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The Hundred Line character design team interview from Famitsu issue 1895

Hello, Mr. Komatsuzaki and Shimadrill. Tell us how you felt when you read the first project presentation for The Hundred Line.

Rui Komatsuzaki: The initial project proposal already had a pretty solid general idea of the plot, so I only needed to expand on that. The Hundred Line's key concept was 100 endings, so I could already predict that my usual amount of illustrations wouldn't cut it. The actual number went way above my already high expectations. I wasn't used to working this much (pained laughter).

Shimadrill: I joined Too Kyo Games because I was a fan of Kodaka's and Komatsuzaki's work, so I felt like I had to keep up no matter how tough it got. Kodaka and Komatsuzaki are particularly fast workers. I didn't even have time to complain without how much I needed to do.

What exactly was requested for the designs of the Special Defense Unit members?

Kazutaka Kodaka: I gave Komatsuzaki the story's script and a document listing characteristics and nicknames of each character (delinquent for Yakushiji, punk rock for Amemiya, and so on) and asked him to come up with the designs.

Komatsuzaki: The design workflow was the same it was in the previous games. Instead of nailing their characterization one-by-one, I started with a draft of the whole cast based only on the amount and general characteristics of them. I used that to fine-tune the collective balance of the cast, and only after that part was settled that I gave the characters individual attention.

Was the process smooth?

Komatsuzaki: Speaking of things being the same as usual, the first version of the mascot characters was never altered. SIREI got approved at the first try.

Kodaka: Back then, I still hadn't given SIREI's character much thought, so Komatsuzaki could go with whatever design he wanted. SIREI's quirks derived from the design rather than the other way around.

Was NIGOU just as easy?

Komatsuzaki: Yeah. I was told NIGOU could be just a palette swap of SIREI, but I wanted them to be a little different, resulting in the current design.

Any other important points?

Komatsuzaki: I really wanted SIREI and NIGOU to be transparent. After that, I exposed their brains and hearts.

Kodaka: I didn't know how to react when he drew a brain after I had already told him SIREI was a robot. I wasn't sure if it was okay for robots to have brains. But later I came to the conclusion that the best computer imaginable would be one capable of utilizing a live human brain. My final decision was that SIREI and NIGOU are equipped with advanced computers that only resemble human brains, but that's a lore tidbit that never gets said in-game.

Cool.

Komatsuzaki: Also, having read the story, I could imagine this game mascot would take some serious damage, so I thought it was better not to make them animal-themed like Monokuma was. I don't want to see an animal-like mascot being seriously harmed. So I tried to give him a design more tolerable to brutalize.

Changing the subject to the Special Defense Unit, who would you consider the most memorable student?

Komatsuzaki: Unlike my previous games, The Hundred Line has combat outfits, which are mostly uniform for every character. To make the characters easier to identify during combat, there was a greater need to give them diverse, distinct, and memorable body types and heads. This means their conceptualization had great emphasis on their heads and physiques. I'd say Amemiya is the most memorable character. She set the bar for how striking they should be. I tend to use muted colors a lot, but Amemiya's design was an attempt to use colors I normally don't. The cast was balanced with her at the center of the scale.

Speaking of characters, I noticed they have a lot of sprites, as usual. How many did you make per character?

Komatsuzaki: The plan was making about 20 per character, totaling around 300 sprites, but I was wrong in predicting the real number would be 3 digits. There are so many that I stopped counting along the way.

How many did you have counted by the time you gave up?

Komatsuzaki: The total of sprites about 1 year before the game was gold was 1368. I kept making more after that, but I can't give a general figure because I was too afraid to count them.

Drill: No estimates for the final number?

Kodaka: We over 100 per character, with the biggest ones reaching 200, so… I guess over 2000 in total?

How did you get this many?

Komatsuzaki: Sprite production involves the following steps: 1. I draw drafts for the sprites based the expressions and scenes that pop up in my head while I'm reading the story. 2. I refine the drafts. 3. I put together the sprite list while examining which variations are essential and which are redundant. However, this time the story was too long and I could never be done reading all of it, and until I finish reading, the sprite list only keeps increasing. I had a lot more expressions than usual before the first selection.

