Mynavi's Interview with Danganronpa Team
This interview is very long. I tried to make sense out of most sentences, but since it was really long, I couldn’t look at most of them for a long time. I have never felt limit in my Japanese skills more before. If I did all of them accurately, this interview alone would take more than several weeks XD
For the parts I couldn’t really word into English or isn’t that accurate, I put Japanese sentences together. If you’re a fluent speaker of Japanese, I advise you to read the original text which you can find here
If there’s a part you can’t understand well, please tell me. For the parts unrelated to V3, I just summarized it.
Contains complete spoilers to V3. Proceed with caution.
MyNavi News did a character popularity poll campaign as a part of collaboration with Playstation® Vita exclusive software “New-Danganronpa V3 Everyone’s Mutual Killing New Semester”. Today, we deliver you the Super Highschool Level interview experience, an interview with “Danganronpa” creators!
This interview contains full of important “spoilers” about the game plot. We recommend you to read this after beating the game.
Mr. F(20s?/man) who won the A prize is actually a game planner. He entered this lottery with a passion for “Danganronpa” which had made him aim for the game industry. Scenario writer Kodaka Kazutaka-san, Producer Terasawa Yoshinori-san, Director Sasaki Hayao-san attended the interview. As another game creator, many deep questions in a “Danganronpa” freak’s point of view came out one by one.
– I’m a game planner, but I’d like to hear from three of you as a fan representative today. Firstly, please introduce us what your roles are.
Terasawa: Producer and director differ depending on the depth they participate in the project, but we’re no different from other game companies. In our case, Producer’s job is to oversee everything. Not just games, but promotions and license business too. We sparkle our eyes on everything, and take responsibility on the rest. To be more precise, all the works are trifling(laughs). Producer’s job is to listen to everyone’s various opinions and say “I got it, I’ll fixt that”.
Kodaka: He’s the face of Spike&Chunsoft after all. He has the most experience too. He’s one of the older guys within the company now.
Terasawa: That’s right. I think it’s been about 18 years now?
Kodaka: How long have you been in game industry?
Terasawa: I think I’ve been in game industry for twenty something years.
Kodaka: You were from the 'Super famicom’ era then. Then, yes! Director!
Sasaki: I used to be the Planner, so thinking up of ideas is my main work but I take care of everything’s schedule or work on each section, and for the rest I take care of equipments and run a lot of errands…
Kodaka: Everyone does trivial chores(laughs).
Terasawa: If the Director does trivial chores related to the game development, the Producer does trivial chores for larger field for everything.
– I think that depending on the game, directors can write scenarios for it, but for “Danganronpa” you have Kodaka-san, so how do you split your works in that area?
Sasaki: I’m just a director who is a decoration so… (laughs) It’s Kodaka’s job to make draft of the plans and directions for the game, so the final decision is up to him and I receive that as main director. I make sure that those elements are in good condition before they go into the actual production stage.
Terasawa: Director Sasaki does the work of a planner and, takes care of everyone’s progress like an agency manager so Kodaka does what he pleases as a director(laughs). That’s our team’s style.
Kodaka: I think it’s different for directors at other companies, but for us we should be able to manage finances and schedule well so that’s why. I can’t do that well so I’m not becoming a director(laughs). I say “I don’t know” to that kind of part.
Terasawa: If we leave the money and time up to him, he will use them lavishly (laughs).
Kodaka: I will say something like ‘let’s start by playing first!’.
– Then basically, does Kodaka-san do everything in his head?
Kodaka: There are times I only provide opportunies. But I give my own thoughts about everything. But conversely, ideas can come from the workplace, especially for “New Danganronpa V3(V3 for short)”, we were doing that together with animation so there were parts that I didn’t participate a lot, so there were things like “Hey when did you guys put mode like this in!”.
So although I say “I really don’t want this!”, since it has become a series, recently, everyone was thinking about their own characteristics of “Danganronpa” and gave their opinions. In that aspect, V3 was reassuring.
– Just a moment ago, you said “when did you guys put modes like this”. In V3, there were mini games or “Scrum Debate” that led to nonstop debates, but does that mean you didn’t conceive them?
Kodaka: That, we do from beginning.
