Introduction
Novelitas is a project to establish a visual novel lesson platform.
We propose visual novel lessons as a new approach to build educational infrastructure.
Current Approaches
There have been two types of approaches in building educational infrastructure. Let’s take a closer look.
1.The Physical Approach
The first is the physical approach such as building schools.
It is the most common and ideal way, but it costs a lot in many ways. Our resources are limited, so this approach has some limitation also.
2.The Technological Approach
As a supplemental way, lectures using internet may have helped reducing educational gaps in the world. This is what we call the technological approach.
This approach can be divided further into two ways: online real-time lectures and on-demand video lectures.
Real-time lectures using video conference systems require strong internet infrastructure. They can cause latency issues even in developed countries.
Video lectures, although more flexible, are relatively heavy in data size and require stable internet connectivity, such as Wi-Fi.
So, what is the solution?
Education should be delivered to everyone in the world equally. From this perspective, two points are important: accessibility and inclusivity.
Accessibility means ensuring that anyone can access the content. On the internet, this requires keeping the content lightweight.
Inclusivity means ensuring that no one is left behind. Online and on-demand lectures often lack fully functional subtitle systems, which can prevent certain learners – such as those with hearing impairments – from benefiting fully.
A new approach: creating HTML5 lessons
One possible approach to contain these two aspects is creating lectures in HTML.
HTML, mainly used in creating websites, can write lightweight on-demand content if designed efficiently.
If combined with Java Script, it is possible to make interactive lesson content run in the browser like browser-based games.
The concept of Visual Novel Lessons
To reproduce the UI of real lessons in HTML, one possible model is lessons in visual novel format.
Visual Novels are type of game in which players read narration and dialogue, typically composed of background images, text box, and buttons.
By representing the background as a whiteboard and displaying the instructor’s speech in text box with a typewriter animation, the UI of real lessons – particularly video lectures – can be reasonably reproduced.
We call the lessons created in this format Visual Novel Lessons. Below is the model developed in this project.
By not using background images, we achieve lightweight lessons.
According to hosting information, a typical five-minute lesson in this model is about 15KB, and even longer lessons generally stay under 20KB. This is extremely lightweight compared to videos (which are often several tens of MB).
Simple charts and graphs can be drawn as SVGs within the lesson interface to maintain this lightweight design.
Although the customizations of backgrounds is lower than video lessons, this trade-off allows for interactivity through HTML and Java Script – such as buttons and quizzes – which video lessons cannot easily provide.
Platformization
If a platform can be built that has these lightweight visual novel lessons, I believe it is possible to create a form of educational infrastructure.
As of January 5, 2026, the project has released about 150 lessons, with additional content in stock. By continuing to expand the collection, we believe it is possible to build a platform that covers learning content from basic topics up to university entrance exam level.
Conclusion
Building an educational infrastructure is a long journey that requires the participation of many people.
I wanted to propose visual novel lessons as a potential solution as a possible way to contribute to building such infrastructure.
Thank you for reading.
*I translated this article from Japanese to English in the assistance with ChatGPT.
Novelitas | Visual Novel × Education 