Kodaka: We tried to lower the amount. But there's a good reason why the number spiralled out of control: in The Hundred Line, each writer did the screen composition for their own stories. One goes "Keep this one, I'll use it", another goes "Keep this one, I'll use it", and little by little we end up with less thing to cut off, and even more things to add (awkward laughs).

Komatsuzaki: I obviously didn't predict this bloat. Face portraits are far from the only thing I got the amount of digits wrong in THL. I never want to be in a game this overblown again…

Kodaka: But thanks to Komatsuzaki drawing full-body sprites, we could do things we couldn't in previous titles. In Danganronpa, the characters had fixed on-field portraits and only changed expressions when zoomed in for conversation. In The Hundred Line, their sprites can be placed with expressions that fit the situation right from the get-go, making this game feel more living and breathing than its predecessors.

How did the designs for the students' weapons and battle suits came to be?

Komatsuzaki: The initial plan was to get the weapons designed by someone other than myself. I had to make The Hundred Line's concept art in a period where I was extremely busy with another game and didn't have much time to work on it. But, for reasons I cannot disclose, requesting the other person stopped being a viable possibility. In the end, I had to do everything myself. I chose the weapons for every student, but since that's very relevant for combat, I first asked Media Vision to give me a general idea of size and shape, then added the defining details based on that.

Kodaka: Amemiya's weapons are kitchen knifes that float midair for no reason. That's something better conveyed by showing a mock-up than by describing verbally.

Some of the weapons are very peculiar. Do they have a shared theme? If yes, what?

Komatsuzaki: The design idea was that they had to seem made of bone and blood, so many of the smaller details look fleshy.

Any favorite weapon?

Komatsuzaki: The most costly ones to produce are the ones that occupy my mind the most. Specifically, Yakushiji's bike, Kawana's AC, and Ginzaki's robot. The robot in particular was hell for Media Vision. I'm truly sorry about that. Most weapons match their mock-ups in size, but the robot was the only one I had to make bigger than they wanted.

Why?

Komatsuzaki: A robot needs to be big enough to comfortably fit Ginzaki inside the cockpit (awkward laughs). Also, thanks to me inventing the whole gimmick of the robot transforming into a shield, Media Vision had loads of extra work for the transformation sequence. I'm very grateful to them for producing a functional transformation sequence despite how the concept art I gave them illustrating what part moves where was so full of errors.

Kodaka: We sorta went crazy with the amount of animations on the robot, but thanks to Media Vision, it looks awesome.

Next, I'd like to ask about the battle suits. What was the design process like?

Komatsuzaki: Like with the weapons, I remember producing them on my spare time from other work. First I produce Sumino's to be the base for the other suits, and I wanted them their outfits to look unkempt by default. I actually wanted them to run around in mantles, but since those are time-consuming to model in 3D, that idea was cut from the game. The suits are made from blood, so having mantles or not doesn't really matter… That said, the battle models were made by Media Vision's modeller and I had to be insistent to get him to make them the way I drew. I feel so sorry for the sheer amount of constraints he had to work through.

Kirifuji's suit really stands out.

Komatsuzaki: That was a high-effort design. Kirifuji's suit had to be different from everyone else's, for lore reasons.

Kodaka: I was okay with hers being just a palette swap of the others, but Komatsuzaki went with a design that much better reflects her lore.

Komatsuzaki: It's a great design that I came to regret once I had to make multiple sprites for it. It's not the easiest design to draw (pained laughs).

What exactly was requested for the monster designs with the Invaders and their Commanders?

Kodaka: I told Drill to make the Invaders colorful and toy-like. The popness of the enemy designs contrasts against the overall seriousness of the story, making them more unsettling, in my opinion. It was also decided from the start that the enemies could take more vicious forms, so I believe starting colorful would add to the creepiness of the transformations.

