Takanobu Terada/Kinoko Nasu Roundtable Talk part 2

Heroic Spirits in Fate are made by running with liberal interpretations of brief descriptions in legends

Takanobu Terada: I'm a fan of Teito Monogatari (*), and that's another work which uses a blend of original characters and real-life figures to create unrealistic backdrops like "As it turns out, Rohan Koda used to battle against monsters." Journey to the West does this too, but when you stick real people into works of fiction as movers of the plot, you have to do your homework first.

(*) Teito Monogatari: A fictional story by Hiroshi Aramata about a mysterious military man named Yasunori Kato who works to destroy the imperial capital Tokyo, and his fights with the people trying to stop him. It includes many fictitious characters such as mediums, shrine maidens, feng shui masters, and others, along with actual historic figures like Eiichi Shibusawa, Rohan Koda, and Torahiko Terada all playing key roles in the story.

Terada: When it comes to mecha stuff, all you have to do is watch the whole series and read the extra material about it. But when it comes to real historic figures, especially contemporary ones, you start seeing things that don't quite fit their image. It's like we talked about with Makai Tensho—Those types of fictional stories with real people are fun for me to read, but I'd have a hard time writing them myself.

Q: Mr. Nasu, care to talk about how Fate came into being?

Kinoko Nasu: Fate was basically a game adaptation of a novel. Teito Monogatari is one of many novels from the 80s that are what-if scenarios milking the trope of "Things that happened behind the scenes during real historic periods". This kind of writing has to conform to actual events to some extent.

Nasu: The first version of Fate I wrote just barely falls into that time period. It's a contemporary what-if story, and the Heroic Spirits are based on past history. It demands a certain level of knowledge from the player, and it's designed to pique the interest of mythology buffs and fans of larger-than-life figures.

Nasu: The thing is, lately, some people ask things like, "Who's King Arthur?"

Terada: Oh, that's true.

Nasu: That's how much fundamental knowledge is changing with players nowadays. That makes it dawn on me that I made something in a pretty old-school format without meaning to.

Q: Do you think there are people who don't know anything about the legend of King Arthur, but who read up on it when they take a shine to Saber in Fate?

Nasu: I think King Arthur is still just barely a household name. As for the more minor Heroic Spirits, I think there's enjoyment to be had from someone asking "Who's that?", then looking it up and seeing the historic context, and noting how Fate puts its own spin on that legend.

Terada: Truth is stranger than fiction. That's something you learn from world history. It's like, "There's no way someone like this really existed... Oh wow, they did exist!" (laughs)

Nasu: History has some amazing stuff in it. The great figures of the past are just incredible to read about. There's tons and tons of stories that make you go, "What are you guys, manga characters?!"

Nasu: Before I started on Fate GO, I could come up with a total of 14 Heroic Spirits I wanted to put in a game, buy two books about each person, and brush up accordingly. But Fate GO's gotten over 150 Heroic Spirits now. There's no way I could've handled that myself, so I reached out to a number of dependable writers I knew. I proposed that we spend a year studying, and I had them buy tons of books. It was a rocky start, but it deepened our understanding of historic figures and provided feedback in scenario writing.

Terada: SRW has its own form of feedback and homages to the IPs it draws from. We debuted Mazinkaiser as an original SRW Mazinger, and it turned out popular enough to get its own anime, though it's up in the air whether that's an ideal scenario or not. In Fate's case, it's impressive to know that it's educational for you.

Fate gameplay elements draw inspiration from SRW's spirit commands

Terada: Do you have any criteria or standards for the heroes you select?

Nasu: Fate started out based on a story, and my criteria for picking out Heroic Spirits there was which ones would be the best to express the story I already had in mind. Of course these days, I've exhausted so many Heroic Spirits that it feels like I'm scraping around looking for ones I haven't used yet.

Nasu: My choices generally fall into three categories: Heroes that are widely known, heroes that aren't famous but would look great when depicted in character art, and heroes that fit what I want to do with the plot. Though sometimes, the artist will send me an illustration of a hero out of the blue, something I didn't even ask for, with a remark like, "I gave this a shot, see how it looks!" Then it turns out amazingly well-done, I decide to throw that person into the story, and I put in an official request with the artist. It happens on occasion, anyway.

Terada: That happens sometimes in SRW, too. "You should put this IP in!" "No, that would take some serious wrangling with the copyright owner." "If that's what's stopping you, I'll make it work." And then they really make it work.

