Anime Expo 2024: Spike Chunsoft Talks With Anime Herald

Note: Due to the time-sensitive nature of our coverage, this article will debut on the main Anime Herald site on September 16. We apologize for the inconvenience.

• Interviewer: Seth Burn

• Interview Date: 7/5/2024

Anime Herald: If you had one month of summer vacation in the late 1990s, how would you spend it?

Daniel Le: Probably playing Elden Ring.

Anime Herald: This is the ‘90s.

Daniel Le: I’m fully aware of your question.

Mimi Saito: You wouldn’t change a thing.

Daniel Le: I’d just be seeing ahead. I’d envision it.

Yu Namba: I think he’d be playing King’s Field.

Anime Herald: The original From Software. I played King’s Field. I’m old.

Yu Namba: I was more of an Armored Core guy.

Anime Herald: Have you played the new one, Fires of Rubicon?

Yu Namba: I have it. I haven’t opened it yet. I’ve been so busy.

Anime Herald: Our modern life. We buy more games than we’ll have time to play.

Yu Namba: Yeah.

Daniel Le: That’s a good question, how to capture that experience of being a kid in the ‘90s. Ryan (Westfall) said, “Wow, a lot of this is like my own childhood.” Pretty much exactly what you do in the game (Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid): Running around, catching bugs, solving mysteries, climbing buildings. And, of course, trying to save the family circus.

Anime Herald: You mentioned the climbing. A lot of joy in games comes from the freedom of movement. You see an interesting spot and you can climb there. And then, being in the 1990s, no cell phones. No one to call you home.

Yu Namba: Exactly. It’s kind of funny. There’s an inside joke with a company that we work with for QA (quality assurance). There’s this one guy that always comes and gets you at 5 PM saying “Dinner time.” It doesn’t matter where you are, he always finds you.

Anime Herald: So he’s the boss of the game.

Alex Flagg: See if you can evade him. He’ll swim out to meet you.

Mimi Saito: (Laughs) “Dinner time!”

Daniel Le: It’s pretty funny, because there are some very remote locations. It was hilarious in testing.

Anime Herald: Then you’ll walk to him and he’ll point at his watch: “It’s 5:00 PM.”

Anime Herald: This is a huge departure stylistically from Danganronpa and Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE. Do you have a corporate philosophy where you can do stuff that’s bright and happy, and also dark as hell?

Yu Namba: We also have the Shiren the Wanderer series, which is right in the middle I think.

Anime Herald: I remember Shiren as one of the first games I can remember where you lose everything.

Daniel Le: The original Mystery Dungeon.

Anime Herald: Exactly. Yeah, that sucked.

Spike Chunsoft: (Laughs)

Alex Flagg: It requires a little more patience to play perhaps than perhaps Natsu-Mon (Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid). Natsu-Mon is a little more relaxed.

Daniel Le: I think there are two things I’d say are probably our strengths. The first is really strong storytelling. Even in Natsu-Mon there are a lot of fun character arcs. There are so many little adventures. This game is very difficult to 100%. You can’t do everything in one month. You need to play it over and over again to see all these little side stories.

The other aspect is creator-oriented visions. The director of the game, Kaz (Ayabe), has a really clear vision of what he thinks this game should be. That’s something we worked really closely with him on.

Anime Herald: Obviously Kaz isn’t here to articulate this for himself, but what would you say the vision for the game is? What is the experience he’s trying to create?

Yu Namba: Kaz is known for the My Summer Vacation (Boku no Natsuyasumi) series in Japan. There were a few iterations of it. And then there was the Crayon Shin Chan game (Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation).

Anime Herald: I was going to mention that. You see everyone from your hometown, but they’re different people here. The story was a little loopy.

Yu Namba: Yeah. It’s about being a kid on a vacation. You can do whatever you feel like doing. I think that was his life-long project. Bringing that experience of being a little kid to everybody. And not just in Japan this time.

Anime Herald: The Legend of Zelda was famously inspired by Shigeru Miyamoto’s adventures in the countryside. It’s a powerful feeling.

Shifting gears, any fun stories from Anime Expo or Los Angeles?

