I didn't finish Japanese School Life. I felt a bit so-so about it, but did intend on toughing it out to the end. It wasn't good, but it was sufficing at passing some dreary work hours. But, as I discovered after way too many hours, the save feature doesn't work. Or, it didn't work. I dunno. There's an obvious save button that I'd hit at various points during my experience, but I never actually tested its viability until I closed the game out. Obviously at this point, when I did restart the game, there was no save file to be found. I had intended on finishing, but not if the burden for doing so is starting right back at the beginning. No fucking thanks.

Japanese School Life is standard VN fare, which is to say unlike genre standouts that have a certain amount of interactivity (whether in the form of puzzles or dialogue options), this is just reading. Read, hit spacebar to advance text, read more. Not long before I exited the game, I did get to choose which female to pursue. I don't know if that option portends further options, or if it's a singular branch in the road. I also don't really know how deep into the VN that option occurs, but I'd guess somewhere between the midway and 2/3rds mark.

While it's dressed in dating sim clothes, the core of Japanese School Life is educational. The target demographic is for potential visitors to Japan to get a crash course introduction to various cultural differences. The main character, Brian, is a foreign exchange student in Japan for the first time. He's plopped in the Japanese school system and has to make his way.

Brian is shy, wears the label "otaku" without second thought, collects anime figurines, and idolizes Japan and Japanese culture. He's also written like your average, boring anime high school boy. Which is to say, nothing about him feels like someone who came from a non-Japanese country. While I suspect that the way anime presents modern Japanese teenagers is specifically catering to the Japanese nerds who make up anime's target demographic, it still seems like there are some weird gender politics that I don't understand, and within such a context Brian may not be a total anomaly. But most of the countries from which Brian could possibly be from (I suspect his country of origin is left intentionally vague)? He simply couldn't be. He says early on (after the girl who sits next to him strikes up a conversation) that he's never really talked to a girl before. Uh, ok. Not many high school students in any developed country I know of--especially the US--can claim to not really talked to girls before. Some homeschoolers, perhaps, especially those from particularly restrictive conservative Christian backgrounds, but that's not a standard teenager experience all.

The educational part is mildly interesting, and certainly presents elements of Japanese schools and culture that a foreigner wouldn't know. But the presentation is bland and a whole lot of it feels... trivial. Like, ok, I didn't hate learning about the fish-shaped wind flag thingies, but if I was visiting Japan, knowing that information would not help me navigate Japan in any way.

When I fired Japanese School Life from my Steam library, I assumed it was the VN I'd started a year or two back, Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~ which has a similar theme and educational approach. I learned so much more in about an hour's play of that than I learned from hours of play of this. If you're visiting Japan and want an educational guide, that is the much better option. Better writing, better vision, and feels like it's written for someone arriving in Japan sight unseen.