This trope tends to occur more in Japanese media since in Japan, students largely stay in their homeroom while teachers rotate in and out throughout the day. This is in contrast to the United States, where students in secondary education typically spend only a few minutes at the beginning of the day in homeroom before parting ways and going to different teachers' classrooms. As such, realistically-portrayed school-aged characters in American media tend to cross paths with each other, rather than stick together in one wacky group. (At The Good Old British Comp, the students move to different classrooms, but usually en masse.)
Rule of Funny and/or Rule of Cool often apply. Often present in an Extranormal Institute, such as a Superhero School. May be the focus of an Intra-Scholastic Rivalry.
For a similar trope outside a school setting, see Ragtag Bunch of Misfits.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The TV series of All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku introduced a class of walking cliches for Nuku-Nuku to interact with. They're even introduced with an appropriate tag such as 'Snobby Rich Girl' or 'Nihilistic Pretty-Boy' whenever they appear on stage. This was noticeably absent from the OVA, where Nuku-Nuku went to school once, prompting the destruction of most of the premises in a fight between her and an attack helicopter. They didn't try to send her to school again.
- Assassination Classroom has Class E, the "misfit" class that all of the main characters belong to.
- Azumanga Daioh is a relatively low-key example, but the main characters are still a pretty eccentric bunch. You've got Sakaki, the tall, intimidating, quiet girl with a softer side; Tomo, the pushy and enthusiastic "wildcat high-school girl"; Yomi, Tomo's straight-laced friend; Osaka, the space-cadet transfer student; and Chiyo, the adorable kid genius. To top it off, their homeroom teacher is not much more mature than her students.
- Ichigo's homeroom in Bleach could certainly be described as wacky. Outside of the fact that the teacher regularly mocks the students, the room has been invaded by shinigami multiple times, and one time Kon showed up in Ichigo's body. In all cases, the room was essentially destroyed. Oh, and the teacher doesn't even seem to care about Ichigo and his friends either not turning up for class or running out in the middle of it.
- While the cast of Cromartie High School (which includes a Tin-Can Robot, a gorilla, a 30-year-old felon wearing a luchador mask, a man who may or may not be Freddie Mercury, and many, many delinquents) are technically spread out among several homerooms (and some are from other high schools entirely,) there's never any actual classes going on and all the Cromartie characters often just end up hanging out anyway.
- The cast of The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.. The entire series is set in a Cloud Cuckoo Land with the main classroom consisting of a Nice Guy who frequently crosses the Too Dumb to Live line, a dorky Large Ham with Chuunibyou, the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing School Idol who has an Awesome Ego, a hopeless romantic In Love with Love, a hammy Lovable Jock that treats everything as Serious Business, a Big Eater who constantly has to work to make ends meet for her family, an ex-delinquent with a Hair-Trigger Temper, and the titular Saiki K, a virtually all-powerful psychic and the Only Sane Man.
- Doki Doki School Hours: It starts with the teacher, Mika Suzuki, "Mika-sensei" to her students, who is just a little over four feet tall and has no stamina to speak of. Her students include Kudo, an openly gay student who gets high-pressure nosebleeds when he thinks about his crush, the athletic, dim-witted, and oblivious Suetake. Then there's the "Old Man", a student who looks and acts like he should be forty. Then there's Seki, a young man who likes girls AND their clothes (as in wearing them himself). For the girls, we have Kobayashi, who is suffering Perpetual Poverty and Weight Woe. Tominaga has a sharp tongue, and sharper knives for her cooking, as well as a love of slasher movies. Iincho is infatuated with male pop star Koro. And Kitagawa is openly infatuated with Mika-sensei, and delights in mildly sadistic behavior towards her, like offering her chocolates and then pulling them out of her reach.
- The Eldoran series: Zettai Muteki Raijin-Oh and Nekketsu Saikyo Gosaurer.
- Averted in Fruits Basket. Aside from the main characters, their class is actually pretty normal. It serves as a stark contrast to the Sohma clan, and highlights the desire of the Members of the Zodiac to be normal.
- Great Teacher Onizuka has a suicidal Bully Magnet gamer who becomes Onizuka's first friend at the school, a prankster who creates embarrassing photoshops of him, and a student who will go to any lengths, including gluing Onizuka's hands into bowling balls and bungee jumping off a bridge to prevent Onizuka from dating his mother, to name a few.
- Isekai Quartet: This show is what happens when you takes the casts of four different series and put them all in the same High School AU
- Komi Can't Communicate: It's established early on that Itan Academy's entrance exam is mostly a formality, and the school accepts students on having a stand-out personality. This means pretty much the whole school is full of weirdos and misfits. Komi and Tadano's classroom is no exception; in addition to the beautiful but socially-awkward Komi and the aggressively normal Tadano, there's Tadano's androgynous and mischievous childhood friend Najimi Osana, yandere Komi fangirl Ren Yamai, delinquent-looking martial artist Makoto Katai, egomaniacal pretty-boy Shisuto Naruse, and more.