Alex Flagg: I have fun stories, yeah. I came here before the rest of the company did. One of my favorite electronic artists, Ghost Data, was playing the 1720. I brought one of our other coworkers, Yuta, and some other friends. That was a fun night. It was the Ara Ara tour. There were a lot of cosplayers there. Lots of dancing. It was a good time.

Anime Herald: That’s wonderful.

Alex Flagg: And I didn’t lose my hearing. Not completely.

Mimi Saito: Just slightly.

Alex Flagg: Just slightly. I definitely woke up the next morning with a slight ringing. I realized as soon as I walked in that I should have brought my headphones. They were in my car. I knew exactly where they were. “Why didn’t I remember to bring them?”

That was my first day of Anime Expo. It was a good day.

Anime Herald: Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE Plus. What has been added to give it the “plus?”

Daniel Le: I think the biggest plus is the visual improvements. It’s absolutely stunning.

Mimi Saito: The city looks really beautiful. Cyberpunk-ish, neon.

Anime Herald: I played through RAIN CODE on the Nintendo Switch. It was a vibe.

Daniel Le: Now if you play on the PS5 or Steam, it just enhances it. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed it on the Switch, too. But playing it now on the big screen with surround sound, it’s a very cinematic experience.

Alex Flagg: The animation is just a bit smoother, the load times are just a bit quicker. The light effects. It feels that much more immersive when you are walking around the hub areas.

Anime Herald: A glow up.

Alex Flagg: A glow up. Even if you played it on the Switch, you can pick it up for the PS5, or Xbox Series S, or Steam. You can see them side by side and see just how much of a glow up it was, just one year later.

Yu Namba: All the DLC has been added?

Alex Flagg: Yes. It contains all the previously released DLCs. As soon as you find which master detective is your favorite, you can play their DLC.

Anime Herald: Halara Nightmare of course. Was that even a question?

Alex Flagg: (Laughs) You can play Halara’s story.

Daniel Le: I think having all the sub-stories allows you to play the game in a different order. As you play through the game, it will be a very different experience than it was on the Switch.

Anime Herald: Do you find that the different systems, having different levels of horsepower, affect your jobs doing localization for them?

Alex Flagg: That’s difficult to say from our perspective. Usually by the time we get involved in the process and localization begins, most of those technical decisions have been made by the development team. We don’t handle a localization process for RAIN CODE Plus or Natsu-Mon any differently. It’s whatever the development team creates.

Anime Herald: Speaking of creative freedom, you had to have a ton of creative freedom for Natsu-Mon. There simply weren’t words for all of those bugs. Where did you find inspiration for naming all of these little creatures?

Mimi Saito: I want to hear this too!

Daniel Le: Before he goes into that, we have a timeline planned for the game. There were 200 bugs. That ended up taking two weeks figuring all of that. It was a Herculean task.

Alex Flagg: The bugs and fish file. So many things.

Yu Namba: Now, this is inside the credits. We worked together with a localization company to split up the task. When we shared the text data file with them, they came back saying “can we... not do anything about these insects? Because they seem like quite a huge task.”

Yu Namba: So we handled that portion in house. I did a lot of Googling.

Daniel Le: I think, at this point, you might be one of the foremost bug experts.

Alex Flagg: You’re halfway to an etymology degree.

Yu Namba: We talked with the director, Kaz. We got his feedback after we did our initial set of insect names. There were cases where he said “Maybe this should be named a little differently. I had some specific intent in the Japanese name I’d like you to carry over to English name.”

We made several adjustments after that. It took quite some time.

Anime Herald: Are there any specific bug stories you’d care to share?

Yu Namba: I wish I could. There were just so many…

Mimi Saito: It sounds exhausting.

Alex Flagg: They all blurred together.

Anime Herald: Can you share something specific that you learned?

Yu Namba: Whenever you catch a bug, the protagonist will write a little bit of information in his picture diary about the bug to describe it. Some of the descriptions were very focused on the Japanese name. In some cases, when we came up with the English name, we couldn’t directly translate. Daniel and I tried to figure out what to write instead. We looked up the scientific name, to see if there was anything special. If it was based on a Greek god, or the person who discovered the bug.

