Atarashi Games’ School Uniform Design Contest

For those of you unfamiliar with Atarashi Games, they’re an independent publisher of tabletop role-playing games, best known for a psychic schoolgirl adventure game called “Panty Explosion.” PE can be kind of dark, but despite the title it’s not particularly pervy or anything. It’s earned them all kinds of extra attention, though the objections have been mainly from men (including a guy who punched one of the designers in the head) rather than women. They also put out Classroom Deathmatch, which is basically Battle Royale with the serial numbers filed off. In short, not unlike myself Jake Richmond and his associates are fans of various kinds of Japanese media and generally like messing with people.

That’s why Atarashi Games is probably the only RPG publisher that would hold a contest to design a Japanese-style school uniform for them to use with their games. I urge those of you who have some artistic inclination to consider entering, but the focus of this blog post is on school uniforms as a cultural phenomenon.

Jake Richmond is an artist, teacher, game designer, and generally has a number of pursuits that take priority over being an anime fan. Anime and related media can be surprisingly subtle in terms of the visual elements they use. For Panty Explosion, Jake mostly did a bunch of relatively generic pictures of Japanese high school girls, with an emphasis on sailor fuku style school uniforms and in a realistic style. It works, though it gives the impression that the art is based off of stills of old Japanese horror films.
Western RPGs in general seem to have a hard time really getting the “anime” look down. Steve Jackson Games got one of their staff artists to fake it for GURPS Mecha, while Guardians of Order hired a variety of fan artists, sometimes with mixed results. More recently, Green Ronin did a Mutants & Masterminds supplement called “Mecha & Manga.” Some art was very good, and some of it was kind of iffy, but even the really talented artists produced a lot of pieces that were highly derivative.

Panty Explosion RPG! Jake Richmond Interview Part 1.

Panty Explosion is a light Role-playing game which draws inspiration from Japanese school life, anime, and Korean and Japanese horror films. Jake Richmond is an indie RPG designer, the co-creator of Panty Explosion and other games, and a talented artist. And I have him here for an interview. The second part will air in a week’s time.

Indie RPGs are like doujinshi, in a way. The creator does more or less everything on their own, but since it’s their own IP, it is official. Most sell for about $20, for interested parties. Story-Games are usually lighter on mechanics than most RPGs.

I will have my comments (in italics and parenthesis), and most links had been added by myself. Hope you’ll enjoy it :)

1. Tell us a bit about yourself?

My name is Jake Richmond. I live with friends in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been a full time freelance illustrator for about 5 years and a part-time art teacher for about 3. I make comics and games, and I publish my games under the label Atarashi Games. I rarely wake up before 1pm, and I never go to sleep before 4am. My blood type is A. I like Indian and Mexican food, collect video game art books and have a glasses fetish.