Drill: This request from Kodaka was the basis of the Invader production, and I also took a page from Komatsuzaki's book, only finishing them individually after I had already figured out the balance of the whole group. I remember that, when lining up the full roster of Invaders, I focused on making their silhouettes resemble capsule toys.

Komatsuzaki: I remember you going out to check real figures.

Drill: I took a trip to Nakano Broadway to study soft vinyl kaiju figures.

They're so colorful that every battle had me wanting to eat them.

Kodaka: Did I ever say I wanted the Darumarrs to look like a mixed blob of jelly beans?

Drill: You did. Then I suggested that displaying them as flocks of 3 in one tile would highlight the mixed blob factor and give off the feeling of fighting against large numbers. The idea of placing multiple enemies in the same tile was inspired by Warhammer 4K, which I used to play a lot.

I can see that. Any other production secrets regarding the monsters?

Komatsuzaki: Their coloring was redone soooo many times.

Drill: Their original models were really well-made, but not as saturated as I wanted their colors to be. Changing the lighting wouldn't fix the saturation, so their coloring had to be adjusted by redrawing them. That's what gave them the vibrant candy colors you find so tasty.

Did Kodaka have specific requests for the Commanders design?

Kodaka: The fodder Invaders were colorful, so I asked for the Commanders to look monochrome and divine.

Drill: Those two were the only requests for the collective, but there were specific things he wanted for each individual Commander. For example, the prompt for the Squad 1 Commander was "I want him to look too strong to reasonably be the first boss".

Kodaka: I also told you to make him huge. The debate of "is making TRPG enemies big is a good thing?" is a can of worms I told Shimadrill to ignore and just make the first one you fight look big and strong (laughs).

He sure looked big and strong (laughs).

Drill: That's why I decided on the dragon theming for the Squad 1 Commander. I've seen some demo players reaction to sudden strong-looking boss appearing, so I'd say the design did exactly what Kodaka wanted it to.

The Commander also had a humanoid design. Who did this one?

Kodaka: Komatsuzaki.

Komatsuzaki: We initially wanted Shimadrill, the monster design expert, to do them, but he didn't have the time for it when he was simultaneously working on another game, so I did all of it on my own. The humanoid Commanders also had a major share of restrictions coming from lore and production cost reasons, but with enough attempts, I feel like I managed to make them reasonably distinct from one another, within the limitations. It's easy to tell from how they all have different masks.

Kodaka: When checking the pictures for approval, I thought the way the mask design resembled Skull Knight was so cool. We were almost behind the schedule at the time we assigned the humanoid designs to Komatsuzaki, and there are many of them, so I was expecting simpler designs. Him making their design with this much care and detail in so little time was a pleasant surprise.

Is it true that Shimadrill designed the school backgrounds?

Drill: Correct. I was in charge of the school's exterior and hallways, and drew them in great detail.

Kodaka: Komatsuzaki and I have something of a "When in need, ask Drill" mentality. He is often helping out with the most random situations. For example, we thought the design for the alarm speaker that rings when Invaders attack was lame. Worried that this wouldn't convey tension to the player, we called Drill to make a more striking speaker design.

Drill: If we're counting that, I also redesign the weird wooden boxes (awkward laughs). That request came quite close to the deadline, and it was something I wouldn't think needed adjustments, but Kodaka is a director particular about the details.

Komatsuzaki: There were so many things we got Drill to redesign because they looked too normal.

What was the hardest part of the background designs?

Kodaka: The first thing to come to mind is the school's exterior. It's always visible during combat, so I asked Drill to draw something memorable. He came up with multiple variations, including more hawkish school illustrations. The Last Defense Academy lore back then wasn't the same it is now, and one of the ideas of having a cannon like the one from Battleship Yamato frequently shooting at the field.

Drill: We actually took reference sheets from Battleship Yamato.

I'd expected you take reference sheets from real schools. Were you avoiding that on purpose?

