Interest
Ellen-Sensei Returns to Educate Youth in Alcohol Board Game
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
Last year saw the rise of Ellen Baker, an assistant language teacher in the latest edition of Japan's first-year New Horizon junior-high English textbook. The blonde teacher immediately endeared herself to Internet users. She inspired so much fan art that the publisher and creator asked for discretion in how she was depicted. The Internet being what it is, unauthorized products were made anyway. Her claim to fame was short-lived, and her relevancy had all but died down in a few months.
Twitter user @PPPppppppQQQ showed where Ellen has been hiding these past months.
「ビールすごろく」ってw てか、エレン先生?エレン・ベーカー先生じゃないっすか!! pic.twitter.com/11OaaLO1P8
— @館長 (@PPPppppppQQQ) January 10, 2017
The character appears in an official sugoroku board game. The game plays similar to Snakes and Ladders, and players use dice to determine how far their pieces can travel along a path. The Ellen version of the game seeks to educate youth about the dangers of underage drinking.
The pink text in the middle of the game board reads, "Life changes with one beer. For better or for worse." The characters on the board highlight different problems youth may face if they partake in underage drinking. The listed risks range from impotence and irregular periods to an increased tendency to exhibit problematic behavior.
Each player starts with 3000 "hop" tokens, and some spaces on the board add to or take away from players' total number of hops. Just like other versions of sugoroku games, players can land on spaces that make them move back to start or lose certain numbers of turns. Each space depicts a scenario related to alcohol and punishes or rewards players for their symbolic choices. The spaces with a small image of Ellen are the only non-event spaces.
Players reach the legal drinking age of 20 on the "STOP!" square. The event spaces after that reward players for their good drinking habits with extra rolls and chances to move forward. In many sugoroku-style board games, the person to reach the goal first wins. But in this Ellen alcohol educational game, the player with the most hops after the game ends wins.
[Via Yara-On!]
