I know that sounds absurd at first, but it really isn't.
Otaku Media is a niche subculture in Japan, and their relationship with taking influence from the west is complicated. In the formative years of the subculture in the 70s and 80s a lot clearly was taken and that's why Star Wars and Superman references never feel out of place in Anime. But by the late 90s the culture started becoming increasingly insular, the thing Miyazaki said that got mistranslated and misquoted as "Anime was a Mistake" was all about how annoyed he is at modern Anime refusing to be influenced by stuff other then prior Anime.
Harry Potter did not invent the concept of fantastical magic themed Schools or using one as the setting for a Fantasy story. Western Fantasy Novels with such a concept can be traced back to the 50s. The late 90s saw an increase in such concepts because using even normal school as a setting only became it's own genre in the prior decade.
But since some of these Magic Academy Anime are technically not Magic at all but nominally some sort of SciFi ability, I could add the X-Men comics to the list of things that were kinda this Genre long before Harry Potter.
The one Anime that I do view as maybe explicitly Harry Potter influenced I like is, Little Witch Academia, but maybe not even LWA since two of the Pre-Potter magic School franchises from that video were about specially All Female Witch Schools. Still LWA is distinct from the LN trend I'm principally talking about.
My agenda here is NOT about trying to destroy the legacy of Harry Potter because of the now exposed bigotry of She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. I'm not even a fan of this genre of Anime, I've yet to get through a full cour of a single show where this is it's main genre. However I will recommend while on that subject Chivalry of a Failed Knight since it has an explicit Trans character.
Rather the agenda of mine this post does fit into is my desire to draw attention to how much modern Anime has it's roots in a lot of obscure forgotten 90s Media that was popular within this subculture in Japan but didn't get localized for the West or directly adapted into Anime till 10-20 years later if at all. Like YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at The Bound of This World.
And while I still am far from an expert on that subject I've already found one such piece of hidden Otaku Media that is in fact a Magic School setting before Harry Potter. Lunar: Sanposuru Gakuen (Lunar: Walking School) released in Japan in January of 1996, almost a year and a half before the first Harry Potter book was published. This instalment didn't get a Western Release but it was part of an already popular series.
Even before that there was a Shoujo Manga/Anime series called Akazukin Chaka.
However these kinds of hidden pieces of the puzzle of Anime History are not of interest to Mother's Basement when he makes multiple videos on this genre calling them "Anime Harry Potter knockoffs" for clicks. He's even aware of the differences like the Academy and Magic's existence not being an in-universe secret, and the lack of anything like the house sorting system.
However there is another piece of this puzzle that even these more Normie observers of Anime have less of an excuse to have missed. Final Fantasy VIII released in February of 1999 but was in production already before Final Fantasy VII was even fully released yet and thus also before Harry Potter. And just look at it's early Cut Scenes. It's a Fantastical Academy and the unforms are clearly way more similar to what we've come to expect from Magic Academy Anime then the more generic Harry Potter robes.
Meanwhile the Japanese Translation of the first Harry Potter book wasn't published till December of 1999, Final Fantasy VIII was almost a full year earlier.
Update July 30th: Low and behold like right after I made this Reign of The Seven Spellblades starts airing, a show seemingly calculated to make this post age poorly. But it really only proves my point more, that's what Anime actively trying to evoke Harry Potter looks like, it exposes how not like HP at all the swarm of shows preceding it truly are, all while still managing to be better then Harry Potter in the way only an Anime version of it's premise could be.
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