Sasaki: That’s right. In the beginning of the beginning, we have plots too, but in the meeting for planning, the planners suggest ideas about what system to put into the game and Kodaka is there too, and everyone decides together.
Kodaka: But I didn’t oversee the omake game bit at all so, there came ‘let’s do “dice game”’ thing without me realizing it. At first, it was some sort of baseball raising game mode…
– Baseball raising game mode!?
Kodaka: But many problems ocurred…
Terasawa: Copyright-wise(laughs)
Sasaki: They were hard on this matter……
(TN: They had an issue with Konami.)
How was “Danganronpa” born?
– Next is what I want to hear the most; how the game named “Danganronpa” was born.
1. At first, Kodaka wanted to do an original project. He chose 'adventure game’ field because he could make it with low cost. But no good idea for it came up. At one point, he thought highschoolers killing each other and having trials could be really fun.
2. Kodaka, Komatsuzaki, and Sugiwara workd on the game planning for DR1.
3. Adventure games were easy to make, but they used to be low in popularity so Kodaka and others thought about how to make the game different from the others.
4. Nonstop debate was conceived from Nico Nico Douga’s flying comments. It used to be a minor system of the game. However, game planner Sugiwara suggested that it should be the main system.
5. They wanted to make the game at low cost so they chose 2D for images.
6. The system and the theme of highschoolers killing each other existed from the beginning. Kodaka worked on the scenario after.
7. Rui didn’t know what kind of world the game was set in when he was making the game back in DR1.
8. Kodaka tried to explain about the concept of 'Psycho-Pop’ but people couldn’t understand him. So he showed them the scenario, and the staffs understood what kind of story this was when Genocider Jack popped up at chapter 2.
9. Kodaka was finished with the whole plot for DR1 when he was working on chapter 1 and 2 but he had only written plot for the whole scenario, so it was hard to know what the details were at that time. So other staffs looked at the scenario in advance while making the game.
10. Character design took the longest time when making DR1. Monokuma took 5 minutes to make.
11. Kodaka makes the plot first. He doesn’t stop until the ending is decided. While making the plot, he thinks of what characters he wants to put in. Themes for each chapter are decided this time around. Then he places the characters in every chapter depending on their characteristics. Kaede was decided to be killed from this planning stage.
12. Scenario for V3 came out pretty late, but since most of the staffs within the team did 1 and 2 too, they already knew what kind of stage the new game will have and Sasaki was giving out directions without Kodaka.
The true meaning within “V3”
– Actually, weren’t you scared of the user responses about V3? For the guys who were fans up until now, the story was shocking.
Sasaki: Rather than being scared, we were looking forward to it. For me, I already knew that there’d be mixed opinions and me and my team thought this was interesting, that it’d be okay to have negative opinions about it…
Kodaka: How about you, Terasawa-san? You were against “2”’s 'game world’ concept. I remember that clearly.
Terasawa: That’s right. At that time, I was against it a little bit but I had almost no opinions against V3. Thinking “he thought up a good ending.”. I thought that “He sure did think up of a good ending”
Kodaka: About the plot twist, I received a review from one worker, and thinking about how everything turned out, I think that was the most correct response. On the day I first showed him, he said “I don’t know about this. Honestly, players will be disappointed.” but on the day after he came back “I thought about it for a day, and I think it’s unexpectedly interesting.”. I thought the players’ response would be similar overall.
Terasawa: If you write (the review) straight after finishing the game, we will have low scores… (laughs)
Kodaka: I guess we could say about “spoilery stuffs”?
– Fans want to hear about “spoilery stuffs”!
Kodaka: I wanted to set players playing V3 up in a different stage than the ones up till now. In the end, players in 1 or 2 are mere bystanders, saying things like “Cheer up Naegi-kun”, “Cheer up Hinata-kun”. Until now, they were bystanders saying “It’s a very sad despair for Naegi-kun, but it’s not related to me in any way.” and since V3 is a third installment, I wanted to put the players on the different position that isn’t like that. If the current position changes, I thought that the feels that you get when you play will become different, and it will not feel like the game has fallen into mannerism. I wanted to make players stand closer to Saihara&co’s perspective.
