The world has gone anime mad. Or rather, the phone-using, app-hungry, selfie generation has gone anime mad. And if the kids in your school aren’t turning themselves into wannabe cast members of Spirited Away yet, they soon will be.

It’s all the fault of Meitu. This Chinese app lets you edit your selfies to make you look like an anime character. It widens your eyes, glosses your skin and adds a touch of rouge to your cheeks. In less than a second you can turn yourself into a cartoon scribble worthy of a Japanese master.

The app is not new, but for some reason it has suddenly leapt up the App store rankings. Quite why this might be is apparently a mystery, but any secondary school teacher can make an educated guess.

Teens love selfies. Teens also have a weakness for vacuous time-sapping pursuits. And teens love a trend more than an Ofsted inspector loves data.

Snapchat filters held the attention of the teen masses for a while, but it has quickly grown wearisome. Seeking out new ways of manipulating endless pictures of themselves, it was only a matter of time before someone stumbled on Meitu. And once one teen did it, the rest would not be far behind.

Is it anything to worry about in school? No more than any other app. Arguably, being faceswapped without your knowledge would be more offensive than being turned into an anime character - though I guess it depends what you were faceswapped with…

Needless to say, though, this is a trend that will dominate classrooms for some time. So it’s probably best to embrace it rather than fight it. Or at least that seems to be the view of our very own editor Ann Mroz. Studio Ghibli awaits, Ann…

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