Promise Mascot Agency Is A Lesson In Writing A Realistic Teacher

By Wallace Truesdale | August 28, 2025 | 10:00am

Video Games Features Promise Mascot Agency

Promise Mascot Agency Is A Lesson In Writing A Realistic Teacher

Video games include a lot of teaching. There is a literal sense to this, considering games often come with text boxes and disembodied voices that tell you which button does what, but what I’m more interested in here is the number of mentors included within games. From Kratos showing his son Atreus how to fight monsters in God of War to Lee fixing Clementine’s arms as he teaches her how to shoot a gun in TellTale’s The Walking Dead, there is no shortage of characters ready to dispense some wisdom.

What’s rare is a realistic depiction of those who do the most teaching—teachers! While there are glimpses of the profession here and there, the Persona series being a notable example, they’re often just glimpses. Some characters may have a background as a teacher, but that trait is not often realized as anything more than a title on a fact sheet. This is one of several reasons Promise Mascot Agency’s Numa Wambui, better known as Miss Wambui, has stood out this year among a cast of zany and heart-warming characters. Originally from the UK before coming to Kaso-Machi, Miss Wambui not only has a bubbly and magnetic personality that’s easy to see in front of a classroom (a personality that shines in part because of the voice actress Reina’s performance), but also shares many of the struggles teachers experience in real life.

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When asked about creating the character, Kaizen Game Works Game Director Oli Clarke Smith said the team aimed to create a realistic portrayal of the profession, one that fit well in a struggling town like Kaso-Machi. “We wanted to make a teacher that fit the archetype of a teacher in a school full of struggling kids, that advocates for them and gives all of herself to make their lives better,” Smith shared with Endless Mode over email. “However, instead of seeing her in action with her students, we wanted for her conversations with the player to be her outlet. Teachers go through hell everyday, and we thought it was important to show her troubles, not just her being strong in front of the kids.”

And troubles there are for Miss Wambui. In between running a mascot agency and unraveling decades of yakuza family drama, players will hear about Miss Wambui’s various problems at the local school. Her issues include paying out of pocket for school supplies, working around an often intoxicated head teacher who threatens her visa if she ever makes trouble for him, and dealing with students troubled by their home lives. This last one is especially worth noting since Miss Wambui’s overarching side quest, where players collect her anime DVDs spread throughout Kaso-Machi, is directly tied to a student who fell into the yakuza world. She considers this a personal failure, bearing to the protagonists Michi and Pinky☆ the difficulty of knowing you can’t save everyone.

Miss Wambui talking about feeding kids

Overall, there is rarely a moment in this game where it’s not clear Miss Wambui does more than not only what’s on her job description, but also anything that should be asked of just one person. It’s a cruel similarity to real-life teachers who, by necessity, often do a lot more than teaching. Even outside of handling generative A.I. use among students that caught schools unprepared, educators are notoriously under-resourced, underpaid, and overworked. This is on top of having to navigate larger political issues that inevitably impact both schools and the people coming into them. For example, one way that this has materialized recently is teachers having to prepare for face-offs with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more widely loathed as ICE. ICE has not been shy about targeting kids, or generally ripping families apart, which has forced teachers to deal with student anxieties or realities around that situation. It was hard not to make this connection as Miss Wambui explained how the corrupt mayor’s poor spending habits made her life harder.

Real-life wasn’t the only inspiration for Miss Wambui’s character. Smith shared that his main inspiration for writing Miss Wambui was delinquent manga like Crows and games like The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa, which is fitting given the general odd-one-out nature that’s pervasive in Promise Mascot Agency. “When I wrote Miss Wambui, I imagined what a British teacher would struggle with in a school full of Japanese delinquents,” he wrote over email. “Over the years, we have seen a number of J-vloggers that work or have worked as English teachers in Japan, and while we didn’t take anything specific from them, there was a kind of nebulous inspiration from what they have talked about in videos.” He also notes how Kaizen Game Works art director Rachel Noy drove the character design and helped depict a foreigner struggling in Kaso-Machi.

When asked about how he believes games depict teaching as a profession generally, Smith also noted how infrequently he saw realistic teachers (“Maybe I just haven’t played them, or maybe they don’t exist?”) and mentioned only the Persona series by name. He then went into his thoughts on how developers can approach depicting teachers, emphasizing the importance of communicating their struggles and those of the larger system—ones he wouldn’t want to deal with himself. “I was always told at school that I’d make a good teacher, but I had no desire to deal with all the challenges that teachers face,” Smith writes. “Kids have it hard these days; everyone is poorer, social media has turned us against each other, kids are forced to grow up too fast, parents expect teachers to raise their kids, and governments enforce unrealistic goals while slashing budgets. If a game features a teacher, these struggles should be shown, so that more people can learn empathy for an essential, but undervalued profession.”

That last point rings especially true by the time Promise Mascot Agency rolls credits. Without divulging too many spoilers, Miss Wambui is without question an integral part of Kaso-Machi’s come-up. Her presence is reassuring both for her warm energy and practical assistance. Multiple characters describe the positive impact she’s had on their life, including Pinky☆. The game adds an extra level of truth to these praises by making Miss Wambui’s words a literal stat-boosting item in the game, appropriately called “Miss Wambui’s Encouragement.” Even Michi himself can’t help but comment on her special character, directly telling her later in the game that “A teacher like you might have made a difference in my life.” Big words from a man whose name can make the toughest yakuza members’ blood run cold.

All of this adds credence to Miss Wambui being one of the best representations of teachers in gaming. With that in mind, knowing that students of all ages and varieties are facing more trials than ever as September approaches, here’s what Miss Wambui’s words of encouragement would be for those going back to school, according to Smith: “The world is tough, but so are you. The world is unfair, but if you stick together, you’ll make it through! Now, do your best!”