Drill: We were. For some reason, I had to study exclusively warships, tanks, and spaceships to draw a school (laughs). The Last Defense Academy is important enough to the game to be part of the title, and as someone with the mission to support Kodaka and Uchikoshi at Too Kyo Games, I couldn't afford to put out something uncreative. My job is to figure out what would be fun, and create the showy designs Kodaka and Uchikoshi love so much. I always try my best to be ahead of the game when it comes to their expectations.

I was impressed by how each floor look so different from another. Is that essential to the Shimadrill style?

Drill: No, it's essential to the Kodaka style. He requested every floor to be different, so the hallways wouldn't feel samey to the player.

Kodaka: I got him to come up with multiple hallway variations and chose which of them to use and what color they'd have. There are a lot of objects placed on the hallways, and all of them reflect elements of the Tokyo Residential Complex's culture and history that won't get fully elaborated in-game. Drill came up with lore reasons for the presence of each object in the academy, so you can theorize on how their inclusion makes sense.

There's some really… unique furniture in the background. Special mention to the cooking machine being a Thousand-Armed Kannon statue.

Drill: The robot Kannon was my idea. Kodaka asked me to come up with an automatic cooking machine, so I sought inspiration in pre-90s sci-fi art and Expo videos.

Kodaka: AI could never come up with a Thousand-Armed Kannon cooking machine (laughs).

Never (laughs). Next, tell us about the event CGs.

Kodaka: There are over 600 CG illustrations in The Hundred Line. Most of them are drawn by third-party workers, but Drill and Komatsuzaki finalize the art. They have a base standard of quality, but we do go harder on the more plot-significant ones.

Komatsuzaki: That's right, about 2 months before the game was gold, we were still working on improving the important ones.

Drill: I remember that.

Kodaka: Wasn't there a few that Drill made from scratch because there were too many for the third-party workers to keep up with the production pace?

Drill: I was called "just for a little finishing touches" and when I looked at it, I had to do even the lineart… Normal projects demand a lot less work than that when the game is just two months away from going gold (pained laughs).

I see you were in hell for as long as it could keep you there…

Kodaka: Checking if no CG illustration was contradicting the story was so much work. The most common mistakes were having the students dressed normal in scenes they were supposed to have their battle suits, and randomly including students that would be absent at that point in time… This kind of verification is usually easy because it's done by the writer who knows everything about the story, but with the size of THL's story, the workload here had to be split between multiple people, plus my part was too big for me to remember all of it. In the end, I had to reread the entire story to see if any of the art had a mistake in it. That took forever.

Komatsuzaki: The Hundred Line is far from our only game conceived to be excessive in scope, but it is a league above the rest. We couldn't have completed it without help from a lot of people beyond just us of Too Kyo Games.

Kodaka: I'm the last person who should be saying this (awkward laughs), but this wasn't a project any normal person would consider realistic, and yet we completed it. I'm proud to say every detail is the way I wanted it to be, and that going into debt for it was the right call. In a choice between a life where I make The Hundred Line and a life where I don't, I'd pick the former without thinking twice. But if you asked me if I wanted to make a second The Hundred Line…

Komatsuzaki: No (pained laughs).

Kodaka: That's where I'm at right now, too. Do not say the word "sequel" in my presence (pained laughs).

(laughs) You heard Kodaka's feelings on it. If you're interested in knowing what kind of game could do this to him, please check out the demo.

Komatsuzaki: The demo currently available only shows the tip of the iceberg. The full game contains experiences you can't even imagine. Please play it for yourself, at least until you reach an ending.

Drill: I know I'm asking for too much, but if possible, I'd like you to play all endings instead of stopping at just one. I want as many people as possible taking a proper look at the CG illustrations I drew, if nothing else.

Kodaka: I feel that. In the writer team interview, I answered "You're free to stop playing whenever you're satisfied", but my honest opinion about it is "Play everything".

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Links:

Writing team interview

Music team interview

Special guest interview

#the hundred line #last defense academy #kazutaka kodaka #rui komatsuzaki #shimadrill

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