Twentythree

Love it or hate it, cram school, or juku in Japanese, is one part of Asian academic culture that looks like it’s here to stay.

Although most cram schools tend to advertise before entrance exam season begins and towards the end of the Japanese school year in March, recently more and more children are starting to attend summer study courses as well.

Gearing up for summer vacation, Waseda Academy put out two promotional commercials highlighting the determination of spirited youth, which have left Japanese viewers so moved they couldn’t help but shed a few tears while watching.

In the first commercial, young Takashi’s mother laments about all the strange things that her son does, saying that children are “strange beings”.

Some of the strange things she finds her third-grade son doing include shutting himself up in small spaces, jumping down from high places, not being able to concentrate, putting sand in his pocket, hiding his mother’s things, and eating things that aren’t his. Not being able to understand what compels children to act in certain ways that worry or cause her trouble seems like something that most parents can relate to.

YouTube

From what seems out of the blue, Takashi tells his mother he wants to go to cram school as part of his plans to become an astronaut some day. Following his admission we get a glimpse of Takashi’s version of the same scenes, and a totally different story emerges.

▼ “Strange Beings”

It ends with a heartwarming narration by Takashi’s mother, saying that no matter how much she may not understand her son, a “strange being” and all the strange things he does, she’ll always support him no matter what.

The second commercial takes a slightly different approach and tells the story of two friends in their third year of junior high school. It features quotes and re-enactments of scenes from the short story Run, Melos!, a short story by Osamu Dazai that was later made into an animated feature by Bandai in 1992.

Both girls, Rin and Mariko, are in the track and field club at school. Part of the same class and club, they’re always together and they know everything about each other… or so it would seem until the high school “entrance exam” wall begins to rise up between them.

YouTube

The commercial skillfully reflects the bittersweet part of adolescence and the desire to want things to remain like they always have been, even though it’s inevitable that they can’t stay that way forever.

▼ “Run, Melos!”

So, those of you watching at home or on your lunch break, were you able to make it through both with dry eyes? Or did these commercials move you as much as they’ve moved Japanese people? Let us know in the comments section!

Top image: YouTube
Insert images: YouTube (1, 2), edited by RocketNews24

Origin: People in Japan are tearing up over these two cram school commercials【Videos】
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Video games designed to provide some titillation are nothing new in Japan. As a matter of fact, developers have been trying to include a little naughty excitement in titles for so long that the feature has begun to evolve and become streamlined in response to players’ needs and desires. For example, we recently looked at a game in which the designers thought to include a cycle by which the female characters change their panties to a new pair daily, much to the joy of realist perverts (and the chagrin of dirty underwear fetishists).

But while Japanese gamers have proven receptive to titles with a decidedly sexy angle, that doesn’t mean their parents are so accepting of their hobby. That’s why the upcoming PlayStation 4 game Gal Gun Double Peace includes not only more panty flashes than you can shake a stick at, but something called the Mom Just Walked In Screen to help spare players from getting caught in an embarrassing moment.

In the early days of light gun/rail shooter video games, the most common targets were uniformed soldiers from some hostile nation. As sensibilities changed during the 1990s and turn of the millennium, robots and zombies became common adversaries as well. But it wasn’t until Gal Gun came around in 2011 that there was a whole game structured around shooting schoolgirls. Don’t worry, though, the main character wasn’t pumping his anime-style classmates full of lead, but pheromones.

Gal Gun proved popular enough that developer Inti Creates and publisher Alchemist have created a sequel, Gal Gun Double Peace. The plot is basically the same as the first game: The main character, a high school student, is struck by an angel’s arrow, making him irresistible to women for exactly one day. However, if he doesn’t find his true love within that time, he’ll be alone forever once the arrow’s effect wears off, and so the race is on.

▼ In the game’s defense, even the preview video touts it as being “200 percent dumber than the original!”

Impeding the hero’s search for his soul mate are the hordes of other girls who are swarming him, and the player has to fend them off by firing pheromones at them until they go weak in the knees and stop chasing you (we’re guessing that getting rid of them by saying “Let’s just be friends” or showing them your closet full of pervy video games are features being saved for an eventual DLC pack). If you’re not quick enough on the trigger, possible outcomes include being handed a love letter, getting an unwanted hug and smooch, or being stepped on.

Along the way, you run into potential girlfriends and apprentice demons. Oh, and also at least one shapely butt…

…and a tentacle-y carrot monster.

Then there’s the man character’s special ability to see through walls, and also the girls’ clothes, which rewards him with their measurements and cup size.

