rebuild their image from scratch. They succeeded...up until an ex-gang leader, the host of a Hive Mind-controlling Evil Weapon, the head of the Dollars, the stalker to end all stalkers, and some kid in love with a severed head all end up enrolling in the same year. The real irony is that the school is actually less chaotic than it was six years back.
Teacher: But really... compared to the times when we had to teach Izaya-kun and Shizuo-kun, this school is way more peaceful nowadays. Back then we used to have filled gasoline drums rolling down the third floor of the school building...
- Fantastic Schools: The stories in this anthology series feature students at Wizarding Schools who get involved in wild, dangerous, and (often) deadly adventures.
- The Finishing School Series: The girls at Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing School for Young Ladies are taught espionage and assassination alongside manners and graces. The school is located in an airship and the instructors number one vampire and one werewolf respectively.
- The Gallagher Girls: Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is a school for training teenage girls to be spies.
- The Gam3: The Game's players can pay to attend academies, which power level them until they can be competitive in the Game. The original and most prestigious is just called The Academy, and takes up an entire solar system.
- Harry Potter: Hogwarts, though it's really not meant to be. For someone not Muggle-born or raised, the magic there is really just an extension of what would go on in their own homes. It's only when Harry is going there that this trope is active.
- Heretical Edge: At Crossroads Academy, students are recruited and trained to use magic and fight monsters (that aren't always as monstrous as the teachers claim). Sooner or later every student ends up dealing with extra-curricular threats and adventures. Especially in The Heroine Flick Chambers' case.
- High School D×D: Kuoh Academy attracts all sorts of strange students, starting with two packs of devils and eventually including an angel, a fallen angel, and a Valkyrie, among others. It turns out that as well as being a legitimate place of education for humans, devils use it as a front to give themselves a safe haven during daylight hours and a base of operations at night.
- H.I.V.E. Series: The Higher Institute of Villainous Education is a school for supervillains. In the first book the school is attacked by a giant plant — a science experiment Gone Horribly Wrong.
- The Impairment: Kyle Griffin is a freshman at Mildwood University and framed for the murder of his roommate, who was actually killed by an extra-terrestrial. Mildwood University features students overwhelmed with fear from a two-year long string of similar murders, a fraternity of hostile young men, and bloodthirsty aliens which, of course, only Kyle can seem to see and are connected to the one Kyle saw kill his roommate.
- The Kane Chronicles: You'd be hard pressed to not find magical activity at Brooklyn House and the larger House of Life.
- Level 1 Strongest Sage features mage academy. Since the goal is teaching the students practical combat magic, tactics, and strategies, the classroom has monster hunting competitions, monthly inter-class duels, and field-trips to foreign countries through routes where guarding against monsters and bandits is routine.
- Miskatonic University - Elder Gods 101: Miskatonic University is not only an Ivy League school on the East Coast but also the lodestone for protecting Earth's dimension from being absorbed by other more hostile ones.
- My Room is a Dungeon Rest Stop: Koharu Dormitory is the private dormitory connected to the number one academy in Tachikawa. The dorm building is all tattered. Its student boarders are all weirdos. And of course, there are rumors about ghosts haunting it too. As the main character Suzuki Tooru soon finds when he’s hired as the new caretaker it is also connected to another world.
- "Nichiasa Reincarnation": Luminous Academy is a combination of this trope and Wizarding School and Superhero School. The main purpose of this academy is to train young noble or common folk with magical affinity to become a magical knight that will go on to protect other people from the threat of demonic armored beast. Dueling between students is also a common way to settle dispute (though it was banned after the case a horrible power abuse). According to the game's storyline, the student of this academy including player character will continue to fight and form bonds with each other, so the school life here will definitely won't be boring.
- The consequences of this trope is Deconstructed in Pale, where the Blue Heron Institute's misadventures actually end up hurting the education of the students going there.
