Cats and ghouls.
Tokyo Debunker is a 2024 joseimuke
mobile game developed by Japanese game company ZigZaGame Inc. (Neo Monsters, Evertale).
You play as a young woman, bound home on a Tokyo train from a concert when suddenly the landscape around you changes and you're attacked by a monster with flowers growing out of its body and a single, giant eye. The monster is driven off by a boisterous young man covered in blood carrying a gun, before he turns his attention to you. Before he can toss you out the train window, however, another young man in a school uniform shows up and takes over. After failing to erase your memory of the event, he takes you to Darkwick Academy, the most elite school in Japan that sits on a man-made island in Tokyo Bay. There, the chancellor tells you that you were cursed by the monster - called an "anomaly" - that attacked you, and that you have only a year left to live. Forced to enroll at Darkwick in order to find a way to research and break the curse before it ends your life, you stumble upon an anomaly that chooses you to receive it's power: the power to amplify a ghoul's stigma.
Ghouls are the once-human students who have gained abilities due to consuming the soul of a demon that granted their wish. They undertake special missions to fight and capture anomalies, and your amplifying ability means you must join them in these missions as an inspector, despite not being a ghoul yourself.
While notable at first for being a popular Instagram account that promoted a completely different game premise and art style, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the developers to table this version, before re-emerging years later having scrapped this version entirely for the current game. The game officially launched for iOS and Android platforms on April 18, 2024.
See Twisted Wonderland for a similar game, but Disney-inspired. Also, it has nothing to do with another popular IP about ghouls in Tokyo.
Tokyo Debunker contains examples of the following:
- Academy of Adventure: Darkwick Academy itself.
- Actually Four Mooks: Higher level cases will start to feature at least one other anomaly than the one shown on the preview screen.
- Adults Are Useless: Zigzagged. On the one hand, only ghouls can defeat anomalies and the only ghouls in the story are all students. On the other, the adults we do see are at least implied to have combat prowess, or are otherwise powerful healers or special operatives, and they have more knowledge and experience dealing with and researching anomalies and the supernatural in general. And that’s even getting into whether or not the students are adults themselves as at least a few of them are shown drinking in the Campus’ mini events (the legal age to drink in Japan is 20).
- All of the Other Reindeer: The ghouls are generally disliked and distrusted by the general admission students, despite the school touting them as champions for world peace.
- The MC as well, being neither ghoul nor general admission student, she's officially called an "honor student" and lives in an old cathedral that used to be a base for a now-defunct House. She tells Haru and Towa that she's still clueless about a lot of stuff due to not becoming a student through the regular channels.
- Axes at School: Justified for the ghouls, as they may need to prepare for a mission with small advance notice.
- Body Horror: Part of what makes this game Darker and Edgier than others like it is the anomalies looking genuinely horrifying for what is otherwise a fairly lighthearted mobile gacha game with an anime art style.
- Cast of Expies: There have been many comparisons to characters of other franchises by fans. Most notably, Professor Hyde gets called Gojo by fans any time he shows up in a post from the devs.
- Cats Are Magic: This trope is likely why the game features so many cats, and the ones that work and live at Darkwick certainly are more intelligent and capable than your normal house cat.
- Changing of the Guard: Every episode features the MC working with the ghouls of a different house, with the ghouls of the previous episode taking a backseat, if they show up at all.
- Dark and Troubled Past: A fair few of the characters.
- Lucas has a twin brother who was kidnapped by a demon in exchange for granting his wish.
- Jin's isolation is due to his mother succumbing to some kind of mental illness, as well as the fallout from the Clash.
- The Clash seems to be a source of this for most, if not all, of the characters who were around to witness it the previous year.
- Alan is haunted by his killing of Professor Dante, as well as whatever caused him to do it as it's implied he wasn't in his right mind for it. Never mind the fact that Dante is in the story somehow alive and well, if wheelchair-bound.
- Darker and Edgier: Tokyo Debunker is this for Twisted Wonderland, being a similar premise but with more foul language and frightening anomalies.
- Eldritch Location: Darkwick Academy is itself an anomaly that is Bigger on the Inside
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Water -> Fire -> Grass -> Water is the setup during battles
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: The Frostheim ghouls fit this, being the only House with four characters:
- Sanguine: Kaito, the immature, childish, but kind and softhearted second-year ghoul.
- Choleric: Jin, the serious, temperamental, but determined house captain.