Terada: As a matter of fact, the request to put Quantum Robot (*1) from Crayon Shin-chan in SRW came from Kazuki Nakashima, and that was quite some time ago. He said, "I'll talk Sensei (Yoshito Usui) into it." (*2)

Terada: We've got this smartphone game, Super Robot Wars Cross Omega (*3), and if you'd told me 15 years ago that Baron Ashura would hold a conversation with Shin-chan in an SRW game, I would've said, "You're pulling my leg, that image is photoshopped!" (laughs)

(*1) Quantum Robot: The titular main robot of Superconductive Quantum Robot, a mecha anime watched by characters in the Crayon Shin-chan universe.

(*2) Screenwriter Kazuki Nakashima used to work for the company Futabasha as an editor, where he was in charge of editing for Yoshito Usui, the writer of Crayon Shin-chan.

(*3) Super Robot Wars Cross Omega: A smartphone game released for iOS and Android in 2015. In a limited-time Quantum Robot event that ran in April 2016, Shinnosuke Nohara and his family made a surprise appearance in SRW. This is far from the only time Cross Omega has pushed the envelope; It has also featured properties like Idolmaster Xenoglossia, Godzilla vs. Evangelion, and Sakura Wars, among many others.

Terada: Some things are too challenging to incorporate into a proper SRW game, but Cross Omega lets us get away with a lot of one-shots. It's like with Kyoryu-Sentai Zyuranger (*)—Cross Omega allows us to break down the barrier of "What would this IP be like in SRW?", with the full understanding of the content creators.

(*) Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger: AKA Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, a tokusatsu TV drama created by Toei that aired from 1992 to 1993, the 16th entry in the Super Sentai Series. It made its debut SRW appearance in Super Robot Wars Cross Omega.

Q: A lot more goes into making a Fate character than simply defining the characters themselves. They have stat values and special pieces of equipment called Noble Phantasms, making them portrayed more like video game characters. Maybe it would be a disservice to call that SRW-esque.

Nasu: The idea of resurrecting a bunch of past heroes stems from Makai Tensho, but plenty of other works do that too. I think the reason Fate stood out from all of those and became more popular was because of the game-like elements it had.

Nasu: I've always been an RPG fan, and I figured that just bringing a bunch of past heroes to life would be dull on its own, so why put in some video game-like restrictions? That's why there are seven classes, why there are stats, and why there are issues with affinities and Noble Phantasms. It's treating them like game units, each balanced differently for risk and reward. That right there might be the biggest element in Fate's success.

Nasu: What struck me when I first played Super Robot Wars 4 was the idea of the spirit command. The spirits that each character has are an eloquent way of showcasing a given character's personality and quirks. "Of course this person knows Love." "This character's got to have Spirit for sure." It's a nice dovetailing of in-game functions and character conveyance.

Nasu: The idea of a universal set of rules that, by themselves, can be used to express the humanity of a character—That was revolutionary to me at the time. The idea that this could easily be expanded upon to make other things. I take a lot of inspiration from SRW, but I'd say that's the biggest thing.

Q: Interesting, so the way you treat stats goes back to SRW. On that note, where did the idea of spirit commands come from?

Terada: It's basically like magic in an RPG, right? But Koji Kabuto's not about to start casting fire spells and stuff, so we called it spirits instead.

Terada: Spirit commands convey a character's mindset, but when you get down to it, most main characters in mecha anime would be considered "Hot-blooded", right? (laughs) But we don't want to give EVERYBODY Hot Blood, so what if we give some people Soul? With things like that, game balancing does inevitably figure into it. We put a whole lot more emphasis on character personality back in the old days, that's for sure. We'd even throw in useless spirit commands on purpose, like when we gave Heero, the main character of Gundam Wing (*), the Self-Destruct spirit. Nobody in their right mind would use that! (laughs)

Terada: Lately there are lots of different spirit commands, and personally, I'd like to limit it to maybe 30 types, then painstakingly apply those.

(*) Gundam Wing: An anime series that aired 1995-1996, part of the Gundam franchise created by Yoshiyuki Tomino. Heero Yuy and all of the other lead characters were pretty teenage boys, making the show a huge hit with female audiences.

Nasu: When you make unique spirit commands for a specific character, it kind of takes away from the idea of everybody playing by the same rules, doesn't it? That said, it does happen in Fate. The classes have specific skills, but sometimes you get a Servant with a power that doesn't fit into a preexisting mold, and it becomes tempting to craft an original skill for them. But if you make an exception for one person, you end up doing it for everyone, and that defeats the whole purpose of having a ruleset at all. It's engaging as a game because everyone is striving their hardest with the same tools.