- Pale Lights: The Watch uses The Scholomance, the annexed summer palace of Lucifer himself, as a training ground for their best and brightest students. The school itself is a shifting labyrinth filled to the brim with monsters, deadly traps, and ancient treasures that the malevolent god animating the building will try to use to lure you to your demise; students are free to roam the island Scholomance is located on as they see fit, being left to their own devices when it comes to finding shelter, surviving the petty squabbles of the student princelings, and avoiding the sadistic monsters that infest everywhere beyond the central port town; and the bloody wars for control of the island have left echoes of past events in the spirit world, which students can accidentally wander into—and, if their luck is especially bad, meet an imprint of Lucifer himself. The curriculum makes Scholomance part Military Academy, part Wizarding School, and part Spy School, with a high expectation for student casualties—something the Watch considers to be well worth the trade when the survivors are granted enhanced powers that make them capable of standing in the direct presence of gods.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Camp Half-Blood is a summer camp designed to protect the children of Greek Gods, and teach them battle skills — but if that doesn't count as a school, then every school Percy's been to counts, because monsters just can't get enough of his godly goodness.
- Please Don't Tell My Parents I've Got Henchmen: Northeast West Hollywood Middle turns into a place where weirdness is just accepted as children reveal their superpowers. Such as:
- The protagonist is a Mad Scientist prone to inventive fugue states.
- Cassie flaunting her electricity powers with her electrified hair.
- Sue using her shadow powers to help teachers pass out tests.
- Mirabelle moving into the school being relatively unremarkable despite being made of glass.
- An unnamed kid having rainbow scales.
- The Protector And The Annihilation has a curious variety centering on both university and high school students. They all attend magical schools that help them vie for the role of The Protector of Worlds, as well as travel their planet to rid it of monsters that arrive from an Spirit World location called The Boundless.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Justified. Kimberly Magic Academy is a Wizarding School built on top of a labyrinth that is full of monsters, dangerous environments, and unhinged upperclassmen who have no qualms about harming fellow students. The school provides very little protection from any of these things and it's up to the students themselves to look out for each other, which is intended as Training from Hell for an order of Military Mages called Gnostic Hunters.
- The Scholomance: The titular Wizarding School is an especially dark version. Not only is it ungoverned by adults and infested by deadly monsters, the school itself is an Eldritch Location that appears to have a will of its own and manipulates the students to feed on their misery.
- The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School and The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School are set in one of these. The school was deliberately established as an educational institution for "unusual" students (supernatural powers, criminal mastermind parents, etc.), so it's probably only to be expected. Being built on weak spot in the wall between dimensions probably doesn't help.
- The Seven Realms Series gives us Oden's Ford, a world-famous academy that teaches everything from magic, to the art of war, to how to be a proper lady. Most of book two takes place there. The Imagery is spectacular.
- In the Star Wars Legends, the various Jedi and Sith academies all have shades of this. It is especially notable in the Jedi Academy trilogy and the Young Jedi Knights series.
- In The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin, Roanoke Academy for Sorcerous Arts. Day three has the heroine musing that she's made friends, gone flying, discovered a world-spanning conspiracy, prevented a murder, and already been to the infirmary twice (once for ending on the wrong side of a Baleful Polymorph spell, once to rescue a classmate being drained by an wraith), and "hoping" the rest of the year won't be so eventful.
- Saint Vladimir's Academy from Vampire Academy. A school for Moroi vampires and dhampirs, taught by older Moroi vampires and dhampirs. Plenty of magic going on, political scheming and plots, and battleground for a Strigoi invasion in Shadow Kiss.
- Somewhat Zig-Zagged by Jade Mountain Academy in Wings of Fire. The school was founded in the aftermath of a twenty-year-long war to educate dragonets from the different warring cultural groups and prevent future wars. The hope was that the dragonets would come to see each other as friends and realize that they’re all not so different after all. Of course, having former child soldiers who fought on different sides become roommates backfires massively, with a bomb plot killing two students and injuring another just two days after the grand opening. Two weeks after the school opens, and the student population has dropped from 35 to 23 as a combined result of a series of incidents (including the aforementioned bomb plot) resulting in two deaths and several students running off. There’s also hints that several other students may have elected to pack up and go home off-screen. The icing on the cake is a literal battle being fought over the school. By now, Jade Mountain Academy has garnered a reputation as a place where frequently lethal chaos occurs on a regular basis, leading many of the dragon queens to be reluctant about a second attempt. However, it’s now been approximately six months into the new attempt, with nothing noteworthy having gone down, and plot focus has moved away from the school.
