Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation

Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation was released in Japan for the Nintendo Switch on July 15, 2021, and worldwide for Switch, PlayStation 4, and Windows in August 2022. The game received generally favorable reviews from critics who, while broadly assessing the title as less strong than entries in the Boku no Natsuyasumi series, praised Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation for its visual style, atmosphere, and adaptation of the Crayon Shin-chan source material.

Plot

Like other entries in the Crayon Shin-chan series, Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation follows the comedic and often surreal adventures of five-year-old Shinnosuke Nohara (the titular "Shin-chan") and his family: father Hiroshi, mother Misae, younger sister Himawari, and the family dog Shiro. When Hiroshi goes on a week-long business trip to Kyushu, the rest of the family travels with him to vacation at the home of Misae's childhood friend in rural "Asso", Kumamoto. Upon arriving at Kumamoto Station, the family is approached by Dr. Akuno, a mad scientist who gives Shinnosuke a camera that produces illustrations rather than photographs. Shortly after the Nohara family's arrival in Asso, Akuno reappears with a dinosaur he claims to have extracted from the past using time travel. When Shinnosuke witnesses Akuno summoning a dinosaur at his laboratory, Akuno puts Shinnosuke in a time loop that endlessly repeats the seven days of his vacation.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation is similar to that Boku no Natsuyasumi (lit. 'My Summer Vacation'), a video game series previously developed by Millennium Kitchen and directed by Kaz Ayabe.^[1] In both games, the player controls a young boy – Boku in Boku no Natsuyasumi, Shinnosuke in Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation – in an open-ended environment as he goes on summer vacation.^[2][3] Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation differs both in its inclusion of characters from the Crayon Shin-chan series and in its inclusion of surreal elements such as dinosaurs, contrasting the more realist Boku no Natsuyasumi.^[4]

While the gameplay of Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation is loosely framed by Shinnosuke's quest to fill his vacation journal with pictures and search for interesting stories to print in the local newspaper, the player is generally free to spend their time as they see fit, with few set goals or obligations.^[5] The open-ended, laid-back nature of the gameplay was designed in order to appeal to a wide audience, from child-aged Shin-chan fans to adult fans of Boku no Natsuyasumi.^[4] The game includes an achievement system based on activities such as catching insects, fishing, growing vegetables, and running errands for the townspeople. Time passes from day to night, with certain activities and events exclusive to specific times of the day.^[1][2]

Development

Production

Planning for Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation began in September 2018 when

The working title of the game was Ora no Natsuyasumi (オラの夏休み); Ayabe initially opposed using the word natsuyasumi in the title, as he did not wish the game to be seen as a direct continuation of the Boku no Natsuyasumi series. The final title was chosen to differentiate the game from Boku no Natsuyasumi, though when the first trailer for Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation was released, fans began referring to the game as "Ora Natsu" (オラ夏). Ayabe stated in an interview with Famitsu that after seeing the fan reaction, he is fine with the game being called Ora Natsu.^[9]

The game was developed by much of the same production staff of Attack of the Friday Monsters. Shin-chan publisher Futabasha and other companies involved in the original series' production also supervised the development of the game's plot, setting, and characters.^[4] Shin-Ei Animation, the animation studio that produces the Shin-chan anime series, provided input on character modeling.^[4][9] Shin-Ei also designed the original characters in the game on the basis of rough drawings produced by the development team,^[4] with producer Akira Nagashima creating the design of Dr. Akuno.^[3][4] The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan required the project to shift to entirely remote work; this workflow meant that Ayabe was directly in charge of the game's script and sound, but certain other elements such as the user interface were handled by the developer Star Factory [ja], with Ayabe overseeing post-creation approvals.^[3]

Setting

From the outset, the Neos side of the development team sought a work that resembled a traditional Boku no Natsuyasumi game, while Ayabe wished to avoid making another Boku no Natsuyasumi; Ayabe sought to differentiate the work by adding unusual elements, for example, initially proposing that the Nohara family go on vacation to a space colony rather than a rural setting.^[4] Later, Ayabe focused on the fact that Misae is from Kumamoto.^[4][8] As Misae's parents have already appeared in the source material and the concept did not naturally lend itself to the integration of unusual elements, the setting of a town where Misae's childhood friend lives was chosen. Ayabe travelled to Kumamoto for a week in fall 2019 for location scouting, drawing particular inspiration from the Tsūjun Bridge and the Kuma River for the game's environments.^[8]

Ayabe stated that in contrast to his previous works, which focus on original characters and settings, some difficulties arose from the lack of creative freedom inherent to creating a game adapted from an existing work.^[9] While Boku in Boku no Natsuyasumi is positioned as an avatar of the player, Shinnosuke is an existing and independent character, so Ayabe believed that a third-person perspective was necessary; Ayabe therefore added a female narrator to the game to evoke the feeling of a mother or teacher reading a story to a child.^[9] Further, there was tension between Shinnosuke being a five year old who should not be left to wander unsupervised, and the reality that the game would be uninteresting if he was constantly supervised by adults; to reflect this, certain surreal elements such as a bamboo periscope monitoring Shinnosuke when he travels near open water were added.^[9] In addition, as Shinnosuke in the original series is not interested in keeping living things even when he catches them, the magical illustration-producing camera mechanic was conceived, which created a gameplay flow where Shinnosuke catches bugs and fish for his picture diary and then releases them, or catches them as part of a specific request for a townsperson.^[4][3]

Graphics

The game backgrounds were created in 3D, then drawn in 2D after the camera layout was set.^[4] As with Boku no Natsuyasumi and Attack of the Friday Monsters, Ayabe personally directed the screen and camera layouts, which Ayabe stated was a decision made in part because of the scale of production, but also to better determine which elements needed to be displayed on-screen simultaneously.^[4] Initially, it was assumed that the backgrounds would be a simple design that resembled the backgrounds of the Shin-chan television anime, but the backgrounds submitted by the art team Convoy was more realistic than Ayabe had expected, as were the effects produced by Star Factory.^[3]

Audio

The voice cast of the Crayon Shin-chan animated series reprise their roles in Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation, alongside a cast of new voice actors performing the original characters.^[11] The soundtrack to Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation is composed by the production company Noisycroak [ja], which also composed the soundtrack to Attack of the Friday Monsters.^[4] The game's theme song "Spinning Round the Milky Way" (まわる僕らと銀河系, Mawaru Bokura to Gingakei) is arranged and performed by Sacco Saito, with lyrics by Kaz Ayabe and music by Eijo Sakamoto. Saito was not informed of the content of the game until after the theme song had been arranged and recorded.^[12]

Release

Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation was announced in a

Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation received "generally favorable reviews" from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic.^[23] It has shipped 400,000 units worldwide as of June 2022.^[27]

References