- Miss Machiko had a very colorful homeroom and the quirkiness branched off into other teachers and members of the faculty as well.
- My Hero Academia has Class 1-A. They run the gamut of personalities, from a goth, a punk rocker, a cocky delinquent, a vain, glitz-obsessed guy, two straight-laced class reps, a token pervert, etcetera. And that's without taking into account that this is a homeroom at a Superhero School, and they've all got superpowers. And, as of Joint Training Arc, Class 1-B is no slouch either — from those who've been introduced so far, they have a petty rival of 1-A, a Cool Big Sis class rep, two foreign students, a token religious Jesus lookalike, a goth, a Sugar-and-Ice Personality, a mushroom-specific Pungeon Master, a guy whose head is a speech bubble...
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi. "Wacky" in this case means badass and/or crazy in a Fantasy Kitchen Sink. There's a vampire, a robot, a ghost, a ninja, and a time-traveling Martian, and even the ones without any powers are pretty wacky to begin with.
- Nichijou: As pictured above. Emphasis on the wacky. Practically the class is a dysfunction junction. Starting from our protagonist, Mio who beats up her friend, the mayor, a goat, and a police officer for accidentally looking at her yaoi art, the ditz, Yuuko, a very unlucky person, and also the butt of every joke involving her, and Mai, the genius troll in the class. This class is also filled with robots, redhead Tsunderes with heavy weaponry, a boy riding a goat in class, a child of a millionaire, and a girl that often sneezes.
- Rosario + Vampire has shades of this, especially in season 2, when the entire Unwanted Harem ends up in the same class together. And then there's their teacher.
- Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei has a psychotic group of dysfunctional students, headed by a suicidal teacher, all played for very dark laughs.
- School Rumble: Class 2-C is a bit...off. We have Tenma, the Cloud Cuckoo Lander, who is crushing on Kurasuma, who is mostly a Flat Character. Tenma is also the subject of a crush from ex-delinquent Harima, who secretly draws manga in his spare time, but can still kick an ass or two. Hanai is Hot-Blooded and seemingly has No Indoor Voice. Akira is aloof but seemingly knows everything going on at any given time, and may or may not be a spy for the Japanese government when she's not in class. Mikoto Suou is Childhood Friends with Hanai, and her bestie is the half-Japanese Eri, who is a Lonely Rich Kid who may be crushing on Harima, but who can tell. Then there's Ichijo, who can lift a piano effortlessly despite her petite frame, as well as the guy she's crushing on, the Chivalrous Pervert Imadori.
- Right next door is Class 2-D, which would be perfectly normal, except for a trio of very...expressive exchange students. Harry McKenzie (whose name gets him mistaken for Harima from time to time) is an Expy of Char from Gundam. Togou is as Hot-Blooded as Hanai and often steals the latter's thunder. And Lara has a one-sided rivalry with Karen Ichijo because her name reminds her of her Missing Mom, who ran out on her as a child.
- Sketchbook is about an art club rather than a classroom, but the elements of the trope are all in place.
- The cast of Soul Eater qualify, as the main characters are students of an academy funded by Death itself for the purpose of capturing souls with wacky personalities outside of the protagonist Maka, with a bombastic ego-driven ninja Black-Star, the Thompson sisters who were former criminals, or the symmetry obsessed son of the Grim Reaper, Death the Kid. Not to mention their homeroom teachers are a Mad Scientist based on Doctor Frankenstein and an undead zombie based on the Frankenstein monster.
- Usagi-chan de Cue!!: Students in Haru's classroom seem to have the run of the place, as the teacher is only seen once, escorting Koshka from the headmaster's office. Haru studies his animal care books and keeps a rabbit hutch on the school's roof. Miku tries to get the oblivious Haru to take her out, and orbits his desk. Humanoid Mimika straight up spends the school day hugging Haru, using her low-level telepathy to convince everyone else there's nothing weird about that. The girls in the classroom even conduct a fundraiser by strapping Miku and Mimika to plasterboard, and have boys pay to be a firing squad using paper blowgun darts.
- Wasteful Days of High School Girls: Most of the cast are Only Known by Their Nickname. "Baka"(Idiot) is the Book Dumb girl who gave the rest of the class their nicknames. "Wota" (Otaku) is an aspiring manga artist who can't draw a bent knee to save her life and is really into BL. "Robo" (Robot) is the seemingly emotionless girl who may or may not be carrying weapons-grade bacteria on her person. "Yamai"(Sickness) is a Chuunibyou sufferer who seems to perpetually be in the doghouse with their teacher for her poor grades. "Loli" is sixteen, but looks like she should be in grade school, and still believes in Santa Claus. She is also ignorant of the Birds and the Bees, and no one can bring themselves to tell her the truth for fear of corrupting her. "Majime" (a pun that has no English equivalent) is a boyish-looking girl who has lots of "fans" around the school (though she seems clueless as to why). "Majo" (Witch) has an obsession with gory films and the occult. Lily has no nickname, but she's a very open lesbian who is literally allergic to men...and Baka (a blind test by Robo confirms it as a genuine allergy). And their teacher, "Waseda" (a prominent university in Japan) begins their first class by informing them that he's not into high school girls and that they shouldn't fall for him, because he prefers college girls. He's also a Vocaloid song composer in secret, whose work is a big hit with Wota.
