AllMovie

An offbeat school project teaches a handful of children some unexpected lessons in this comedy-drama from director Tetsu Maeda. Mr. Hoshi (Satoshi Tsumabuki) is a teacher at a Japanese elementary school who one morning at the beginning of the school year walks into his classroom carrying a piglet. Hoshi tells his students that as a special assignment, they will raise the pig over the course of the school year, and then eat the pig before summer vacation. Hoshi hopes to teach his kids a lesson about the connection between food and living things, and the school principal (Mieko Harada) OK's the project over the objections of her second-in-command (Ren Osugi). The kids build a pen for the pig (now named P-Chan) while taking turns feeding it, cleaning up after it and making sure it's properly cared for. However, as one might expect, the children become attached to P-Chan, and as the end of the school year looms, they begin to furiously debate the ethics of transforming their class mascot into a ham, evolving into an argument about peoples' rights to use animals as they wish. Buta Ga Ita Kyoshitsu (aka School Days With A Pig) received the Audience Award at the 2008 Tokyo International Film Festival.