ju-rain-blog - Tumblr blog

ju-rain-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Kodaka's interview on NDRV3's ending and DR3 Animation

This doesn’t explicitly spoil the whole game(no mentions of who is victim&culprit and who is the mastermind), but contents about the ending is implied heavily. If you are planning to play the game, I recommend you not to read it.

My translation is pretty rough, so if you can speak Japanese fluently enough to play the game, I recommend you to read the original article: http://www.gamer.ne.jp/news/201702180002

Interview with Kodaka Kazutaka, the creator of the game he wanted to make despite the controversies, “New Danganronpa V3 Everyone’s Killing Semester”

We interviewed Mr. Kodaka Kazutaka, the planner and scenario writer of Spike Chunsoft’s PS4/PS Vita’s software “New Danganronpa Everyone’s Killing Semester.” It’s been 1 month since “New Danganronpa V3 Everyone’s Killing Semster” came out in 12th of January, 2017, and there might be a lot of players who cleared the game and saw the ending to the game. And while there are people who want to do the game for the second time straight after, there are people who can’t think about anything for a while. Perhaps, both of them are correct responses to the ending. This game creates that many kinds of emotions, and makes players feel those many emotions. In this interview, we focused on why this controversial masterpiece was born with Mr. Kodaka Kazutaka.

~~Beneath are the full spoilers to the game~~

Chapter 1 took the longest time out of the whole series to make

– Since “New Danganronpa V3” is out now, I hope we can hear about the scenario and the characters. K: Thank you (yoroshiku). – This time, the story was renewed and became the new beginning. Tell us what you focused on when making the story from the scratch. K: Since it’s the third installment of “Danganronpa” series, I firstly thought about what to leave unchanged and where to change. It shouldn’t be too new, or it would lose the series’ characteristics. Although I did renew the story, I started with deciding on what should stay.

– Specifically, what did you think you should leave unchanged? K: What I took notice was the starting point. In other words, I thought the plot where a number of teenagers were being forced to play murder games should stay the same. If this bit was same, I thought the players would recognize it as “Danganronpa”. Even so, if the plot is too identical, it will lead into mannerism. – Although it’s set in a school just like the first installment, the atmosphere is quite different. K: You can say that I set the game in a school on “purpose”. I wanted to make it look similar to the first installment, yet make the players feel a little bit of difference. – What was the biggest change you applied when renewing the series this time? K: Firstly, the characters. There was a balance between characters’ relations until now, but by breaking it I expected to show something new. And for the plot developments too, I made some devices that shows new stuffs. So, I kept the settings and changed the characters, and plot developments that came after that. – Speaking of plot developments, I was very surprised by chapter 1’s culprit. K: When making murder tricks, I roughly think about what I will do, what will happen. Chapter 1’s trick existed from that time. Thinking up of tricks for the chapter 1 was easy, but making the plot was quite difficult. The story needed to make sense, and we needed to pursuade the players too. Looking back, this chapter 1 took the longest time to make out of the whole series.

– Indeed, you were being more careful than ever before. K: “New Danganronpa V3”’s big theme is “lie”, but that doesn’t mean you can put fake tricks. Actually, if you play once again after learning chapter 1’s ending, I think you will understand why the culprit did that. I think I made a fair mystery in my own way there. – Certainly, there were new discoveries in the second playthrough. K: You can make “Actually, these sorts of things were happening in the game without the players knowing it.” sort of stories pretty easily, but that’s not surprising enough (laughs). So, even if it was hard, I wanted those things to happen right in front of players’ eyes. – This is the question about the whole series, but how do you think up of tricks? K: For the first installment, I thought up of them all by myself and for the second installment, I thought together with the planner. For ��V3”, Mr. Kitayama Takekuni, the writer for “Danganronpa Kirigiri” helped. Just as I had mentioned previously, I prepare the rough story, we make first draft of the trick and merge it with the scenario. For this time, many people’s ideas were mixed up in the tricks, so I think everything is different, and they ended up in high quality. – So as the series progresses on, new bloods are mixed in. K: Sure indeed. Ideas keep on running out as the time passes by (laughs) – You said that “Lie” was a keyword for the story and classroom trials. Is there a reason why you focused on lies? K: Focusing on lies was decided from the planning stage. For example, in “Jinroh(人狼)”(the game bit like mafia), you don’t need to say the answer, and you just need to persuade the participants to continue on. I thought maybe I could apply the same rule to “Danganronpa”. This game is centered around class trial’s “nonstop debate”, and I was not planning to change that. Even so, since it’s the third installment, I wanted to increase the variations. There, we decided to use lies, as a derivation from the nonstop debates. – I think being able to enter hidden routes as well as being able to use lies in classroom trial is another characteristic of this installment. K: Actually, I wanted to put all the hidden routes in nonstop debates. But if I try to do that, we should think up of all the debate with hidden routes in mind. Rather than making everything look half-forced, we decided to put this system only on the spots where it looks natural, so it became like this.