Terada: That's definitely a dilemma. On the flip side, when a show like Gunbuster (*) puts a special emphasis on the idea of miracles, you feel morally obligated to make use of the keyword "Miracle" in some way.

(*) Gunbuster: AKA Aim for the Top! in Japan, an OVA (Original Video Animation) series that ran from 1988-1989. The show starts out as a parody of sports anime, portraying the growth of the main character Noriko Takaya, a girl who aims to become an Armed Machine pilot one day. In the latter half, though, the show evolves into a sci-fi drama with a massive scale, depicting the final showdown between humanity and an army of space monsters. Noriko has a line in which she says, "A miracle will happen! I'll make it happen!". This line gets carried over to subsequent Hideaki Anno works Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, and Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Terada: Not giving someone Hot Blood makes them harder to use in game terms, but some characters just can't be described as "Hot-Blooded", and it would be wrong to give them that spirit. You have to pay extra attention to cases like that. Some restrictions are vital in game development.

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How much to change things while still respecting the feelings of fans of the original?

Terada: When I see the way the Fate series ushers in a new fandom, it reminds me of the dilemma I constantly face, that of aspects that could use some change. Fate's a pretty long-running series too, right?

Nasu: Fate/Stay Night came out on PC in 2004, so it's 13 years old... Barely out of its tween years.

Terada: That's long enough in the tooth already! People like us that create a long-running series have our own brand of troubles and hardships. When you have something that has a high barrier of entry for newer players, of course the first idea you get is to mix it up a little, but in the case of SRW, we have rules to follow in the source material we draw from.

Terada: We have tons of ideas for ways to break down the preexisting notions present in the SRW series. I couldn't tell you how well they'd work in practice, but we definitely think of things like giving Gundam weapons to Mazinger Z. It's not that we don't come up with things—We just don't put them into practice. In a game whose focus is the characters, it would be wrong to disregard the feelings of fans of the original IPs being used. It feels like the kind of thing where the fan reaction would be to tell us to save that for our original games if we want to go that route. There are lines that shouldn't be crossed if we want to respect the people who created some of our most emblematic mecha anime.

Terada: And then you get Fate, where King Arthur's completely the opposite gender. (laughs)

Nasu: And where Edison is a lion. (laughs)

Terada: I mean, it works well enough. It's impressive, even.

Q: While SRW depicts characters in ways faithful to the IP they come from, Fate likes to subvert the characteristics of the heroes it uses. Do you have any policy or sense of balance when it comes to preservation versus subversion?

Nasu: It's what I was talking about before, the fun of liberal interpretations. For example, in the original legend, you get these brief, like two-line descriptions. Something like, "Cú Chulainn (*) has a spear called the Gáe Bulg. The spear is said to always pierce the heart of the wielder's foe and burst within it." And that's it, that's all you get. But if you look at it the other way, you can do whatever you want as long as you make sure to adhere to those two lines.

Nasu: It's why I've always been opposed to turning contemporary figures into Servants, because they're extensively documented. That said, Fate GO has such a huge volume of Heroic Spirits that I violate that taboo.

(*) Cú Chulainn: A hero of Irish Celtic folklore. According to legend, he trained under Scáthach, queen of the fortress of shadows, in martial and magical arts, and she granted him the magical spear Gáe Bulg. In addition to his appearance as a Lancer-class Servant in Fate/Stay Night, he is featured in Fate GO as a Caster as well as a Lancer.

Nasu: The heroes in folklore are basically showcases of the "setting" that their respective tales like to indulge in, so when you do your own liberal take while adhering to that, the result's got to be entertaining. I figured that sort of logical leap would be engaging for the players. It can be eye-opening and get people to say, "I never thought of it that way," or, "If I were the one doing this, I'd do it like such and such." The players can come up with their own ultimate Servants for fun.

Nasu: I wouldn't call it a subversion as much as I would a creative interpretation of folklore with very simplistic descriptions, designed to spice it up a little. What you also have to remember is that no matter how minor a hero is, they're still a hero and deserving of respect. They were someone worthy of being written about in a tale, so I always make sure to keep that in mind and give them some fitting heroics.