Comics
Literature
- A Certain Magical Index features quite a few colorful characters in the protagonist Touma's homeroom, although they aren't the main focus of the series.
- Hogwarts of Harry Potter fame is all about this, especially in the early installments. When your school specializes in teaching magic, there's bound to be some truly weird and wild things happening among the students.
- The Wayside School series, originally a set of books by Louis Sachar and since animated, focuses on the antics of Ms. Jewls' eccentric classroom at the eponymous school.
- Discworld: Susan Sto Helit is a proper young woman, who is entirely sober and rational and will not stand for even the usual amounts of silliness that a child usually displays. When she becomes a teacher in Thief of Time, her class is extremely well-behaved and sensible. She just happens to take them on literal trips through time and space without ever leaving the classroom. Because she's Death's granddaughter. But she keeps her past so quiet that her employer is surprised even to find out that she is a Duchess. Having said that, a few students do have personalities that push them into Wacky Homeroom territory: Vincent the overachiever, Penelope the Brainless Beauty, and Jason the Enfant Terrible.
- Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan takes place in a high school that, among other things, have cheerleaders who do their routines on motorcycles.
- During the late eighties, Scholastic had a YA book series called Homeroom. As it was Exactly What It Says on the Tin, it followed the misadventures of an 8th grade homeroom. It had all the stock YA characters: the Alpha Bitch, Jerk Jock, etc.
- The Worst Room In The School was set in an overcrowded, out-of-date K-8 school centered around fifth grade class held in a converted storeroom off the gym.
Live-Action TV
- The Brazilian show "Escolinha do Professor Raimundo" (and its more recent copycats) is (and are) centered around one such homeroom(s).
- Saved by the Bell focused on one set of students and no main teachers, but they somehow always shared the same classes, subverting this trope. The first season, however, played it completely straight since it was originally called Good Morning Miss Bliss and took place mostly inside one classroom.
- Community. Although set in a local community college rather than grade school (and with a study group instead of a classroom), many of the same elements are still present, such as the Ensemble Cast and the themes.
- The '70s Brit Com Please Sir! was set in a classroom full of suspiciously over-age looking fifteen year olds.
Video Games
- Persona 3 and Persona 4 both feature this, which is unsurprising, as both games feature a band of high school students secretly fighting monsters outside of muggle perception. Even not counting them, there's the pronounced tendency of both schools to hire Bunny-Ears Lawyer teachers.
- The classroom is this in The Magic School Bus video games to an even greater degree than in the books or the show. Rainforest doubles down by turning the classroom into a miniature tropical jungle when you complete the main Fetch Quest.
Liz: Click around! Look for surprises!
Webcomics
- Largo's class in Megatokyo. Not only is it taught
by resident Cloudcuckoolander Largo, but some of its more colorful members include a Robot Girl, an enigmatic Elegant Gothic Lolita who may very well be a Dark Magical Girl, and a class representative who practices Enjo Kosai and has an alcoholic dad. Also, the class's first field trip involved them taking on a horde of fanboys/zombies.
- Zoophobia's drama and film classes are as wacky, colorful, and eccentric as they come. The drama class's teacher calls her students "sparkling turtle doves".
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: There are over twenty students in Miss Simian's class, all of whom get fleshed out with distinct personality quirks over the course of the series.
- Class of 3000 focuses on the antics of the school's quirky music class, with its 7 members each having their own distinct personality.
- Fangbone!: Bill and Fangbone's third-grade classroom is made up of their circle of friends — all of whom are very quirky characters with their own unusual habits. They sometimes help Bill and Fangbone fight Venomous Drool's monsters.
- Gravedale High has a class made up of a Monster Mash that includes a greaser vampire, a nerdy werewolf, a fat mummy, a surfer fishboy, and a valley girl gorgon, just to name a few. Barring the single human teacher, the rest of the school staff is also based on monsters from classic horror movies, adding even more to the wackiness.
- The Magic School Bus series. Ms. Frizzle is decidedly crazy and her class, while not as quirky as some other examples, are unique in their own ways.
- In Miraculous Ladybug, the students all have unique, distinct personalities formed around archetypes. As the seasons progress, they become so accustomed to the supernatural that several of them have fought off or prevented akuma attacks.
- Oswaldo follows the title character's misadventures in middle school, so naturally, the supporting cast is largely composed of an eccentric and colourful band of classmates (although certainly none as as quirky as Oswaldo himself).
- Recess follows a band of 6 grade-schoolers and their interaction with other classmates and teachers.
- Wayside is set at the eponymous incorrectly constructed school and focuses upon the misadventures of one of its classes, in which protagonist Todd is the Only Sane Man.