– Speaking of class trials, I think the whole story progressing in full voice was a big charm too. Was there a bit you particularly took extra care to write? K: For the class trials, there are no descriptive passages, and the whole thing progresses only by speech exchanges. If that’s the case, the tempo becomes really important and the catchball game of conversations should work when progressing on. I keep in mind about the contents of conversation, whether the tension or the volume is corresponding to the situation, or whether the change of emotions in a character is natural. – When we’re playing the actual game, we feel that making a character that doesn’t stand out too much on his own is difficult. What do you think about it? K: I keep that part in mind as well. I don’t exactly measure which character speaks for how many seconds, but I try to make all the characters have their lines in similar lengths. This way, you can make the players wonder if the silent characters have other intentions in mind. – Is there something you kept in mind when writing the lines? K: There are 16 characters in “New Danganronpa V3”, everyone has their own feelings, and those feelings change gradually. I tried to keep track of everyone’s flow of thoughts, and prevented them from saying something different from the flow.

Ouma Kokichi as the real “Trickster”.

– How do you think up of characters? K: I think up of keywords at first, and then add images to it gradually. For example, Yumeno Himiko’s was “Self-proclaimed magician” or “loli girl”. I make characters with keywords that “looks really interesting somehow”. – When adding the characteristics, is there something you kept in mind about? K: I try not to make everyone scatter apart, and that includes gender and appearances too. And if there’s a character that doesn’t look interesting after reading the scenario, I put another setting to the character. Gonta is a SHSL Entomologist with great physical strength, but that couldn’t describe his kindness. So, by adding “He’s aiming to be a gentleman”, he became a human with both foolishness and kindness.

– Are the culprits and the victims decided from the stage you make them? K: When the characters are considerably completed, I move onto the plot stage. The character designs are completed around that time as well, so we edit a little depending on their roles as culprits or victims.

– After playing this game, personally, Ouma Kokichi left quite an impression on me. K: Looking back at the whole series, there was no one who purely enjoyed the class trials. Komaeda from “Super Danganronpa 2 Goodbye Despair Academy” was a little close to that, but he was a bit different from enjoying. Ouma Kokichi was born, wanting to make the real trickster who enjoys the class trials like a game. Since “lie” was a theme for this game, I inserted some lines that are impossible to figure out whether they’re lies or not.

– Another thing, I felt that Monokumarz had different identity from what we had seen up till now. How were these characters born? K: Actually, Monokumarz didn’t exist in the plot stage, and we had planned to send out only Monokuma this time. However, the staffs said that it looks kind of empty without a character like Monomi from “Super Danganronpa 2”, so I tried to fit them in somehow. But the plot was completed at that point, and there was no spot for them to fit in so… – Indeed, someone like Monomi is an ally to the protagonist, and it looks difficult to put someone like her in afterwards. K: Yes. And even so, if I put them in as Monokuma’s ally, then that takes away Monokuma’s screentime. So what I thought up of was characters without any roles, the Monokumarz. – For Monokumarz, Mr. Yamadera Koichi’s acting was impressive. K: I requested him because I thought it was possible, but actually hearing him do it, was really amazing (laughs). Especially for Monodam, he made that kind of voice without any alterations, so I felt the variety of acting.

– There’s a romance part if you continue the scenario, so I thought this was something new that didn’t exist in the previous series. K: Indeed, looking back, there was no installment with romantic emotion up until now. But it’s not that I intended to exclude it on purpose. I hear that “To increase a character’s popularity, you shouldn’t make couples.”, but I really didn’t mind that either. – Ah, is that so. K: Since I didn’t mind at all, for this installment, if there was a character, should I say natural or suited for that role, I thought it wouldn’t matter at all.

I want Danganronpa to be “the place where being angry is allowed”

– Looking at the whole series-wise, there were many things going on such as animation broadcasting last year. Was there a change in “Danganronpa” as a content due to this? K: I felt that the number of fans have increased a lot. The types of goods increased, and I feel happy that everyone’s enjoying them. On the other hand, my way of thinking still hasn’t changed. I don’t treat it like someone else’s matter, but I think freely, including “New Danganronpa V3” – About the animation, tell me your thoughts on it. K: When it was on air, we were working on “V3” at the same time, so even when the anime had ended, I didn’t feel like I had completed something. Looking back, I was proud that we could broadcast two episodes of that deep contents, and I think that was possible because it was “Danganronpa”. There aren’t many contents where you can try experimental stuffs, but this is possible because there are fans who love experimental stuffs.

– Broadcasting 2 different episodes per week is pretty ground-breaking. Looking back on how you worked on it, how is it? K: Personally, that was the part I had the most fun. The big plot where you can have two different stories broadcasted per week is one of Danganronpa’s characteristics. And, I wanted to have all the past characters make an appearance. Since we could do all-cast episode in a good context. If it was a normal all-cast genre, things would have been a lot lighter though. (laughs). – Even if it was all-cast, the story had quite the tension. From my own perspective, fanservice is not an ‘if’ story where characters enjoy, but is telling the story of lives and deaths properly, and the right history. So it’s natural that all-cast story became that way. – Why did you decide to broadcast two episodes per week in the first place? After ending “Danganronpa”’s animation, they said “we want to make a new one”, but we couldn’t decide what to do. We could have animated “Super Danganronpa 2”, but, the story was specialized to the games in the first place, so we needed to make a lot of changes to the story for the animation. And we were thinking about renewing the story for the next game, so we decided that we do the final episode for the Kibougamine Academy in animaton. And another thing, I wanted to do the “Super Danganronpa 2”’s past despairs too. Looking back at the past isn’t something you can put into the games easily, so I thought it might be a good idea to put this one into the anime too. I don’t know if it was a good timing or a bad timing, but those two plans were completed at the same time, so we broadcasted them all at once.