Anno: "Put Char in an EVA" Terada: "But only 14 year olds can pilot those" Anno: "...Oh yeah"

Q: You talked earlier about not giving Gundam weapons to Mazinger Z. Are there other lines you try not to cross in SRW?

Terada: It's tricky doing cross-series pilot swapping. Could Amuro Ray pilot Mazinger Z? Personally, I think someone with Amuro's level of experience in handling humanoid mobile weapons could do it. But is that a line I want to cross? That's harder to answer.

Terada: It would be great if we did it, of course. There are so many amazing possibilities you could get from throwing different characters into the Eagle, Jaguar, and Bear from Getter Robo.

Nasu: It would rule if you could put Amuro, Char, and Haman (*) in Getter Robo!

(*) Haman Karn: A prominent figure in the Gundam series who first appears in Mobile Suit Z Gundam. She's regularly portrayed as a villain, but she is a highly charismatic politician and an exceptionally skilled pilot. She often appears in SRW as a top-tier female pilot.

Terada: You could go either way with it too, treating it as a gag or taking it totally seriously. Oh no, something's going on, and the only robot that happens to be on hand for Amuro, Char, and Haman is Getter Robo. Contrive a scenario around that idea, and you could make it work. The only question there is, do Char or Haman yell "OPEN GET!" when separating? Personally, if it were up to me, they totally would. (laughs)

Nasu: If you're that prepared for it, you could always do it as a one-time thing, right? But then again, it doesn't matter how well you spin it sometimes. One word from the publisher, "I get it, but the answer is no," and all of the staff's hard work goes up in smoke. I definitely wouldn't want to there.

Terada: You can't break a story's immersion without permission from the creators of it, after all. I only met with Director Hideaki Anno once like twenty years ago, and when I did, he had two requests for me. The first was: "I'd like you to put Char in EVA Unit 02." "But I thought only 14 year olds could pilot Evangelions." "....Oh yeah" (laughs)

Terada: The second was to have Bright "correct" Shinji, which I did in SRW F (*). Shinji says "Even my father never hit me!" while Amuro looks on awkwardly. (laughs) But we never could've done that if Director Anno wasn't personally on board with it.

(*) Super Robot Wars F: Released for the Sega Saturn in 1997. It was billed as a remake of Super Robot Wars 4, but it had never-before-used new roster additions Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gunbuster, and Space Runaway Ideon, and most of its old content was superseded. The game is continued in Super Robot Wars F Final, released in 1998, and both games have Playstation ports.

Terada: One way of looking at it is that rules are made to be broken, but I'm of the opinion that some lines should always be respected. That's how I've worked for 25 years. After all, these aren't our original creations.

Nasu: It's hard having your cake and not being able to eat it too, huh?

Terada: Going back to that mention of Getter Robo piloting, I think it would be fantastic if we made a concerted effort at doing it. But I think there are times we managed to nail it well enough by working with existing points of crossover interaction, without doing anything so drastic.

Terada: As a personal example, take Super Robot Wars Alpha. I wanted from the very outset to have the Super Robot Army show up in the nick of time when Asuka was ganged up on by the Mass Production EVA series. See, when I watched the movie, my big thought was, "For God's sake, someone save her!" But it's still a what-if story development, and I was seriously conflicted about whether it was appropriate to alter the flow of the original story.

Nasu: On the flip side, other characters do exist in SRW. If Amuro was there for a certain scene, he'd react to it a certain way. You can't just omit that. It has a certain level of reassurance to it.

Nasu: I haven't played the latest game, Super Robot Wars V, yet, but a writer I know keeps telling me I need to play it soon, that it's really great. He'll say things like, "Look, they have a bunch of female characters from all these different series just going off on Embryo (*2) from Cross Ange (*1)." (laughs) And that makes sense, that's something they would absolutely do if they had to deal with him.

Nasu: SRW is such a satisfying series because it creates these situations that everyone wants to see, all while faithfully adhering to what a given character would do in a given situation.

(*1) Cross Ange: Rondo of Angels and Dragons: A TV anime series broadcast 2014-2015. The story revolves around Ange, the former First Princess of the Empire of Misurugi who has fallen to the level of common soldier, and her fight against the Dragons in her Para-Mail mobile weapon. It made its SRW debut in Super Robot Wars V.

(*2) Embryo: A handsome, enigmatic young man featured in Cross Ange. He manipulates statesmen the world over with his silver tongue, callously severs those who don't act in accordance with his will, and seduces every woman who catches his fancy. His extreme idiosyncrasies are portrayed in full force in Super Robot Wars V, even extending beyond his own show.