Saihara and others were like “All the things we believed up till now were all fictions, it’s a pity.” and they fall into despair. Still, even if it’s fiction, I wanted him to refute the enemies by “The ones which made my heart move and made me grow are truths.”, and grasping hope from despair by refuting enemies so I made the end like that.
I wanted him to sync with the players at the end, but I guess there were parts where he went too far. But thinking that it’s the same despair as the one Saihara and Naegi&co. and Hinata&co. had experienced made me want the players to feel the same.
– You wanted us to sync with them. I thought I was being told off by the game.
Kodaka: Is that so. I think there could be people feeling that way, but I didn’t intend to at all. They’re(the viewers in NDRV3) from completely different world. That world’s viewers aren’t our players. It’s really popular in the world over there. In the world over here it’s not… (laughs) I wanted to do that kind of thing mainly due to that plot device.
When that was connected up with the theme “Fiction and Reality are swapped” and thought of it, I really wanted to do that ending. I had that kind of belief so even it became something hard and the players can’t take it, I couldn’t do much about it. I somehow thought will be a really great game to the players who understood it well, so I wasn’t really scared. I was ready for it a bit too.
– “Danganronpa” gives an impression that it is “a life-changingly touching game for some users” rather than a game loved by everyone.
Kodaka: Of course, the best-case scenario would be “Danganronpa” becoming a magical game that is life-changing and “agreeable” for everyone, but it’s a sharp game to begin with. We aim for something that doesn’t exist out there, and we believe that there will be fans for that stuff no matter what. We believed that those kind of fans will cheer for us this time too. Saying that we’re ready for this, we had false hope believing that the fans of “Danganronpa” will agree with us this time too… but as expected they didn’t.
Terasawa: That expectation was betrayed (laughs).
Kodaka: I had thought maybe miracles could happen, but it went as we expected.
– How was the reception for “2”?
Kodaka: Rather, we took the common road for 2 so we heard a good amount of praise. “1” ended with somewhat buoyant ending that has despair and hope at the same time, and “2” ended with a happy end so I guess the gap inbetween was a factor too? “2”’s way of ending is one of Danganronpa too, but “1” and “V3” ’s ways of ending are “Danganronpa” within me too, so I’m thinking whether I have achieved the intention of enjoying various tastes like that.
Something like you play the game several years later and you find that the game tastes different. If the game tastes still the same, you’re just repeating the series. I want to change that part as a creator no matter what. (何年後かにまたやり直してみたらまた違う味がするみたいな。同じ味がしちゃったら、ただシリーズを重ねるだけになっちゃうので。それは作り手として絶対に変えたいなと思っていました。)
Thoughts for the next work?
– There are undecided parts too, but what do you think about the plot onward. If I take examples from fans, there are voices saying “We want to see “V2” where Amami Rantarou is the protagonist.“.
Terasawa: Indeed, there were people asking for something like "What was Amami’s previous killing game like”, saying that they don’t mind seeing it in novels or comics.
– Finally, there were people asking for something like animation 'Despair-arc”.
Terasawa: I suppose he(Kodaka) will write it if he feels like it, right?
13. Kodaka doesn’t just reveal a fact within a story because Danganronpa’s core genre is mystery.
14. If you look at Kodaka’s way of writing stories, you can add as many ideas as possible whenever you like, but it doesn’t consider budgets at all.
15. Kodaka always thinks about how to break everyone’s expectations when writing a story. It was same when writing tricks for “V3”’s 5th chapter.
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Sasaki: For that, only a theme was delivered at first…
Sasaki: As theme of the trick, he said “a trick that works out because the culprit and the victim cooperates together” so three other planners gathered and produced ideas repeatedly for about a month and it was finished.
Kodaka: It was completely different trick at first.
Sasaki: At first, it was a trick where both of the guys pull the bow and the arrow together. With a fatal wound that enables them to use only one hand, one of them aims and the other grabs bowstring, and the culprit pulls the string to plunge it.
Kodaka: That was hard direction-wise, and we concluded that it was bit insufficient for chapter 5. It lacked drama too, so we fixed it again and it turned out like that.
Sasaki: We didn’t think about using Ekisal that way at first as well, so it was good that we coincidentally made a good use of it.
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16. Kodaka compromised many things to fit the cost and schedule when he was making “1”.