Live-Action TV
- In Buffy the Vampire Slayer the Hellmouth that made Sunnydale a City of Adventure was located right underneath the local high school, so Sunnydale High was this in a big way.
Xander: Something weird is going on. Isn't that our school motto?
- Community: Greendale Community College has all of the madcap, wacky adventures you could ever hope to find at any college, except that the stakes are usually irrelevant to any normal person.
- Coal Hill School in Doctor Who and its spinoff Class (2016) — it has had three of the Doctor's companions (or four, depending on how you define 'companion') as teachers, at least three aliens as staff or students (Susan, Charlie and Ms. Quill) and the Doctor himself as a caretaker. All this timey-wimey activity has made the school a hotspot for tears in time through which all manner of alien threats emerge.
- The unnamed boarding school in House of Anubis (at least, for those who live in the titular Anubis House).
- Smart Brain High School in Kamen Rider Decade is the battle ground of the Orphnochs and Kamen Rider Faiz, effectively making it a canon High School AU of the original show. What's worse is that Lucky Clover, the school's popular clique that rules with an iron fist, are all Orphnochs too. So is Faiz himself.
- Amanogawa High School is an Elaborate University High that features a secret Cool Base on the moon, a Humongous Mecha, and the belt that allows you to transform into Kamen Rider Fourze. And that's before the Zodiarts show up.
- Legacies: The Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted qualifies as this.
- The action of Li'l Horrors never moves outside the grounds of Maug Stone Hall: an All-Ghouls School.
- Whitechapel High School in My Babysitter's a Vampire qualifies. Something extranormal happens on a weekly basis.
- Reefside High in Power Rangers: Dino Thunder. A natural consequence of having The Dragon for a principal and a five-time Ranger for a science teacher. And the second guy's substitute teacher was the good half of the Big Bad himself.
- And it's not even the first Power Rangers show to have the action revolving around a school; the idea was first introduced in Power Rangers Ninja Storm, though most of the school was actually missing for much of the season. Even in Power Rangers Jungle Fury, there are some episodes that take place in their kung fu academy. While the concept of the Power Rangers being teenagers and/or in school isn't new-it first showed up in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers-there are few shows within the franchise that specifically show the Rangers in school. Some-particularly Power Rangers Mystic Force-imply that the Rangers are high schoolers, but never outright state that they are, as we never see them actually attending school like we do with the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers through Power Rangers in Space teams or a number of later teams.
- Mokryeon High school in The School Nurse Files. This school is built on top of a pond, which is infested by monsters.
- Smallville High was one of these, with plenty of students and teachers turning into insane monsters and/or dying horribly. Plus Superman was also a student there...
- Strange Hill High: The story follows the unusual and absurd occurrences that happen at the inner-city school `Strange Hill High'. Students Mitchell, Tanner, Becky Butters, and Templeton find themselves in the middle of every event, as they try to unravel the school's secrets and mysteries.
- Strange Days At Blake Holsey High is set in one of these. An experiment Gone Horribly Wrong at the quantum physics facility next door makes the school a nexus for strange events.
- Beacon Hills High School in Teen Wolf. It has five werewolves currently attending it, a werewolf hunter as its (former) principal, and at least a few teachers who are aware of or involved with the supernatural themselves. A lot of weird stuff happens there.
- Unnatural History: Smithson High is one especially since the "DOUM Room" has many undocumented artifacts of the National Museum Complex.
- Wednesday: The main setting of the series, Nevermore Academy, is a school for supernatural students such as vampires, gorgons, and sirens. It also happens to be steeped in mysteries, conspiracies, and murders. With the arrival of Wednesday Addams, they all boil to the surface.
- WizTech in Wizards of Waverly Place.
- Cheiron's Academy from Young Hercules, where Herc, Iolaus, Jason, Lilith, and others learn to be heroes. The school is often a target due to Ares and other gods' hatred of Hercules. Other episodes show the school also happens to be near a Bacchae cave, deserts home to man-eating monsters, the Forge of Hephaestus, and Artemis's Sacred Grove. An episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys revisited the place, where the now older heroes began instructing a new generation.