SRW combat animations are still reined in

Nasu: While we're on the subject of SRW highlights, I want to mention how Mazinger Z's Breast Fire (*) gets improved upon in every iteration. Every time I think it can't get any better than this, it never fails to get outdone the next time around.

Nasu: The way SRW combat animations can adhere to the aesthetic of the source material while also producing something pleasing to the eyes of the players is flat-out incredible. There's just so much impact when the staff come up with these amazingly on-point storyboards, and SRW replicates them in purely 2D imagery.

(*) Breast Fire: An ultra-powerful 30,000° C heat ray fired from Mazinger Z's chestplates.

Terada: How we make our own spins on the original depictions of combat in Mazinger Z is actually something we wrestle with every time. But the same thing could be said about Fin Funnels (*). Most combat depictions of it in the original work have already been reproduced to exhaustion, so the person in charge of that has to wrack their brain over how to give it a twist.

(*) Fin Funnels: Funnels are a class of miniature remote-controlled beam weapon meant for all-range attacks. In Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack, the Nu Gundam piloted by Amuro Ray is outfitted with 6 Funnels that each have their own megaparticle cannon. These are Fin Funnels.

Nasu: Fin Funnels are simple as far as weapons go, so you can't expand past them being miniature weapons that flit around and fire narrow lasers. Yet they get flashier with every portrayal, so I look forward to seeing how far SRW can run with them in that format.

Q: What kind of background do the staffers in charge of combat animations come from? Are they graphics artists from the video game industry?

Terada: Generally yes, but we do have a handful of people who come from the anime industry.

Nasu: Fate GO uses 2D combat animations too, and I aspire to create the kind of combat animations the players will never get tired of watching, but that's still a pipe dream for us. Meanwhile, SRW keeps putting out animations that exceed the players' imaginations and wow them every time. It always impresses me and makes me think, "This is what it means to get someone fired up!"

Terada: We do operate on a limited timeframe and budget, though. I'd say what you see now is still reined in from what we wish we could make.

Nasu: Seriously?!

Terada: And sometimes there are things in our power to do, and we push ahead with it, but then it's not done in time. We stumbled over ourselves a lot back in the Super Robot Wars Alpha days.

Nasu: For the animation standards at the time, SRW Alpha's combat animations blew me away. So many dreams packed into those...

Q: SRW's combat animations are definitely leagues beyond what other RPGs or SRPGs have.

Terada: But it means the production can get tedious at times. There are times something got cut after being looked at once, only for someone to say to me, "Is there any point in me pouring my blood, sweat, and tears into this?"

Nasu: When a final boss attack runs up to 40 or 50 seconds long, I'll watch the animation once just to enjoy it, but after that, I tend to cut it short. Even then, though, I think the production of the final boss animations for that one time you sit through them is important. After all, this is what awaits the player at the end of a long journey. It's only right to show an ultimate level of power.

Terada: Well, people watch regular animated movies once and call it done, so I can't exactly expect people to keep watching our games' combat animations indefinitely... That's a dilemma right there.

Q: As SRW combat animations grow more fancy and elaborate with every incarnation, do you get a larger staff team?

Terada: We do grow, but not as much as you might think. After all, it takes a certain level of craftsmanship. I used to hear people say that the 2D graphic artist was a dead job, but now thanks to smartphone games, there aren't enough pixel artists to go around. (*)

(*) In the early 2000s, with the launch of the Playstation 2, 3D CG became the order of the day in video games. With the times changing, many pixel artists either left the games industry or made the jump to being 3D modelers, and there was no passing on of their craft to the younger generation. Nowadays with the advent of smartphone games that primarily use 2D graphics, demand for pixel artists that can depict character motions has skyrocketed, creating a chronic labor shortage. Previous issues of Denfami have reported on the past and present environment for pixel artists in more detail.

Terada: Development-wise, I will say that smartphone game management is way more demanding than console games. I take part in work on Cross Omega, and what struck me there was, "So this is the terror of something that's serialized weekly!"

Nasu: Smartphone games are always cutting it close to deadlines. We've only lasted maybe two years so far, but my hat goes off to the staff on other smartphone games that have done this for three or four years. I find their stamina and administrative capabilities to be astounding.

Q: Do you craft games differently when it's for console or PC, versus when it's for smartphone?