17. But Kodaka said they shouldn’t compromise a lot for the first installment of a series. For the first series, they normally have a lot of ideas, so if they throw them out one by one, there will be not many ideas left in the future series. So you will lose to “We only have this pattern left!” and the story will end up being costly to make yet trash-like. At some point, making something new out of big budget will become really hard.
18. So he chose themes that costs differently when making “1”, “2”, “V3”. He thinks 1 is pretty great in that perspective because it didn’t expand too much in terms of ideas, but was sharp on its own.
19. If there is something that Kodaka would like to add in “1”, he puts it in future installments. If he was given the chance to remake 1, he would like to change it so that the culprits are less obvious. Many people pointed out that “1” was really simple. That’s why he made it harder to guess culprits for 2 and V3.
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– Thinking about it, nothing was obvious when playing through first.
Kodaka: One of the easier one is Shinguji(Korekiyo) I think. But that too, we had a magic show as a stage in chapter 2 yet Yumeno wasn’t the culprit so our intention was that even if the occult was the main theme, people won’t be able to guess if Shinguji is the culprit or not so we just made it like that.
– I thought Yumeno was going to die for sure. I don’t remember a lot of cute characters in the past series surviving until the end, but is there a reason why you made her survive?
Kodaka: It’s the same reason as Kuzuryu(Fuyuhiko)from 2, but killing the character who has just overcame her friends’ deaths and grew up is a bit… well it’d be betraying the expectation as well, but I don’t want to betray like that. It’s alright if she dies after completing her growth, but I thought killing her when she’s about to grow up was bit meaninglessly bad. So you might think she’s going to survive after playing V3 up till 3rd chapter thanks to Kuzuryu’s case.
Terasawa: Although he says he doesn’t like it, he might try to kill someone that way if there is a next installment. (laughs)
Kodaka: Might… (laughs)
– Next, about the protagonist, it’s the spoilery bit but I wanted to ask you about Saihara Shuichi being the protagonist. All the protagonists up till now had the impression that they were easy to empathize with. Saihara is clearly different from past two so, what did you have in mind when you conceived him?
Kodaka: “Growth”. I was thinking that he was a growing protagonist. In “1”, Naegi was weak and cute when he first appeared, but he had this characteristic that he’s cute, and he somehow was cute from the beginning. But Saihara wasn’t sure of himself, so I wanted him to be the character that players can think he’s on the even level as them or someone whom the players worry about. Looking at the character, I thought of the story where he lets the others think even though he had the baton passed from Kaede and he became close to Momota, so I thought I must make him continue growing. That’s the part I minded the most about Saihara. Hayashibara(Megumi)-san, who voiced him, minded that a lot too, he was very weak back in chapter 1 right?
Sasaki: Indeed. He’s the character whose impression changed the most from the first to the last.
Kodaka: When staffs heard only about the first chapter, some were like “Is he okay to be that weak?”, so I gave them the impression that “he will be the real man!” when we reach 6th chapter. Considering that, he picks up girls in his head in “Brain Drive”, and there’s this pervert side of him too so, it’s like “hey what is this guy thinking in his head?”.
(TN: I think he’s referring to “Man’s Greatest Ambition” event)
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20. When making the character, Kodaka thinks as much as he can about the character and gives them to Komatsuzaki. Komatsuzaki then gives him the design back and Kodaka refines the character. They usually go through seven versions before finalizing. 2 or 3 if it went smoothly. Only about 4 people are involved in this process. Everyone discussed together for “1”, but they thought it’d be better this way rather than having everyone’s opinions.
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– For this installment, which character was revamped the most?
Kodaka: I think it’s Ouma(Kokichi). And I think Amami took a long time too. But overall, it went more smoothly than “2” right?
– You had a lot of hardships for “2”?
Kodaka: They were expecting the next one to succeed like “1” did, and the weird request like 'put in a character like Oogami(Sakura)’ came in. If that kind of 'unique’ kind of character is once created, it’s good for “2” too. It’s really hard, and we had the frame for it too, but we couldn’t do it and it felt like 'hey you’re aiming for that again?’ so we just gave up.
