High school can be awkward, boring, or even dangerous at the best of times. A high school is a common setting for a variety of anime genres, from shonen to isekai, and sometimes the place is a sanctuary but not in the following cases. There's an impressive library of anime that either stars or is made for viewers in the high school age bracket, so it makes sense that would be a lot of movies and shows that take place in a high school.
These are high schools that put a whole new spin on the idea of education as an adventure, where academic achievement can just mean survival. There's a wide variety of perilous classrooms that includes boarding schools, martial arts academies, and educational institutions that start at kindergarten and go all the way to college prep. They all involve those precious post-adolescent years in some way. Getting out alive would be the catchphrase in every yearbook from these deadly hallways.
5 Death Weapon Meister Academy – Soul Eater
The name of a dangerous high school isn't always this straightforward, but the students who attend this high school have precarious lives already with an even more horrifying future ahead of them. Their school is located in Death City and was founded by Death himself, so there's no point even trying to hide it, unlike some other anime locations.
The school has a long and chilling history that goes back several centuries and includes a battle with a Kinshin, which is a dangerous and destructive monster, a group of assassins known as the Star Clan, and an ongoing battle with the Witch Order. Any of the students and teachers, including Death himself, get caught up in these ongoing battles. Part of the homework for students, who are training to be weapon Meisters, is to work with their demon weapons and gather souls.
4 Hyakkou Private Academy – Kakegurui
The perfectly manicured gardens and polished marble walls of this upscale private school hide a perilous situation within. Despite the appearance of a normal curriculum complete with exams, reading lists, and regular homework, the real subject of study among the idle rich is gambling. Students play games based on kids' contests like Rock-Paper-Scissors as much as more conventional games like poker or even Russian roulette, and the stakes are always counted in the millions of yen.
The stakes are high in these games, where students come from rich families and have vast fortunes to spend on nothing. The vindictive and sadistic student council president has instituted a system in which students who can't pay their debts become "pets," which is a veritable slave class. Students with this designation have to wear a special lanyard that marks them out to other students as the targets of bullying, insults, and other gruesome punishments.
3 Ninja Academy – Naruto
Usually referred to as Akademī, which means a school specifically for ninjas in Japanese, any school that teaches the ways of martial arts would have to be dangerous and this one even more so. This school is one of the main settings for one of history's most popular shonen anime and is one of the dominant buildings in Konohagakure, or Hidden Leaf Village, in the Land of Fire.
Ninjas are not only trained here but also receive their assignments at the school which also functions as a military headquarters and the home of the Hokage's office, which means it's also a potential enemy target. The Taijutsu, Ninjutsu, and Genjutsu classes include the potentially dangerous martial arts part of the curriculum. Aside from the ninja classes students also learn more mundane subjects like math and geography.
2 True Cross Academy – Blue Exorcist
The True Cross Academy is considered to be one of the most exclusive in Japan. The students that attend this prestigious school are from some of the most elite families in the world, and the underworld. The big secret is that the students here are training to be exorcists, and the main character's dark secret is that he's related to none other than Satan himself.
Some schools have auditoriums and cafeterias, and this one does as well, but it also has an Asylum and a Deep Keep. The Asylum is the former training academy grounds where most of the events of the Blue Night took place when Satan possessed the bodies of several Exorcists and made an unholy mess. The Deep Keep is the lowest level of the school and is where most of the most powerful magical items are stored, hidden, or guarded.
1 Fujimi High School – Highschool Of The Dead
As the name indicates, Fujimi High School is strictly for students between the ages of 15 and 18 years old. Some shots of this place that show the gray concrete rooftop make it look like a giant mausoleum, and that's not far from the ironic truth. Unlike certain other high schools in anime, this one is dangerous in the sense that it's being infested with an undead plague and the question is whether or not our heroes can escape.
The storyline behind Highschool of the Dead is a zombie apocalypse, and as it is with this genre, the plot focuses on a small group of survivors that have to survive. Eventually, they manage to escape on a bus and the school itself is left abandoned.