Princess Maker creator Takami Akai announces Japan Sinks visual novel Nihon Chinbotsu Desu Yo for Switch, PC

Yonago GAINAX, the company founded by GAINAX co-founder and Princess Maker series creator Takami Akai, has announced Nihon Chinbotsu Desu Yo, a science-fiction visual novel set in an alternate Japan, based on the 1973 novel Japan Sinks (Nihon Chinbotsu). It will launch both digitally and in a limited physical edition for PC in summer 2025 in Japan, followed by Switch in fall 2025.

Get the first details below.

About

Japan Sinks (Nihon Chinbotsu) is a disaster novel by written by Japanese writer Sakyo Komatsu. It has spawned parodies and derivative works across various forms of media, including novels, manga, movies, and anime. In the half-century since its creation in 1973, this is the first derivative work in the form of a game.

Development is led by Takami Akai, one of the founding members of GAINAX, president of Yonago GAINAX, and creator of the the Princess Maker series, which is said to be the world’s first raising simulation game.

Japan Sinks Desu Yo is set in a fictional Japan where fiction, essential to humanity, is neglected. In this adventure game (where situations are depicted through images and text, and the story progresses based on the player’s choices), players must track down the missing Dr. Tadokoro while attempting to save Japan from a phenomenon called the “Personification Phenomenon” (P.P.), caused by the mass emission of “MOE,” a mysterious substance generated deep below the Earth.

Story

The story is set in an alternate Japan, different from the real world, where fiction is neglected and otaku are persecuted.

MOE is a mysterious substance generated on the upper layer of the Mohorovicic discontinuity, between the Earth’s crust and mantle. It has long influenced human civilization by activating the brain’s capacity for fiction.

With fiction suppressed, the movement of the Earth’s crust triggered a mass emission of MOE, leading to the outbreak of the “Personification Phenomenon” (P.P.) throughout Japan.

P.P. is a phenomenon in which a person’s desires transform any object into a character using MOE as the medium.

Dr. Tadokoro, who was among the first to discover the existence of MOE and holds the key to resolving P.P., suddenly goes missing.

Onodera, a deep-sea submarine pilot transformed into a female character, and Associate Professor Yukinaga, with the help of the similarly transformed submarine Wadatsumi, embark on a journey across the chaos-stricken Japanese islands in pursuit of Dr. Tadokoro.

Artwork

—France’s State-of-the-Art Deep-Sea Submarine Kermadec, Transformed into a Girl

—Deep-Sea Submarine Wadatsumi, Transformed into a Girl—Constructed in 1980 and Now 50 Years Old