Let’s face the facts here. If you’re a male anime fan, you like girl’s school uniforms (seifuku) in some way, shape, or form. There are so many school life anime that it’s nigh impossible to avoid exposure to them. I was originally indifferent to seifuku, but they’ve really grown on me over the years for some reason. They just have this cute charm. I’ve classified the uniforms into three different types after the jump.

1. Regular sailor fuku
First we have the classic sailor outfit featured in anime such as To Heart, Shakugan no Shana, Shuffle, and Lucky Star. This kind of uniform has been around forever with many different variations. Hallmarks of the sailor uniform are the shoulder flap, big sleeves, and ribbons or bows of varying size.

The girls of To Heart 2 in pink sailor fuku

The Shuffle girls in sailor fuku

Shana and Kazumi in sailor fuku

2. Western style uniform
Next up is the westernized sweater/blazer look. Examples can be found in titles like Tsukihime (sweater), Bamboo Blade (sweater/blazer), To Love-Ru (sweater/blazer), and School Rumble (blazer). Most notably, these designs tend to use collared shirts and discard the shoulder flap. These uniforms carry a more contemporary appeal, but there’s no consistent look as the designs tend to drastically vary between different series.

Tenma, Yakumo, and Eri in blazer uniforms

The girls of Bamboo Blade show off their western uniforms

Sacchin in a lovely sweater and skirt combo

Sometimes this uniform type changes depending on the season. In Bamboo Blade and To Love-Ru, use of the sweater vest and the blazer alternate between seasons. In School Rumble, the blazer changes between long-sleeve and short-sleeve versions. I’m sure there are schools that exclusively use different length sweaters but can’t really think of any examples right now.

The To Love-Ru girls with school blazers

To Love-Ru’s Haruna in the summer uniform

3. Hybrid uniform
Last is the less commonly seen hybrid which combines the best of both worlds. A hybrid can be any combination of the above two styles. The best example is the Clannad winter uniform which has the sailor shoulder flap built into the school blazer while omitting the ribbon. Additionally on a nonessential point, the Clannad uniform switches from the hybrid to a standard sailor uniform in the summer. What a twist~.

The girls of Clannad in winter uniform

Nagisa in summer uniform

My next example is Kirika from Noir whose uniform is the sweater type with a sailor shoulder flap. This design is an anomaly because it’s unusual to see this particular combination.

Kirika’s uniform (Note the shoulder flap, not the panty shot)

Next we have the Air uniform which sort of looks like a sailor fuku with modern influence, so I’ll lump this into the hybrid section. This one is certainly unusual but charming.

Misuzu: Gao~

So which type is your favorite? I personally prefer the sweater uniform to the standard sailor fuku. If you noticed that I missed a noteable uniform and would like to contribute something, the comments are always open.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Anime, Articles, Otaku.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.