Manhua
- My Girlfriend Is A Villain: All the students in Blake Academy are trained in live combat, and the main characters frequently have to dodge kidnapping and assassination attempts.
- The Cassel College in Dragon Raja -The Blazing Dawn- is dedicated to training half-dragon hybrids for the purpose of slaying the titular Draconic Abomination.
Podcasts
- In Dungeons & Doctorates Firamustus University is one of the largest education institutions on the continent (if not the world). It has everything a major university would have, but magnified due to the fantastical setting. With an Alchemy Department instead of Chemistry, Artificers instead of Engineering, a Necromancy Department, Barbarians studying Sports Medicine and numerous student societies that could incite events (the Adventurers Appreciation Society and Enigma Society, especially), there is never a dull week for the characters.
Tabletop Games
- The Defender academy in Age of Aquarius. The final exams are field missions that combine combat against actual foes and magic use.
- Breakfast Cult is set in an outwardly-lighthearted take on such an academy, in a world where magic and science were combined, ushering in a new age of progress. Players take on the role of students at Occultar Academy, and gradually uncover the sinister goings-on behind the scenes.
- GURPS Illuminati University is set in one of these.
Video Games
- Board Game Online has a random event at the Academy of Adventure, where players can sacrifice their next turn and some rupees in exchange for a permanent passive skill taught by various professors, some from other media's.
- Bully has Bullworth Academy, which is filled with various cliques that are constantly at each other's throats as well as staff that range from dysfunctional to outright corrupt.
- PSP JRPG Class of Heroes.
- Maritsu Evil Academy from Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice. The school's campus is so gigantic that it encompasses most of the world (And presumably will be the world eventually, due to its constant expansion). As such, traversing things like icy wastelands and lava-filled ruins to get to a class isn't out of the ordinary, making the "adventure" part of the trope's name quite literal in this case.
- Escape From St. Mary's has time travelers, aliens, a random knight in shining armor, kung-fu battles, angry cannibals...
- Final Fantasy VIII has the Gardens, such as Balamb and Galbadia, which are military academies.
- The main setting of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the Officers Academy at Garreg Mach Monastery, located at the center of the continent of Fódlan. It’s operated by one of the most powerful institutions on the continent, the Church of Seiros, and the students of the academy are tasked with putting down threats to the peace, from bandit attacks to rebellions against the church. Early on the player chooses from one of three classes of students to instruct in the ways of combat and leadership, and it is where the player spends most of their downtime.
- Link and Zelda are students at the Skyloft Knight Academy in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Zelda's father is the headmaster.
- Lunar: Walking School has a Wizarding School located on an island that travels across the ocean as its primary setting. The main characters are entirely-to-mostly (depending on version) magic students who seem to spend more time getting up to hijinks/saving the world than attending classes.
- Monark has Shin Mikado Academy, an Elevator School and Elaborate University High. It's not a positive nor a voluntary example, when the school suddenly finds itself cut off from the outside world by a mysterious barrier, insanity inducing Mist floods several of its buildings, and they're terrorized by supernatural beings called Daemons, led by the powerful Monarks, and being helped by their human collaborators, Pactbearers. Much of the game involves the "True Student Council" trying to get things back to normal, battling otherworldly dangers and their personal demons.
- Leafmore High School in ObsCure. It was an Elaborate University High even before it was crawling with monsters, the principal built the place as a cover for his mad science experiments, and you explore every nook and cranny of it. The sequel, meanwhile, has Fallcreek University, where the latest fad is a drug made from the mortifilia plant and the campus fraternity is actually a cover for a secret society.
- Persona plays with this trope depending on the entry.
- Persona 1 has the St. Hermelin High, which on its own hosts a mask holding the sealed goddess Nyx, which is used in the school's traditional play "the Snow Queen" and kills every person who wears it. If the box containing the mask is unsealed (fortunately going by that route is optional), the school turns into an Eldritch Location / dungeon ruled by Nyx. And even without all that, it shortly becomes the target of a Zombie Apocalypse.
- Persona 2 has two of them.