For “V3”, we didn’t aim for that from the beginning. I didn’t put Hoshi(Ryoma) in as comedy relief, but as a cute but hard-boiled character. On the other hand, characters that lack characteristics but have good looks took rather longer time. I don’t want add more to that. Especially, if voices of many people are applied, the character design becomes 'added(足し算)’, so that’s why I don’t put many people when making the character. I don’t quite like character design with many added(足し算) parts. So I do whatever I wish, stuffs like making Saihara dark and wearing his cap.
Sasaki: There were lots of revamps for Saihara. No matter how we tried he became a lot like Hinata or Naegi, so we minded that a lot when making him.
Receiving the result for popularity poll
– Continuing on with characters, how was the result for this popularity poll?
Kodaka: I say, Harukawa(Maki) ranked low! So this result, must be a lie. (laughs)
Sasaki: Right. She was high in the survival ranks though.
Kodaka: As I expected, it’s because she stuck around with Momota. And it’s a shock that Shinguji ranked low! I can’t stand how this character must be feeling. I like him a lot design-wise too. But everyone is good too. The one who grew up the most through Danganronpa must be Komatsuzaki.
Back then in “1”, along with Terasawa, I said my opinions a lot too. But Komatsuzaki made theory within himself as time went on so, if we had a meeting now, we just throw ideas to him. It’s more fun to receive ideas from him too so. So for characters being this popular, I think it’s power of Komatsuzaki.
Terasawa: Well, the rankng for this is not only about pictures but also the contents too so.
Kodaka: Do you mean, (Yonaga)Angie was popular for her looks but I didn’t try hard enough? (laughs). I wonder if you mean… Komatsuzaki did good. Well, I couldn’t do much about Shirogane.
Terasawa: I thought Harukawa and Momota would end up higher. Harukawa ends up higher in other rankings, but Momota is generally low. I thought Momota would be more popular back then when the game wasn’t out.
Kodaka: What do you think, do you think he was too heated? I like third characters like Momota because he’s like Kuwabara from 'Yuyuhakusho’. I guess Amami ranked 6th thanks to his looks….
Sasaki: Even though he didn’t do anything…
Kodaka: Erm, isn’t it because he gives off good vibes? He somehow survived the previous survival. Still, I didn’t make any character with intention of making him/her popular. If choose some factors to please people, I choose characteristics that will lead to positive effects rather than similar things.
– You said before that you give ideas to Komatsuzaki-san, but what are written there?
Kodaka: I write everything that comes to my mind as hints. Something like “This lass believes in god” or for K1-B0, “He’s a cute dopey robot”, or for Iruma(Miu), “She goes S and M.” and gives him their lines. Komatsuzaki keeps that in mind and gives ideas too, like for Momota, he didn’t have goatee at first. But we decided that he should have goatee to look more like a third character, and his suit’s color was black and more gorgeous at first too, but it was said that it might be better off with some color washed off so color of his clothes ended up weird. (laughs)
– K1-B0 is a dopey character with great key visual. I suppose that bit was decided from the beginning?
Kodaka: His personality was decided, but it was like 'let’s make his key visual really gorgeous!’. But in chapter 6, he was really awesome. That movie was created without me knowing it too.
(TN: He’s talking about 3D movie where Kiibo destroys the whole school)
Sasaki: It was when Varin was broken (バリーンって壊れてくるところですね). In the scenario, it was clearly written that K1-B0 will come out rigorously, but I wonder if it was the designer’s heart that carried him to do that far.
(TN: I wonder if 'バリーン’ is typo for barrier)
Kodaka: I didn’t expect him to show this much passion and I was surprised.
– So it’s like Kodaka-san makes basic things and you spread it out to staffs.
Kodaka: So in other way, “Danganronpa” team members don’t do just what they’re told to do. I do more than what I was asked to do.
Sasaki: Right. But somehow within everyone else, they know what is allowed in “Danganronpa” and what is not, so they add what they think are fun to the team. Everything’s over though… (laughs).
They talk about Japan’s game industry afterwards. Nothing much related to Danganronpa. Kodaka does mention that he always makes game as if he’s making the last, thus V3 ended that way too.
I didn’t know that that 3D footage of Kiibo destroying the school was something that designers did on their own lol. By the sound of it, DR team sounds like passionate pranksters.
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