Nasu: Well, the way a player treats a console game is entirely different from how they treat a smartphone game. Console games are like a treat for the player. They want to sit down and have fun with the game in front of a large screen. On the other hand, smartphones are integrated with someone's daily life, so the players want those games to be faster, lighter, more compact.

Nasu: While we're aware of that, Fate GO takes the format of a game that asks for an hour of your time. We talked earlier about trial and error, and what I'd ideally want is to keep the current format while mitigating the tedium associated with it.

In an era where difficulty isn't wanted in video games

Q: Mr. Nasu, I see from this that you're also concerned about the tedium that modern-day gamers feel from the act of playing a video game.

Nasu: Fate GO and SRW, and most games really, are designed to be things where players focus their time and brainpower on a game, and obtain success through repeated trial and error. But I was surprised to get feedback from Fate GO players asking, "Why is this system so tedious?" For people playing on a smartphone, a game isn't supposed to have any stress at all. That was an eye-opener that made me reflect on how out of touch my sensibilities were.

Nasu: When you play a modern-day SRW game, it's fun how fast-paced progress is, but that takes away the old bite that earlier titles had, where you'd go, "Man, I spent 40 minutes on this fight and I STILL can't beat the Blood Temple?!" (*) What are your thoughts on that?

(*) Blood Temple: A Heavy Metal from the 1984-1985 TV anime Heavy Metal L-Gaim, which exists only in designs and never made it into the show proper. It shows up in Super Robot Wars 4 on the final stage, and it represents a formidable stumbling block for players.

Terada: Well, you hit the nail on the head. The way I see it, with video games, there's a cycle where you build up stress to a certain extent, then release it, and repeat. I wouldn't apply that to all games equally, of course.

Terada: If all a game does is cause stress, then it gets called a chore to play. That's why people encourage me to make the strongest game mode right from the start, and I think that in the case of smartphone games, they should be designed to let auto mode handle the grunt work.

Terada: But at its core, SRW is a fanboy game. 25 years ago, people would tell me, "Nobody will ever buy your team's fanboy game," and I'd rise up and go, "Excuse me?!" Considering that core, I think maybe SRW should emphasize forms of enjoyment that only it can provide.

Terada: For example, as we put in more series, Combattler V's (*) weapon list keeps growing shorter. It used to have have a weapon list like three pages long.

(*) Combattler V: The titular robot in Chodenji Robo Combattler V (broadcast 1976-1977), developed in the show by Dr. Nanbara. It is a combining robot made up of five Battle Machines that join together using super electromagnetic power, and it battles the Campbellians with a wide variety of weapons and super moves.

Nasu: I remember that!

Terada: Combattler V was called a weapons treasury, but its weapons dwindled down to two pages, then one. Sure, nobody ever uses more than maybe Chodenji Yo-Yo, Twin Lancer, and Chodenji Spin—Even I've never used all of Combattler V's weapons. (laughs) Though I did review the combat graphics for them.

Terada: But the way I see it, throwing in weapons you'd never normally use is part and parcel of SRW. Even now, the staff talks about how much they loved those pointless things.

Q: Could we get into that a little more? I see that as one of the biggest problems facing modern-day game development, and I'd love to hear about how popular titles like Fate GO and SRW tackle that.

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Fate GO defying mobage conventions by requiring completion of the entire first main scenario arc before taking part in some events

Terada: Fate GO's constantly active with events, isn't it?

Nasu: We have about one event a month in Fate GO. Most other smartphone games do one a week, but Fate GO is designed from the ground up to have one major event a month that can be considered the "main dish of the month" for the players to enjoy. The first week of an event is the most active, followed by three weeks of taking their time and doing their routine work. It's our way of giving the players that time to chill out, relax, and just level some characters while waiting for the next big thing.

Q: Some Fate GO limited-time events (*) require completion of the first main scenario arc to play. I found it shocking that a smartphone game would do that.

(*) There was a Fate GO special event that ran from May 1 to May 24, 2017, called Deep Sea Cybernetic Paradise SE.RA.PH, which required players to clear the final chapter of the first main scenario, End Singularity Cap Rank Time Temple: Solomon.

Nasu: Only 40% of our entire player base had access to the Golden Week event this year. But nothing sticks around forever, and all I want is for the people who played it to be able to reminisce about the amazing stuff that happened in Golden Week, and how cool it was. I hope it frustrates the players who missed out to the point that they push harder to get next year's Golden Week event.

