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.
