The concept of a "metaverse" has been touted among us for some time now. As Phil Iwaniuk wrote last February, anyone who has played video games knows that the digital wonderland promised by the metaverse has existed since the days of CRT monitors. [Second Life, Everquest, World of Warcraft. heck: if you need a headset to compare, VRChat got there first in 2014. Now there's an actual challenger to that assumption, as reported by Automaton (translated from a PR Times press release), a metaverse project I'm oddly optimistic about. [It's by a company called Aominext, which is shedding the grimy, soulless avatars we've grown accustomed to from Zuckerberg and his ilk, and developing a distinctly anime-style metaverse space that reveals the cute animated avatars underneath as the VTuber butterflies crack open the creepy chrysalis. Development.

Moreover, this doesn't smell much like a PR stunt. It is bolstered by the fact that the company is collaborating with an actual Japanese high school (Yushi International) that already exists in the flesh-and-blood world. Automaton reports:

"The virtual high school will have a three-year credit-based course with a curriculum approved by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Meanwhile, the press release promises virtual events like a cultural festival and an e-sports tournament for participating students.

I like to remain skeptical, but this genuinely feels like the first project focused on the metaverse that makes absolute sense to me. It may be easy to point and laugh at the VTuber-like kids around the school table, but distance learning has been around for years; even though it became more prevalent with the Covid-19 craze, it has always existed and always been socially isolated.

As the press release points out, correspondence schools often use programs like Slack or Zoom calls, but they cannot replicate the feeling of being in an actual classroom. Not so bad if you are an adult with other commitments, but certainly no substitute for young minds eager to actually make friends and socialize.

Needless to say, VR is no substitute for that one-on-one, but I think we can all agree that it is definitely a step up. Merging the concept of a correspondence school with a VRChat-style space where students can customize their animated avatars is something that kids actually seem to like. Especially since the press release promises to loan the equipment to students free of charge.

Whether it actually works is another story entirely, but I'm rooting for this funky little experiment. The fact that one can get an officially accredited diploma while wearing a cartoon avatar is the kind of futurism I'm all for.