But hey, you could make the argument that a fascination with the female body is perfectly healthy and normal for the young males of Gal Gun Double Peace’s target demographic, even if this isn’t necessarily the most normal way to scratch that itch. That said, it would still be a little awkward to have your mom walk in on you while you’re playing the game, which is why Inti Creates included the Mama Kita Gamen, or the Mom Just Walked In Screen.

For example, let’s say that the course of events have led you to a point where you’re about to get stepped on by a girl dressed in nothing but her bra, panties, and stockings.

But oh no! Someone’s coming!

No problem. Hit the button for the Mom Just Walked In Screen, and suddenly the on-screen image switches to this:

Instead of playing a brand-new sexy PlayStation 4 game, the Mom Just Walked In Screen puts up the front of what looks like an RPG from the tail-end of the 8-bit era. Those are even super deformed bitmapped versions of Gal Gun Double Peace’s primary cast of Hodai, Ekoro, Shinobu, and Maya. Just leave it on screen, put on a stoic expression like you’re plotting your next move until your mom leaves the room, and go back to firing phermones (you also might want to have an excuse in mind for when your mom asks why you’re sitting at home playig a 25-year-old game).

▼ Gun Gal Double Peace’s opening

Gal Gun Double Peace comes out for the PlayStation 4 on August 6. There’s also a PlayStation Vita version being released the same day, but gamers should be aware it lacks the Mom Just Walked In Screen, so if you choose the handheld version, you might want to play it literally close to the chest.

Source: Dengeki Online via Jin
Top image: YouTube/alchemistINFO, Gal Gun Double Peace official website (edited by RocketNews24)
Insert images: Gal Gun Double Peace official website, YouTube/alchemistINFO, Gal Gun Double Peace official website (2)

Tottori is just one of those places. The kind of area that’s so quiet and uneventful that not even Starbucks, the corporate giant that’s more than happy to smother historic cultural heritage sites with their over-roasted beans and pricey lattes for a quick buck, spent decades more or less pretending it didn’t even exist. The Prefecture’s population of just over half a million is shockingly small by densely-populated Japan’s standards, and it’s just generally ignored by the rest of Japan as a place that, well… doesn’t have much to see, to put it kindly.

But wait a second! What’s this?! Tottori has been sitting on an amazing tourist draw in the form of a sand sculpture museum that features mind-boggling, award-winning and massive sand sculptures and they basically haven’t even really told anybody about it.

We sent one of our Japanese writers to check the museum out – because none of the English writers could be trusted around a bunch of fragile works of art – and he came back almost giddy with praise.

Our writer, Mr. Sato (yes, that one! Contrary to this, this and this, he’s surprisingly cultured and appreciate of the arts), said the museum’s exhibit at the time of his visit was entitled, “Germany: Travel Around the World in Sand,” and featured, well, a bunch of stuff from Germany. Although it seemed like more or less a hodgepodge of random bits from Germany’s history, the exhibit included such impressive and varied works as a sand sculpture of the Brothers Grimm, recreations of the construction and eventual destruction of the Berlin Wall, depictions of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, and… probably some other stuff we didn’t pay attention to in history class.

Strolling through the massive, warehouse-like facility that housed the mammoth sculptures, Mr. Sato was reminded of that other sculptures-made-of-powdery-stuff attraction of Japan, Sapporo’s Snow Festival, and concluded that the sculptures of the Sand Museum were so awe-inspiring that Tottori could easily host a Sand Festival and draw hundreds of thousands of tourists just like Sapporo!

Sure, but Sapporo hosting a snow festival makes a ton of sense, since there’s snow everywhere in the Hokkaido capital, but what does Tottori have to do with sand? Well, as long-time readers of RocketNews24 will known, Tottori is home to the Tottori Sand Dunes, Japan’s one and only sand dune range, and the Tottori Sand Museum is located right next to it, meaning sculptors employed by the museum can literally just walk outside with a wheelbarrow when they need more building material.

In conclusion, Mr. Sato – admittedly maybe a little biased as a native of that other comically small prefecture, Shimane – gave the Sand Museum his seal of approval, proclaiming: “Who needs a Starbucks when you’ve got such an awesome claim to fame right here?!”

Although Tottori is unsurprisingly off the beaten path, especially for those here in Japan on vacation, take Mr. Sato’s word for it and put the Tottori Sand Museum on your list if you can work a trip in to your itinerary. You can find the official website (in English) here, and here’s a map, too!