Daniel Le: Bug naming, and animal naming in general, is pretty interesting. Some of them are named after the discoverer. Some of them are native to Japan, and even in English they’ll use the Japanese name. Some of them we tried to come up with names for, like “yellow-ringed” only to discover there already was a “yellow-ringed.” 

Well, darn. That’s its most defining feature.

There was one where we didn’t keep the original name. We used a Japanese name.

Yu Namba: We ended up mixing the two. There is a dragonfly that was named after a Japanese war fan. The original name in Japanese is Gunbai Tonbo. Tonbo means dragonfly. Gunbai is the war fan. We wanted to try and translate it into “War Fan Dragonfly.” We ended up keeping Gunbai, and adding a description in English.

Daniel Le: Part of the fun of this is we tried to make every bug you catch a learning experience.

Anime Herald: I have to say I love dragonflies. They eat multiple mosquitoes every hour. They are our friends. You fly that war banner!

Alex Flagg: Come to southern California. We need you.

Anime Herald: Can you talk about any of the projects you are working on?

Mimi Saito: That’s a difficult question to answer.

Alex Flagg: Umm...

Mimi Saito: I’m watching you…

Alex Flagg: Going through the pages in my mind… nothing that has been publicly announced.

Anime Herald: Can you give us a rough timeline of when we might hear something?

Alex, Yu, and Daniel, in unison: That’s a Mimi question.

Mimi Saito: Hopefully, later this year. Something very exciting is coming. I really want to say something, but then I’d get fired.

Daniel Le: We were hoping to announce something at AX. But unfortunately, it’s not quite there.

Mimi Saito: Plans change. But yeah, I’m really excited about our upcoming project.

Daniel Le: I can probably announce that I am working on RAIN CODE 2, SNOW CODE. It’s a fan-fic I am writing. I am hoping to present it to the higher ups.

Alex Flagg: Maybe we can do it as SNOW CODE: A RAIN CODE Story. Just as long as you don’t do it on company time.

Anime Herald: HEAVY RAIN CODE.

Mimi Saito: It’s raining so heavily, let’s not go out.

Anime Herald: But enough about Seattle.

Yu Namba: Natsu-Mon is coming out in August. We’ll be releasing short videos.

Mimi Saito: We’ll be releasing a demo that allows you to play through a single day of the game. I hope a lot of people give it a try. In that one day you can explore a lot of the town. I’m excited for people who haven’t lived in Japan to experience it. I grew up in Japan. It’s a part of me. I had a similar experience. It’s really nice to be able to relive that timeline. It’s a special experience that video games can provide.

Anime Herald: Where did you grow up?

Mimi Saito: Shizuoka. That’s where I live right now.

Anime Herald: Ah. I know that prefecture. My friend lives in Numazu.

Mimi Saito: I’m in Hamamatsu. It’s a bit of a drive. Same prefecture.

Anime Herald: Whenever I interview a Japanese band I’ll ask them if there’s any chance of them doing a concert in Numazu. They always smile and answer definitively, “No.”

Mimi Saito: (Laughs)

Alex Flagg: A traveling circus, maybe.

Anime Herald: Did you have any fun doing translations for the traveling circus? That probably has a lot of Japanese words that don’t directly translate.

Daniel Le: There are a lot of concepts that work out very similarly. Most of the circus stuff is kind of a universal language. It’s a very 90’s vibe. The slang and the words that were popular. We want people to feel the nostalgia when reading the story.

Yu Namba: Coming back to your question on the titles Spike Chunsoft works on, I joined Spike Chunsoft a little over a year ago. During that time I noticed a lot of the titles that Spike Chunsoft Inc. releases in North America and Europe tend to be pretty demanding localization wise.

Alex Flagg: Yeah, sorry.

Yu Namba: My first title was "ANONYMOUS;CODE". It’s a science adventure series with tons of tech jargon. But, at the same time, the main focus was in Japan, with cultural references we needed to translate correctly. 

