Singaporean YouTuber Jianhao Tan started his YouTube channel in 2010 and became prominent for his videos displaying archetypes (all named after their actors) doing specific activities such as driving, reacting to a scary movie, cutting in line, going on a first date, etc. In 2018, Tan released a video entitled “GOOD STUDENTS vs BAD STUDENTS,” which compares how “good students” act in school vs “bad students.” The video went viral and became his most-viewed video at the time and currently has 44 million views. Tan was encouraged to do more videos relating to high school, and the “Titan Academy” series was born.
The series takes place at the prestigious high school Titan Academy in the fictional city of Titan Town, Singaporeand and focuses on Class T1-T5. In Season 3, Class N4-T1 was introduced, and the series began to rotate between the two classes. As of Season 9, Class T1-T5 are seniors and Class N4-T1 are juniors.
The main characters of the series have changed over the years due to new actors entering the series and old actors leaving, but the most important main characters (all from Class T1-T5) have stayed the same. The protagonists of the series are Jianhao Tan, Vincent Sin, Madeline Wang and Denise Taylor. Taylor is known as the smartest student in the school and is caught in a love triangle between Vincent and Jianhao. Vincent is the class clown who only wants Denise so that he can copy her homework, while Jianhao is a caring friend who genuinely cares for Denise. The plot gets complicated in later seasons when Madeline, Vincent’s ex-girlfriend, develops feelings for Jianhao and tries to get together with him.
In Season 4, Ms. Siti, the principal, is forced to sell ownership of the school to a mysterious organization called The Organisation led by Mr. Alan and Mrs. Regna. The Organisation sees the students purely as pieces in their plot to make the school as financially profitable as possible and makes many radical changes such as designing the school uniforms to be more formal and forcing all of the students to take an exam while expelling all of the students who get a failing score.
One thing I enjoy is that the series shows character development amongst the students and teachers. For example, Miss Sherly, a teacher for Class T1-T5 and N4-T1, debuted as nice and caring to the students only to be popular amongst them. In reality, she thinks that only the top students are worthy of being taught and bluntly tells fellow teacher Madam Soot Beng that it issn’t their job to help the students. By the time The Organisation arrives, she grows to care about her students and decides to leave Titan Academy since she doesn’t want to work for a school that only cares about financial gain. After hearing of The Organisation’s plans to initiate stricter measures on the students, she changes her mind and stays so that the students will have someone in school to speak up for them.
However, the episodes are getting repetitive. After Season 4, the series lacked any major plotline and went back into its slice-of-life videos. Every season, Tan would usually include several videos of exams, including types of students preparing for an exam, types of students in an exam, and types of students reacting to exam results. Initially, Tan said that the season 4 exam videos were going to be the last ones in the series and would be the best ones in the series. Tan eventually went back on his word and released many more exam videos. The sequences are repetitive, and the exam videos are basically the same except for different characters performing the scenes.
Additionally, the cast is starting to get too old to play high schoolers. With the exception of Vicky Soot Beng who was born in 2000, all of the main characters are born in the 1990’s and are either in their late 20’s or early 30’s. Many of these actors (such as Jianhao and Debbie) are married and starting families of their own. To make things more awkward, the actors for the teachers are the same age as the students. For example, Madam Soot Beng’s actress Amander Liew was born in 1993, the same year Tan was born. In the series, Vicky is her daughter, meaning that there is only a seven year age difference between the two.
The Organisation, which is a very lazy name, has become comic relief as time goes on. In Season 4, they were shown as intimidating, and anyone who defied them received severe consequences such as expulsion and getting blacklisted from all other schools in the country. By Season 9, the Organisation did not come off as intimidating at all as the students continuously foil their plots easily. For example, Mr. Alan wanted to expel Denise after she accidentally humiliated him in an assembly only for her to thwart his attempts again and again. They also start to make uncharacteristically ridiculous decisions, such as forcing the students to play Squid Game after Mr. Alan was disappointed by the exam results in the latest season.
Overall, I think that Tan has stretched the series long enough and due to the ages of the actors and how the series seems to be going nowhere, the “Titan Academy” series should end.
