Playing through Tokyo Xanadu eX+ as I am, I find a thought occurring to me which I’ve pondered privately in the past, but never actually written anything about. So I thought I’d indulge those musings now.
The thought is, as it says in the headline, what would a “modern day urban RPG” with a primarily school-based setting look like if it was set in, say, the UK, where I’m from? I suspect it would be very different, and I’m surprised that no-one appears to have tried it up until this point.
Sure, there are western visual novels set in a school setting, but those are often heavily exaggerated or laden with insincerity and irony; there’s nothing delivered with a sense of genuine earnestness like Tokyo Xanadu eX+, the Persona series or Blue Reflection. And I think that’s a pity. So I’d like to talk about that a bit today.
A bit of background about me for the unfamiliar: I am a qualified classroom teacher, though I haven’t actually been in the classroom for quite a long time now. I lasted approximately three years at the chalkface before suffering a nervous breakdown and swearing never to do that ever again. (I then did it again a couple of times, but got out well before my brain exploded again.)
Despite my negative experiences as a teacher, I’ve always found school as a setting to be fascinating. I found it fascinating back when I was a student at school — particularly secondary school — and I continue to find it a thoroughly compelling setting for stories to this day. The reason for this is something that is universal between eastern and western approaches to narrative: school, particularly in your teenage years, is the period of life in which you truly “define yourself” for the first time.
Sure, people can and do “reinvent” themselves long after their schooldays — and it can be healthy and productive to do so — but for most people, your days at secondary school, high school, whatever you want to call it, have a profound impact on who you are as a person. You start to figure out what you like to do, the sort of people you are physically attracted to, the kind of people you get along with as friends and potentially consider what sort of career you might like to pursue.
These themes would be universal between a school-based story set in the UK, and a school-based story set in Japan. Where the two differ radically would be how school culture is, on the whole, depicted.
In most Japanese popular media, school settings tend to be fairly “nice”. I don’t have anywhere near the experience or knowledge to know how accurate that depiction of school life in Japan is, but I do know that it’s widespread enough for me to pay attention to it as a trend. Couple that with the aspects of Japanese culture I’ve picked up from both popular media and independent research, and I don’t find it hard to believe that, had I been born a Japanese person, I would have probably thrived in their school system.
Popular media about British schools specifically, meanwhile, tends to be down the “gritty” end of the spectrum — and from my own experience I can say that there’s a certain amount of realism there, albeit with some inevitable exaggeration for dramatic effect. Your average urban secondary school in the UK is perpetually faced with a variety of struggles that never quite seem to be overcome: financial hardships, staffing shortages, cultural clashes, bureaucracy overriding everything, and individual behavioural issues, many of which stem from special educational needs.
To contrast the two in terms of popular media, in Tokyo Xanadu eX+ the worst we get is a kid who wants to be a delinquent but has done little more than dye his hair, a third-year who is feared as the toughest thug in school but actually has a heart of gold (and cooks a mean bowl of soba), and a street gang who runs for the hills as soon as things start getting a bit too real when their leader gets jacked up on drugs of supernatural origin.
Meanwhile, in several UK TV dramas set in schools, we have matters of drug abuse, underfunding, mental health crises, violence, bullying, interference by the local authority and all manner of other things that makes for good TV but provide many of the myriad reasons my wife and I have no desire to ever have children in this country.
This isn’t to say that Japanese school-based media can’t do “grit”. The popular Persona 5 actually pushed quite a few boundaries in this regard with aspects such as a teacher who was sexually harassing his students… but even so, there was still that sort of “respectful” undercurrent; that feeling that overall, life in even an inner-city Japanese school (as depicted in popular media) is probably quite a bit nicer than life in an inner-city British school (either in reality, or as depicted in the media).
With all this in mind, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if you were to attempt something along the lines of Tokyo Xanadu eX+ or Persona from the perspective of a group of kids in a struggling British school. I think it could potentially make for an interesting story — and incorporating fantastical elements would help elevate it out of being nothing but “misery porn“.
Exactly what would be different, though? Well, the way school life is depicted would be the main thing. In your average Japanese popular media high school, students are pretty much always well-behaved, respectful to their elders and, above all, mindful of how they represent the school. In many instances, students are shown taking pride in the place they go to learn, even if they might not be the most enthusiastic learner in some cases.
In your average British popular media high school, meanwhile, there is a lot more chaos. Teachers are stressed-out, exhausted and overworked, and in many cases their departments are under-resourced, making it difficult to cover certain subjects effectively. Meanwhile, pupils are often disrespectful, unengaged, unenthusiastic, unmotivated, rude and noisy. The students don’t take pride in their school in many cases, and in some instances are only showing up because their parents have been threatened with legal action.
I hasten to add that this is by no means a universal depiction of British schools. I’m sure some are quite nice, particularly those out in the country in nice, affluent areas. But what I describe here is a combination of my own experiences at the chalkface and how British schools tend to be depicted in popular media.
The reason I think this would be interesting would be because it would add an element of, for want of a better term, peril and danger to the “everyday” side of things. In Tokyo Xanadu eX+, for the most part when you are in the “real” world, things are safe and nice, and life only gets truly dangerous once you step through a “gate” into the “Eclipse”. Persona 5 blurs the lines a little more by showing how some people — specifically adults — are demonstrably evil, especially when given power over those of lower status in society, such as kids. But for the most part in either of those games, you don’t fear, say, getting mugged by the school bully, beaten up for no real reason, threatened at knifepoint or forced into undesirable, dangerous situations through peer pressure.
To a certain extent, I feel like I’m doing the Japanese school-based stories a bit of a disservice here, because many of them do tackle some surprisingly heavy themes along the way. And, thinking about it, a lot of the time those stories are so effective because they juxtapose those challenging themes against what appears to be a somewhat idealised backdrop of how society “should” be; it’s the idea of someone being in a utopia, but still somehow suffering.
But then I think coming at it from the other end could be interesting, too. Make the baseline a dystopia such as the hellscape we live in today, and the fantastical elements a representation of an individual or a group of people fighting to better themselves against not only the supernatural threat of the hour, but also the weight of “real” society weighing them down. I reckon that could work as a story.
Hmm. Maybe I should just write this myself! Where’s that copy of RPG Maker…?
Want more Pete? Check my personal blog I’m Not Doctor Who, and my YouTube channel ThisIsPete. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider buying me a coffee.
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I would definitely be interested in playing a game like you describe. I generally really like school settings in game, from games set entirely in a school to ones that just visit one for a section of the game. If the developer of the Class of ’09 games ever made a true RPG, I think we’d get something along those lines. Those games do tackle gritty and heavy themes in a school setting. Or, if the Academagia: The Making of Mages and the Magical Diary games just pushed it a bit farther, we’d have it, just with a fantasy/magic element to it. Those games can get dark, but only with certain choices by the player.