Japanese School Life (2016)

Japanese School Life is an educational product that teaches a substantial amount of Japanese culture wrapped in a Visual Novel format. To be clear this game is not fun in a conventional VN way. There is no compelling story, no gratuitous fan service and only 3 characters in the entire game.

In addition, I would ONLY recommend Japanese School Life if you are either learning Japanese (with at least N3 level, ~1500 hrs of studying) or planning to study abroad in Japan. If you are only interested in visiting Japan, the “Go Go! Nippon!” series is a better choice.

With those caveats aside, this game is amazing for Japanese learners. There is an option to show both Japanese and English on screen at once. The two girls are voiced by professional voice actors with Chiyoko being VO'ed by Risa Taneda, who played Kaori in the Anime, “Your Lie in April”. And the cultural explanations are in-depth and often include historical origins and regional differences.

The problem with the game stems from our silent protagonist, Brian. He is a total weeb, whose talents outside of speaking Japanese are eating food and buying merch. He idolizes Japan and thinks everything Japanese is superior to all other cultures. Brian's idea of having fun is to save as much money as possible, go to Akihabara every weekend and buy otaku goods.

This game can sometimes feel like a Japanese Cultural Wikipedia entry with an extensive portion relegated to Douijnshi scene, which is akin to the indie scene. The writing can be long-winded with both girls going off on unexpected tangents, such as summarizing the plot of The Tale of Genji.

Japanese School Life is a game I've played for the sole purpose of improving my Japanese skills, so the rating is from a learner's perspective. Compared to textbooks, classrooms or other edutainment games out there on Steam, I found Japanese School Life an effective way to learn at an intermediate level.

A tip for learners: Install an OCR tool like LunaTranslator, get the Yomitan browser extension, optionally get a screenshot tool like ShareX and start sentence mining with Anki.

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.