Where’s our diploma in slime-slicing?
Ancient — the family company of VGM composer Yuzo Koshiro and developers of everything from Sonic The Hedgehog’s debut Game Gear outing to Gotta Protectors for the 3DS — released Royal Anapoko Academy in Japan on 16th December 2021. Like much of its output in recent years, this light-hearted RPG is an irresistible mix of faux-retro style combined with slightly off-the-wall ideas centred around the magical academy of the title, a school where young warriors train alongside ‘Wild Fangs’ in bunny suits and a beautiful princess lives in the nearby castle.
The Japanese language-only Royal Anapoko Academy (or Ouritsu Anapoko Gakuen) gets very silly, very quickly — and luckily for everyone involved it’s deliberately so; the sort of game you laugh with because it’s funny rather than at due to some embarrassing design misfire. Some of this manifests as moments that are consciously fishing for laughs. One early quest involves a drunk fairy queen, there’s an entire four-panel comic dedicated to the classic ‘I can detach my thumb’ joke, referring to the age-old trick to as ‘Elf magic’, and the weapon shop owner has a humorous chart measuring their health, temper, and the state of their knee.
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