Nasu: The requirement is basically there because if you don't clear the first arc, then you don't appreciate the event's primary gimmick. It's also my answer to all the players who talked about how great the first arc was. That's why for very specific limited-time events like the CCC event, the newer players just have to deal with it. Because it's a reward, setting exposition meant for the enjoyment of the players who cleared the first arc.

Q: What's wrong with just enjoying an event without fully understanding it?

Nasu: Sometimes there's nothing wrong with flying blind, but that's no way to play a long scenario. When you consume something you don't really understand, it leaves a sour taste in your mouth, and it's a disservice to the players consuming it. I want it to be considered a treat, like a steak that you can only eat at a certain time of year, that you missed out on last year. It would be like playing an SRW game with no knowledge whatsoever of any of the IPs that it features. It loses something for both the creators and the players.

Q: You know, when you first spoke about the concept of Fate GO, you said it would be a game that wraps up in a year's time.

Nasu: I was privately hoping to do a second arc if it turned out popular enough, so I spaced things out some... but only some. I just worked to give the first arc my max effort. We put out the maximum that we were capable of by the end of last year.

Nasu: Since it's going to continue on, we and the players all need a cooling-off period for our own good. So before launching into arc 2, we prepared something akin to an anthology, basically an arc 1.5 (*), which was meant to get the players as hyped up as they were at the start of arc 1, while also giving us some time to get things ready. I want arc 2 to feel like the start of a new school year, where people wonder what's going to happen this time around.

(*) Fate GO is currently releasing a new scenario, Epic of Remnant, positioned as arc 1.5 taking place after arc 1 of the main story. It is organized like an anthology, with four vignettes that can be played in any order.

Fate GO emphasizes a had-to-be-there experience

Q: What would you consider to be the most critical aspect of Fate GO? I'm guessing the scenarios?

Nasu: It's a game all about scenarios, but at its core, I think it's the experience. Like I touched on before, console games are a treat, where you set aside a whole day to immerse yourself in the special world that the game creates, while smartphone games are part of the daily lives of the players. I want people to have fond memories of playing the game that was a constant presence in their lives. That means I never skimp on the story, and I strive for excitement with every event.

Terada: Oh, that's interesting.

Nasu: When I was younger, I couldn't stand the idea of a book or video game that would be gone after a month. I wanted something that would last forever. But that led to me having tons of books and games in my backlog that I never played, because I figured that since they weren't going anywhere, I wasn't in any hurry to play them.

Nasu: As I grew older, I grew an appreciation for the idea of things that can only truly be enjoyed in their time. It's frustrating when you miss out on something like that, but sometimes that's life. Calling it a YOLO mentality might be going too far, but Type-Moon as a video game company runs on the idea of doing the maximum you can at this exact moment.

Terada: That's something you can pull off because Fate is a major series, right? Games that can be started at any point can also be put down at any point, but Fate GO has a lasting appeal that keeps people coming back for more of it.

Terada: What you said got me to thinking about my middle school years in the 80s when the Internet wasn't a thing. We would read Shonen Jump. You'd be left out in the cold if you just bought the tankobon to read later, but the weekly serialized issues, we'd all read at the same time. The day after they hit the stands, we'd all be gushing about what came up that week. We'd wonder, "Who's the Last Nanto General?" (*) When we opened it up to that page, we were floored to find out it was Yuria. (laughs)

(*) Referring to Yuria, a character in the Fist of the North Star manga. She was Kenshiro's fiancee at the start of the story and died in the plot. Later on, it came to light that the last Nanto Rokusei Ken survivor, a figure clad in form-covering armor, was actually Yuria, sending shockwaves through the readership at the time.

Terada: In today's terms, it would be like the comments coming on the screen in real time during a Niconico livestream, or going to see the newest Star Wars flick on opening day and chatting about it the day after. I think a large reason Fate GO is so popular is because it's designed around that real time sharing of experiences.

Nasu: Stories that were pop culture a decade or two ago might last forever in the minds of the people that were there for them at the time, but they hold no interest to people not in that age range. No matter how well-preserved something is, and no matter how much you show people that there's a whole world of material they can read if they look farther back, it's just not easy to interest people in media from an era that they weren't around for.

Nasu: Real talk, back around 2010, I felt like we were stuck in the past and would never connect with modern pop culture. So the idea of having fun with players who appreciated past culture was Kinoko Nasu's mentality back in 2010.