– Seeing that the game has gone into the new universe, does it mean that Kibougamine Academy’s story has ended? K: You can say that. If you tell me to continue on with it, I can. But if I do that, I won’t be able to see the end to it. Kibougamine series’ theme is about hope and despair, and Naegi Makoto’s group took hope, Hinata Hajime’s group took despair and departed on their own. I think that was summed up in the anime, and it’s hard to make something new out of that. – It’s been about a month since “New Danganronpa V3”’s release, and have you gotten a lot of comments from fans? K: I did. A lot of approvals and disapprovals (laughs) – (laughs) Did you expect the fans’ opinions to split into approvals and disapprovals? K: I wouldn’t say gettting approvals and disapprovals at the same time is a good thing. But that strong game that I wanted to make despite risking that was “New Danganronpa V3”, so we decided to make it even if it means we would end up having mixed opinions. If we don’t make this, we will never be able to make different “Danganronpa” from 1 and 2. – So you don’t try to flatter the fans, but do what you guys want to do. K: Personally, I never tried to flatter the fans even once. That goes the same for this installment as well. Even if there are fans, everyone wants different things, and it’s not realistic to accept all the opinions. Of course, if everyone says negative stuffs, then that means we were wrong, but there were many people who said it was fun. Conversely, there never can be the game where everyone says it’s fun. So I think that we must think by ourselves when making the game. – Is there anything you want to tell the players through New Danganronpa V3? K: Actually, there’s nothing I want to tell nor there’s some sort of moral nor I want the players to learn something. I just made it as an entertainment, a fiction. – So you mean all the things said in the games are the characters’ thoughts, not the game creators’. K: Yes. The protagonist is saying opinions in his own persepctive. They’re not my opinions, and I’m not planning to force it onto someone either. What are truths in the games and what people should think from it are totally up to everyone. Of course, my own thoughts sprout while thinking up of the scenario, but I’m not planning to say that officially. If I say that, then that will become “the answer”. – By doing that, I think it gives the players the opportunity to think freely. K: This might sound like beating around the bush, but the message “I want you to get this message” might have been in “Danganronpa” a little bit. In other words, instead of including my own thoughts within the games, I tried to insert the philosophies that every character has. – Philosophy? K: Yeah. To make the players feel something, I made those philosophies clash during class trials or conversations. To make everyone feel them clearly, I tried to make everyone’s philosophy properly. There are some thoughts that are opposite to mine, but including those too. – Those different characters were possible because it was a fiction. Speaking of which, the word fiction appeared at the some point of the game. K: That point, might be the only scene with my own thoughts in it. From my perspective, creator is an occupation where you have to make truths from lies. Not only just “Danganronpa”, but all the fiction existing in this world is a work of lies. But if you ask if everything is a lie, that’s not true. There will be truths born from fictions, and most of all, the feelings that you get from them are real. – That opinion will play the key role when you face the approvals and disapprovals. K: If there are people who get angry after playing and seeing through the end, then that’s the evidence that you took an emotion called “rage” from the fiction named “Danganronpa”. It makes me glad more than antyhing because Danganronpa didn’t just end up as something created. – So you mean, feeling rage is one of the right way to enjoy it. K: It’s just as you said. Well, it would be best if you enjoy it peacefully (laughs). Sad thing is, it’s okay for more opinions to exist, but there are people who badmouth each other for that. Any opinion is right, so I want fans to discuss more on that. – All right. It might be a little early to ask, but are you thinking about what to do next? K: No. I didn’t think up of anything yet. With all our might, we finally managed to finish the game and the animation. We’re all blank now. – Is that so. Then, how do you want to raise not only just the game, but the whole contents? K: It’s something difficult as it’s not something we raise because we want to. And it’s not something that happens just because we think it can make it big. If people will gather for the stuffs you can only get from “Danganronpa”, then that’s enough. Not just only “Danganronpa”, but I would be glad if there are more contents with its own pinpoint in this world. The world where everything is unique, and everything has something that you cannot find anywhere else. If this industry is filled with those kinds of contents, I wouldn’t be more satisfied. – That means “Danganronpa” is aiming to be unique too. I’m not planning to fill this fandom only with enthusiastic fans, but I think it’s okay to have only the people who come to this area just to get angry. Rather, I want this series to be the place where getting angry is acceptable. I want this to grow it that way. – Thank you very much.

———-

TN: Feedbacks and corrections are much appreciated!!

257 notes · View notes