- Melancholic: Tohma, the polite, intelligent, and shrewd vice-captain.
- Phlegmatic: Lucas, the courteous, dependable-to-a-fault, and levelheaded New Transfer Student
- Functional Magic: The Mesmer Matches are matchsticks used to wipe a civilian's memory of events of up to 24 hours. Similarly, Darkwick's campus is apparently home to some pocket dimensions that allow for dorm space (Jabberwock's area of campus being the biggest offender), and the Galaxy Express to get from the campus to various areas of Tokyo while circumventing normal railways and traffic.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The main character has no default or canon name, and is instead named by the player.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Lucas is chosen by a pair of twin swords as his artifact, while Jin has a large One-Handed Zweihänder.
- Improbable Weapon User: There are more of these than standard weaponry present. Leo uses his gum to disorient and confuse his opponents. Sho has a motorcycle that eats human food instead of taking gas. Haru has a broom, Towa a bubble blower, and Ren a pool ring. Subaru uses a parasol while Zenji has a marionette.
- In Medias Res: The opening cutscene of a new game, after you pick a ghoul of one of the seven houses, has the main character running through a hallway on fire, presumably in Darkwick, following one of the Academy's messenger cats. The cat leads her to the ghoul chosen in the previous screen, who after a short conversation jumps off the balcony into the flames and chaos below. The main character wonders how it got to this point before the game takes you to the beginning of the story proper.
- New Kid Stigma: Downplayed. While the general student body doesn't seem to have much of an opinion of the MC at the outset, the ghouls are a far more mixed bag, mostly because of her role as inspector and dubious ability than being a new kid though.
- New Transfer Student: Lucas Errant is a new transfer from Emrys, Darkwick's sister school in the UK. The main character, too, though she's referred to as an honor student to distinguish her from the ghouls and general admission students.
- Once per Episode: A Like Dove showing up in front of the main character, signifying that one of the House ghouls has developed romantic feelings for her, is becoming this.
- In Episode 1, a Like Dove is introduced when it lands in front of the main character, Lucas, and Kaito. Kaito notices a group of nearby female students giggling and whispering nearby and goes to ingratiate himself, before coming back discouraged that they were interested in Lucas instead. However, it could just as easily be interpreted as the dove responding to Kaito's crush on the main character.
- In Episode 2, another shows up at the Vagastrom garage, startling the main character when it flies up in front of her before circling the ceiling and leaving. This is right after Sho leaves to cook something, ignoring her.
- In Episode 3, a Like Dove appears on the Jabberwock dormitory roof after the main character eats the dandelion Towa gives her.
- Police Are Useless: Considering the police can't handle anomalies, or even know about their existence, this is a given.
- Precision F-Strike: Unusually for this sort of game, the localization makes pretty frequent use of the word "fuck" in casual character dialogue. Considering the students are young adults with some adjustment problems this makes sense.
- Real-Place Background: The game takes place in Tokyo, Japan and Darkwick exists on Tokyo Bay.
- Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: All of the ghouls have something unusual about them, and nearly just as many have snarky, sarcastic, and/or intimidating attitudes. Their ages are never made explicitly clear, but they're most likely teenagers or young adults.
- School Uniforms are the New Black: The characters all wear their school uniform or dorm outfit most of the time.
- Second Year Protagonist: The main character - despite knowing virtually nothing about ghouls and anomalies until the day she's admitted - is made a second-year student at Darkwick. Lucas and Kaito, two ghouls who form a Two Guys and a Girl team with her in the prologue and first episode, are also second-years.
- Signature Move: The ghouls' stigmas.
- The Smurfette Principle: Being a joseimuke, the main character is the only female among the rest of the all-male cast. As of Episode 3, there haven’t been any female ghouls or staff seen at Darkwick.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The game as a whole is one for Twisted Wonderland - being a magical secret academy with dark secrets and a...colorful...staff and student body. The biggest difference is Twisted Wonderland is a Disney IP.
- Urban Fantasy: Supernatural elements taking place in real-life Tokyo, Japan
- Urban Legend: In Episode 2, Leo mentions how urban legends become what they are by the people who believe in them, like Hanako's Toilet (the English localization goes with Bloody Mary instead). It turns out the Big Bad of the episode is one such urban legend - a tulpa.
- Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: How the ghouls of Darkwick (and thus the protagonist) operate. The missions actually take precedence over the classes, if the MC mentioning missing more classes after starting missions is anything to go by.