- In Innocent Sin, Seven Sisters High, named after the Pleiades, has a clock tower haunted by the ghost of a teacher who apparently commited suicide there, and the Naruhatu stone in the back yard serves as an entrance to the mystical Silver River which leads to Xibalba. In addition, there is a curse which melts the face of the students, and the statue of the principal is moving somehow. Not to mention all the demons that invaded the school. Eventually this trope is subverted when it turns out that all this nonesense is caused by the rumour curse and the school was never supposed to have supernatural properties. None of these things apply in Eternal Punishment, but in both games it serves as the first dungeon of the game.
- Kasugayama High School, an all-boys school with a reputation of being full of delinquents, is filled to the brim with demons in both games. In the second game it gets to the point that they have shifts guarding the entrance to the basement (where the more dangerous demons are) and a local monk sends his son there to get some practice exorcising demons. The basement in question is a Bomb Shelter apparently used in WWII. In Innocent Sin there is a curse on it that hides the exit unless you know the trick to it, and in the second you find an Apocalyptic Log from a little girl that took refuge from the bombings.
- Persona 3: Gekkoukan High is a perfectly normal (if unusually cool, being on an artificial island) school during the day, but midnight is a different story. At midnight the Dark Hour strikes, and the school transforms into Tartarus, an enormous tower / Eldritch Location that spews out Shadows. The school has a dedicated club called SEES to deal with them and explore Tartarus. In addition, any person who happens to be on schoolgrounds at the time of the transformation gets trapped into Tartarus unless someone rescues them.
- Averted in Persona 4. The teachers are quirky, but nothing odd happens in the school.
- Subverted in Persona 5. Shujin Academy is technically the first dungeon, but that's because it's connected to the Palace of the gym teacher. Nothing odd happens at the school itself (save for the gym teacher's behavior) in the real world, and once the Phantom Thieves get rid of the Palace and the gym teacher quits, the school goes back to being completely normal.
- In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, the Player Character is a student at Naranja/Uva Academy, a school that educates people from various regions across a wide range of age groups in Pokémon training as well as conventional topics. They take the "adventure" part literally and have an independent study program called the "Treasure Hunt" in which they allow the students to roam the region and find themselves but still come back for classes on occasion.
- In The Indigo Disk DLC, the player character attends Blueberry Academy as an exchange student. The academy is in the ocean near Unova, with a large underwater Terarium containing four biomes and many wild Pokémon, and the player challenges the League Club's Elite Four and Champion.
- While it's a summer camp and not a school, Psychonauts's Whispering Rock is an ordinary, mundane Summer Campy, if one mixed with a Superhero School.
- Territoire for Windows by EasyGameStation. Main character Facil becomes Student Council President and fights battles along with her "students" in this TRPG.
- Tracen Academy in Umamusume: Pretty Derby is a downplayed case: while the glitz and glamour of becoming a racer in the Twinkle Series is obviously its main draw, it's still ultimately a high school (if an admittedly elite one) and the students still have to do regular subjects like maths, English and history on top of training for races. Cinderella Gray also shows that you don't even have to be a racer to attend Tracen, as there's a Support Course for students more interested in becoming things like farriers, scientists and doctors.
- Valkyrie Drive -Bhikkhuni- is set on an artificial island that also serves as boarding school for its inhabitants. The classes go from the normal topics to scheduled battles between the alumni set by their giant, robot teachers.
Visual Novels
- Danganronpa's Hope's Peak Academy, where only students with super-talents are admitted (though those talents do not need to be productive.) Then they start killing each other.
- In Marco & the Galaxy Dragon, Isezaki Academy teaches its students to protect the town of Gold Cord from mutants and alien invaders with lethal force, in addition to more mundane subjects.
Webcomics
- Saint Scarlet's Combat Academy from Cendaran Marael. Even setting aside the name for a moment, let's start with the bit where one of the students in the inaugural class is part of a First Contact squad and go from there...
- In Girl Genius, the school aboard Castle Wulfenbach. It provides schooling and training for the future rulers of Europe and further afield (at least one from China, one from India and one from the Middle East), and the fact that a lot of them are Sparks or the children of Sparks means that there are a lot of shenanigans. Their carer/teacher/mother figure is Super-Soldier and Dark Action Girl Von Pinn, which doesn't improve things. Baron Wulfenbach just generally seems resigned by it all.
