Eastern Private Defense Academy

"Childish curiosity, a sense of impending danger, constantly fleeing from something. Everyone had their own reasons for choosing this school. But no one imagined they would be forced to prepare for everything so quickly"

- Touko Natori on the Eastern Private Defense Academy

The students of the Eastern Private Defense Academy, located in the Japanese Self-Defense Force Fuji Training Grounds make up the main cast of the 2011 web-anime series Busou Chuugakusei: Basket Army. The series takes place in 2026, by which point a future Japanese government has created a sort of JROTC-like program that allows students to start training for the JSDF as young as middle school. The story follows and a class of middle schoolers at Eastern Private Defense Academy, who, on the day of their graduation from middle school, are attacked by a mysterious enemy who are after a box containing some sort of experimental weapon. The students are given the box by a dying teacher at the academy and are told to protect it. They manage to secure the box and hole up in the main Eastern Private Defense Academy building, arming themselves and fortifying the building against attack with Claymore mines. It is later revealed that the mysterious enemy are in fact a French private military company, Trident, who have been hired to retrieve the box by an unknown client. At this time, the anime series is ongoing.