For Shiren, there are a lot of older titles. Some were released in North America, some were not. When we worked on Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island, we tried to retain as much of what was translated back then as possible. But we did revamp some terms so they’d make more sense now. And then Natsu-Mon. It was so Japanese and so ‘90s. A lot of the jokes were really hard.

Daniel Le: When you and I were editing, we had to come up with our own comedy sketches so that the puns and jokes would make sense in English.

Alex Flagg: Very ‘90s humor.

Anime Herald: I’m glad you were able to channel your inner ‘90s comedy writer.

Daniel Le: I had to think of all the great ‘90s sitcoms.

Alex Flagg: Pick up the language of the time.

Anime Herald: You’ve only been there for a year, so you didn’t have the joy of translating The Somnium Files series. Any stories you’d care to share from those localizations?

Mimi Saito: I’m sure you have a lot from that series.

Daniel Le: It’s background lore.

Alex Flagg: It’s really funny. From AI: The Somnium Files, the character Aiba, her running gag is that she’s really into insects. She freaks out whenever she sees one. She gets very excited about it. We get our fantastic voice actress to say these extremely long scientific names as fast as she can, which is always fun. There were times in both AI 1 and AI 2 where there is a bug joke for a bug that does not have an English name. It only has a Japanese scientific name.

I had to do the same thing Yu had to do. I had to Google it and look at the picture of it. Okay, it’s from this family. The closest equivalent is this. I’d find some bug collector’s Geocities with a picture of it from 1997. “That’s the picture. That’s the bug. That’s what they said the English name is.” That’s what we’re going to call it.” Because I don’t have anything else to call it.

It’s really funny. We’ve done a lot of bug naming at this company.

Daniel Le: We’ve contributed more to bug knowledge than any other videogame company.

Mimi Saito: Yeah.

Alex Flagg: How odd. It’s one of those “If I had a nickel” things. It’s not a lot of nickels, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.

Anime Herald: 100 years in the future, the world’s greatest and best known etymology company, Spike Chunsoft. And by the way, they used to make video games.

Spike Chunsoft: (Laughs)

Alex Flagg: We’re going to pull a Nintendo. Playing Cards:Video Games. We’re going Video Game:Etymology.

Anime Herald: Do you have any questions for us?

Daniel Le: How’s the last day of the convention?

Anime Herald: Two nights ago I went to Bar Sawa. I had a wonderful night of sushi and sake, and cocktails. And yesterday was a dream. Today, things are starting to be real again.

Alex Flagg: Fair enough.

Anime Herald: I take the redeye home to New York tonight. Tomorrow is just the worst day of the year. On every level. There’s work, I’m tired. The only good thing is I get to see my cats again. But they’re angry at me. They recognize what packing luggage means. They give me these angry meows.

Mimi Saito: They’re going to start loving you again.

Anime Herald: Oh yeah, when I give them treats again at night.

Anything else?

Yu Namba: Was there any other announcement at Anime Expo that caught your interest?

Mimi Saito: Besides Natsu-Mon?

Alex Flagg: Besides ours. I know that was #1.

Daniel Le: By the way, thanks for coming to our panel. I know NISA's panel was at the same time.

Anime Herald: That was tough. To be fair, I did interview Mr. Kondo for 90 minutes on Day 0.

Mimi Saito: Great interview!

Anime Herald: Yes. It was only scheduled to be an hour, but we were having so much fun. We were talking about games from the 1980s, back when we used to play the old RPGs. Actually, the real thing we were talking about is the experience when you first get a vehicle, a boat or skyship, that allows you to travel to places your characters aren’t leveled up enough for. Those are my favorite parts of video games.

We talked about Ultima. In Ultima there was an island way above your level. You know if you get into a fight on it you’re going to get your ass kicked. But ten steps in, there’s a treasure chest. How awesome must whatever is in that chest be. Are you brave enough to try?

The other announcements… I talked to the Trigger guys years ago. Before the end of the world. They talked about how much they wanted to do more Panty & Stocking. That’s where there heart is, that’s what they’re really about. I was so happy for them. This is their passion project.

Mimi Saito: Aw… that’s nice.

Daniel Le: They’re on a hot streak right now.

Spike Chunsoft: Thank you very much.

Anime Herald: Thank you.