- The University of Paris is another one due to the large percentage of sparks in the student body. The Master seems to like using the sparks in the student body to deal with the troublemaking sparks that Paris attracts as a means of keeping both groups occupied and out of his hair.
- Both high schools in Moperville from El Goonish Shive fits this description.
- Mostly because the whole town does. There's a snide mention that Moperville's newspaper is regarded with the same respect as a tabloid everywhere outside of the town.
- South fits the description more than north. Physics teachers react to levitation with nothing more than a sigh.
- Setting for the eponymous Gunnerkrigg Court.
- The Institute Of Metaphysics.
- The comic M.A. in Dragon Slaying is a tabletop adventure/comedy comic that features an adventurer's collegiate life.
- The York facility for training heroes from Surprising Octeal is described as, "sort of like a university campus".
- In Tower of God, the second floor (the Floor of Test) serves as one of these, teaching new Regulars the basics of what they'll need in order to climb the tower.
Web Original
- Played with, but ultimately subverted with Temple Academy in Adventures in Jedi School. Jedi School sounds like it could be awesome, but most of its curriculum seems to be either basic gen-ed classes or about how to build and maintain a lightsaber. You don't even get to actually use the damn thing until at least 22 years in.
- Arcana Magi Universe: Wizarding School Memorial Academy
- Silas University from Carmilla the Series. There's magic, vampires, and a crazy alchemy club, just to list a few things.
- Elfen High is one of these, though it seems to vary between everyone having sex and actual world saving.
- Fire Emblem on Forums:
- Solrise Academy: The titular academy is this, along with every single other Elerian academy, as they train students to fight the monstrous Fiends and rescue people from Calamities, supermassive natural disasters that spawn Fiends and cause massive damage everywhere they go.
- Upcoming Grave Academy, while being a monster school on a Haunted Castle on a Überwald 'verse, is also this.
- In New Vindicators, this trope is present with the various Vindicator Academies, which most main characters are enrolled in or alumni of.
- RWBY features the Huntmen Academies of the Four Kingdoms, which train the next generation of Huntsmen and Huntresses to keep civilization safe from the Grimm. It's eventually revealed that they double as the secret resting places of four powerful McGuffins.
- Wildcliff, School of the Arcane, the main setting of Trials & Trebuchets, seems to attract an inordinate amount of danger for the Player Characters to get caught up in.
- Famous YouTube contributor Freddie Wong directs the YouTube series Video Game High School, in which becoming a professional video game player is a legitimate and lucrative career, and graduates from VGHS are assured a successful future. Students don't study physics, but physics engines; they don't play varsity football, but varsity FPS. If your class rank drops below zero, then you're expelled. Naïve Newcomer Brian. D gets lucky and earns admittance into the school by winning against VGHS's stop student, Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy, The Law.
- Whateley Universe: Superhero School Whateley Academy.
Western Animation
- Hamilton Hill High School is this in Batman Beyond is perhaps an unintended example (in-universe, of course). Aside from Terry "Batman" McGinnis and Max "Reckless Sidekick" Gibson, this school has a Flash Thompson-esque Jerk Jock, a Lovable Alpha Bitch who seems to attract trouble, a student who dated a sexy psycho robot, a student whose step-father had a short career as a villain, a student whose thought-to-have-been-dead birth father tried to kill her adopted father, an avid gamer who almost helps a villain kill someone, no less than four students who are villains, a coach who attacked Batman in an attempt to protect his Venom-using students, and a guidance counselor who moonlit as a super villain until he turned to supervillainy full time when he was fired from his job at the school.
- Codename: Kids Next Door features a school where some of the students are in a global organization bent on guaranteeing freedom for children worldwide, teachers who oppose this group, corrupt members of the student council who try to ensure that snow days never occur, playgrounds with hidden paths to volcanoes, etc. The secret temple that leads to the Fountain of Youth, kindergarteners that are practically wild animals, Wild West situations... the list goes on and on.
