In the lead-up to the release of Stranger Than Heaven in early-2027, Sega and RGG Studio are dropping a series of videos to give players a taste of protagonist Daito’s life across four decades. The first video shows off his life in Kokura, Fukuoka, and it’s pretty rough. You can check out the trailer for yourself here.
Basically, after spending most of his life in America and facing rampant racism and discrimination there, Daito figures he’d have better luck going back to his hometown in Japan. The catch? Daito is of mixed descent. While he looks Japanese, he has the blue eyes of a westerner. It doesn’t help that he was essentially raised in the west, which means his Japanese probably isn’t all that good, and he isn’t even familiar with life in his hometown. This is clearly illustrated in the way most of the Japanese people react to him, referring to him as “keto”, short for ketojin, which is a derogatory term for any white person in Japan.
Snoop Dogg’s also in this trailer. Good ol’ Snoop Dogg. He plays Orpheus, who owns the ship that Daito stowed away on, and while it initially seems like he’s after Daito for payback, the trailer suggests he’s got other plans in mind.
By and large though, I’m more intrigued by the racial displacement themes that Stranger Than Heaven wants to explore. Mixed children typically do not do very well in Japan, which is a theme that’s been explored in quite a bit of Japanese media and books too. Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale For the Time Being is a great read that follows the life of a young girl of mixed descent, her troubled family life, and the kind of bullying she has to put up with at school. It’s pretty tough to read, but it’s still engaging nonetheless to try to understand why this sense of xenophobia is so prevalent in Japan.
Stranger Than Heaven‘s latest trailer also features elements of discrimination, though I expect that since Daito is a young, able-bodied man, we won’t have to put up with the bullying for too long. I’m certainly interested to see what this game has to say about Japan’s less pretty side.
Stranger Than Heaven is set to be released for consoles and PC on Jan. 15, 2027.