Shumuel • Jul 3, 2025 at 2:54 pm
Another thing I feel is a problem I forgot to mention are the characters. Even though the characters at first start of interesting and have so much potential to become very likable, within recent videos they’ve been nothing but boring or very hateable. I have 5 characters in particular with so much wasted potential: JianHao, Nicole, Vincent, Maddy, and Denise. First is Jianhao who I loved at first because despite him being the main characters he always had his flaws. He didn’t do well in school, he always got in trouble, many teachers found him particularly to be too much of a hassle, etc. These flaws, while always played off as jokes, were still very interesting to me as it made Jianhao more relatable to those who don’t do well in school or tend to act up, which could’ve been a genuine lesson for those watching to learn not to do things like that. But instead, now thanks to Mr. Alan, he can get away with all these flaws and doesn’t actually suffer any consequences. It also doesn’t help the fact that no one around him even addresses these flaws. Vincent is always rightfully chastised and scolded for this and actually gets punishment, but since Jianhao is rich and very influential now thanks to Mr. Alan he never gets any consequences for his actions. Next is Nicole who as I said before, had potential to be an antagonist, but didn’t for some reason and just went back to the way she normally was. While I don’t think her character is as wasted as the other ones on the list, it is still worth mention. Next is Vincent who has just become super hateable. It’s not even his fault cause we knew from the start, JianHao was always going to be with Denise and that Vincent’s relationship with her was temporary. However, even knowing this, the way JianHao frames their relationship in order for people to be happy they broke up is just wrong. Like Vincent constantly acts super protective over Denise, always rude to her and treats her like a object, which sure while it is in his character to be an asshole, he’s never really been that way before with Denise. Vincent is always portrayed as the bad guy or the asshole, but it completely overshadows moments when he’s genuinely kind or caring. His whole relationship with Denise, while honestly boring, was just doomed from the start cause he was eventually going to be broken up so JianHao could swoop and be like the knight in shining armor for Denise. And now, thanks to a breakup that was already stupid, Vincent has just done a completely 180 and become fully evil for no reason outside of the fact that he’s broken up with Denise. Next is Maddy who has the most wasted potential. In my opinion, I just felt like had they not portrayed Vincent as an asshole all the time, Maddy’s relationship with Vincent could’ve genuinely worked. It would’ve been interesting seeing Maddy and Denise (the girlfriends of the 2 main characters) getting along and also maybe having episodes of double dates. These relationships had so much potential, yet cause Vincent had to be such an asshole, Maddy is just left to randomly develop feelings for JianHao which feels so forced. It’s obvious their just doing this to introduce “girl drama” or whatever and at this point, Maddy literally just feels like a second choice, even though we all know JianHao and Denise aren’t going to break up. It also doesn’t help the fact that Maddy said that if JianHao picked Denise then she’d be fine with it, only to still show signs of jealousy and constantly making JianHao uncomfortable by asking him who he likes more. She even lied to her own mother that she and JianHao are dating which if just really messed up. Maddy knows how JianHao feels and rather than trying to deal with these feelings and understanding that JianHao is always going to pick Denise, she ends up acting at times like an obsessive stalker/psychopath who pines for JianHao’s attention, even showing us episodes where she just does whatever JianHao does, acting like she doesn’t have her own sentience. Finally, is Denise who I’ve come to loathe. She’s always seen as this perfect. can never do wrong students, and even when knowing who her mother is, it feels so stereotypical and like it either goes nowhere or doesn’t have any real impact on her character. Honestly, I have a lot to say about her, but I don’t want to rant on for so long, so I’ll just say, I personally do not like Denise.
Shumuel • Jul 3, 2025 at 2:16 pm
I completely agree. I remember back during COVID time when I first stumbled upon the series, I thought it was funny and engaging and never actually thought it had a story. It wasn’t till 4 years later, when I came back to the show in 2024, I was surprised that it was an actual series, and that the series itself was still going on. At first, I thought it was pretty fun and interesting, but now, it just feels like a slugfest to get through. It’s fun binge watching the older episodes, but the newer episodes have been extremely disappointing. Too many episodes are very similar to one another, and even when they change up the formula, it doesn’t do much for the show. The Organisation no longer feels like a threat, and the show constantly leaves us on cliffhangers only to go nowhere with them. Like, it’s been I believe almost a year now since JianHao learned who his father was, and nothing has actually changed. Sure we get a few scenes with them, but it’s nothing that furthers the plot. Plus, I always thought cause Nicole was more accepting of Alan being their dad than JianHao, it would’ve actually created tension in the famile story that I would’ve loved to watch, making for an arc that would’ve genuinely been interesting. Also, another problem is the whole JianHao and Denise situation, and too be honest, I don’t like nor care about their relationship. I thought when first watching it it was nice, but now knowing that JianHao is MARRIED and literally has a daughter with Debbie (another character on Titan Academy) it genuinely feels so weird why him and Denise in specific are a couple. It would’ve been cool seeing how JianHao and Debbie get together in a show where they’re two new and separate characters. But even looking past the fact he’s married, JianHao and Denise have nothing really in common, and outside of them having a few nice romantic scenes, this relationship feels so forced and genuinely like its going nowhere. I also feel like the show has a bad habit of milking ideas. For example, the fact they constantly keep doing exam videos which were funny and some of my favorites at first, but now just repetitive and boring. Or, a more recent example is JianHao having an actor who’s been pretending to be his ex-girlfriend which was weird in the actual show but is just weirder when he’s constantly been featuring her in shorts as pretending to be JianHao’s ex-girlfriend (once again, JianHao is MARRIED and has a child). Finally, I just feel like as a person who’s been waiting for episodes on a weekly basis, this show just feels too boring. Having to wait anywhere from a week to more than a month genuinely pisses me off cause nothing interesting actually happens in the next episode. Sure, I get excited when the episodes come out, but my excitement quickly fades when nothing relavent to the plot actually happens. On top of that, this show is starting to become harder to watch because of how long it takes for episodes to come out, as before the current haiatus, they were doing biweekly uploads on Sunday (which for me in particular sucks cause I have church on that day) and I hate having to wait after church only to watch another video that doesn’t further the plot at all. In my many months of coming back to this show, the only relavent things I believe have happened is: JianHao getting back with Denise, JianHao’s father being revealed, and Teverly being expelled. Only 3 major things in the span of almost a year have occured, and genuinely this just feels like padding at this point. I hope after the internships (which should be only 2-3 episodes), they have one or two more mini arc to further develop the characters and plot before wrapping it up anytime this or next year, because I cannot keep coming back to this show only to be letdown with pointless, boring, and repetitive episodes.