- Justified in Code Lyoko with the Kadic College: XANA targets almost exclusively said college because the Lyoko-Warriors usually are here. Ironically, none of the events that happen remain in the memory because the Lyoko-Warriors possess their own personal Reset Button.
- Casper High in Danny Phantom qualifies. It's a wonder the teachers could get any teaching done with ghosts constantly fighting in it.
- Detentionaire's A. Nigma High School. Let's see: a weird snake/dragon/lizard monster thing called a Tazelwurm (who also happens to be the school's mascot) crawling around in the vents, secret passageways literally everywhere, an eye-patched cyborg principal, a mysterious pyramid under the school, most of the teachers being clones of famous people, vacuum-wielding hazmat janitors, mysteries, conspiracies... there's quite a lot of adventure to be had.
- The Berk Dragon Training Academy in Dragons: Riders of Berk is an institution commissioned by Stoick the Vast and granted to his son Hiccup to learn about dragons, record their studies for the tribe and better acclimate dragons into their lives after Hiccup made peace with them in How to Train Your Dragon. Whenever there is a dragon attack or an invasion from an enemy group (the Outcasts, Berserkers, Dragon Hunters, etc.), the team either tries making peace or chases them off on dragon back. The academy is composed of Hiccup, his dragon Toothless, and the other dragon riders that helped defeat the Red Death, later expanding the number of members when a new team was needed.
- The Fairly OddParents!: Timmy Turner's Dimmsdale Elementary not only has to deal with the effects of Timmy's wishes on a regular basis, but the mad fairy-obsessed Mr. Crocker tends to make things crazy as well.
- X Middle School, the main setting of Fillmore!. It's absolutely massive to the point of absurdity, with a diverse student body and faculty ranging from normal to insanely cool while also being a little insane in of themselves. Their after-school activities range from the typical (like the book club or the chess club) to the highly specific (like the club for model train enthusiasts), with the facilities to accommodate them which includes an Olympic size swimming pool. That's not even getting into the premise of the series where the school's Safety Patrol acts as the police force, and how Safety Patrollers regularly have to chase troublemakers throughout the school.
- The eponymous school of the short-lived Canadian cartoon Flying Rhino Junior High. Let's see...the principal is a rhino, the janitor is a pig who used to be spy, a supervillain makes his lair in the school's basement, and the school is anything depending on the episode from a dinosaur-infested jungle to Ancient Rome. Nobody bats an eye at these things.
- My Gym Partner's a Monkey: The show's main focus is about the life of a human boy named Adam Lyon who, due to an error involving misspelling his last name, was transferred to a Charles Darwin Middle School, a school for animals. The school is wild and spacious enough to houses many animals from small critters to large ones.
- Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja is the latest in a long line of ninjas chosen to protect Norrisville High. That might sound a bit silly, if it weren't for the constant mix of Killer Robot attacks and miserable students becoming Ax-Crazy mutant horrors, courtesy of an immortal Evil Sorcerer imprisoned below school grounds.
- Recess: While nothing too out-of-the-ordinary happens, Third Street School usually has something crazy going on every episode.
- The Spectacular Spider-Man: Empire State University (although, the fact that it's a school in addition to having a research lab is barely brought up) ends up being where Electro, The Lizard, and Venom are born.
- Ultimate Spider-Man's Midtown High is where Spider-man and four other hero's attend high school, the school is constantly attacked by dozens of super villains and protected by SHIELD's security system, and its principal is an undercover SHIELD agent.
- The eponymous Boarding School of Vikingskool, where they young Norsemen train in the ways of the Viking warrior. Not only does the curriculum include such subjects as axe-throwing, longboat sailing, troll-slaying, and court intrigue, but its wilderness surroundings (infested with trolls, wild beasts, thieves, and nature spirits) and numerous secrets (from a haunted chamber underneath the school to its centuries of forgotten history) mean that there's always plenty of adventure and misadventure for our heroes to get into.
- Winx Club: All three schools in Magix. Alfea (school for fairies) has many secrets; Cloud Tower turned out to be housing three delinquent teenage witches who never seemed to go to class (and the school was the usual hideout for the season's main villain); Red Fountain is a school for young heroes and the headmaster is a wizard, but none of the boys have magic.