Nasu: But as times changed and I tried my hand at a smartphone game, I saw that we were getting younger girls who had never shown an interest in Fate before. It was more than just an interest in the IP that brought them there, I realized—It was an interest in getting in on the ground floor of a collective experience that you could share with others at the time that it happens. That idea of providing an experience that you can only have now, that became my driving force in 2016.

If video games are just there as something to do, they don't need a story

Q: Mr. Nasu, what do you see as the reason why teenage girls have started playing Fate GO?

Nasu: In a word? Because it was topical. When we started out, our player base was the players who had enjoyed Fate for the past decade, but Fate GO had a lot of problems at the time. But our players had faith in us for all the good games we'd made so far, and they stuck with it and believed that it had promise and would get better. Other people saw that and decided to see what all the fuss was about. They tried it out and thought, "Hey, this Fate series is pretty rad." I think that's all there was to it.

Q: There was a campaign where you allowed free downloads of the Saber route in the smartphone version of Fate/Stay Night. Do you think that had anything to do with it?

Nasu: Ehh, not really? Gamers don't generally read text.

Terada: I often get told to simplify the scenarios in SRW, too. I can appreciate people wanting that, since different players enjoy different things, but doing away with them completely would leave current SRWs up in the air.

Terada: Scenarios are supposed to be the reason why all of these robots are together in one place and fighting. Without that, it's just a bunch of robots on a stage for no reason, which isn't all that entertaining. We do simplify scenarios, but removing them entirely is something I consider out of the question.

Nasu: I personally wouldn't want to play an SRW without the text adventure parts. The SRPG sections are fun precisely because there's a story that's elegantly threading these ridiculous scenarios together and making you invested in it. I think to put it in numeric terms, the satisfaction of the people who skip the text and just play the SRPG parts is a 5, and it's a 10 for the people who play it after reading the text. When it's a 10, it will always stick with people in their hearts.

Nasu: In terms of Fate GO, I would say that I wanted to impress the entertainment value of a story on players that hadn't grown an appreciation for it yet. At first, I'd settle for "The earlier chapters I read were crap, but this one's pretty decent." If that's enough to make them stick with it, they get more accustomed to text. If I can get someone to think, "These stories are pretty sweet," that carries a special significance, and it means something for us as well. Later on when we go back to writing text adventures, if I can get someone to think, "Okay, if the Fate GO staff worked on this, it'll probably be a pain to play but I'll give it a shot," that's all I could ask for.

Terada: In that sense, Fate GO is calling into question the whole idea of what a smartphone app should be. People are accepting of it when they might not have been before. In SRW's case, for all the work we put into battle animations, our scenario dialogue is still just paper cut-outs talking to each other. People say to do better, and I kind of want to, but...

Nasu: No, no, no! If you started animating scenario dialogue as long as what SRW's got, that by itself would cost as much as making a whole game! That'd be nuts!

Terada: It'd be intimidating, but that's no reason not to do it. Not when it's been given to me as homework. Adventure games have been a thing since the Portopia Serial Murder Case (*), but not many things can attract so much attention with just still images and text. I find that impressive, considering that they compete with anime and movies.

(*) The Portopia Serial Murder Case: A PC-8801 adventure game released by Enix (now Square-Enix) in 1983. Yuji Horii was in charge of programming, scenario writing, graphics, and everything else. It portrays a human drama story written in the style of a novel, set in real locations.

Nasu: Back in the Famicom era, stories weren't a thing in video games at all. Hell, video games don't really need stories at all. In that sense, the simplistic smartphone games of today are a return to our roots. You can't expect to get a story with games that are just there to be something to do to kill time.

Nasu: Then you have us, the people that fell in love with video games. We had a different view entirely, because we'd come to love the culture called video games. We started adding stories to our video games out of a desire to create something that adults could enjoy, something that could be solid entertainment. The more we designed games for adults, the more complicated they became. The logical conclusion to that is a treat like SRW.

Nasu: It's fun enough just having Getter Robo and Mazinger Z do cool team-ups, yet you add a grandiose story, complicated stats, human relationships, themes... More and more gets incorporated over time, until you end up with the treat of a game you've got now.

Q: Nasu, what do you consider to be the appeal of SRW scenarios?

Nasu: Scenarios in SRW are structured to basically recreate episodes of the series included in the games. People who have seen the episodes go, "Yeah, that happened," while people who don't know anything about it go, "I never knew that anime had a scene like that." That makes up around 80% of the game, but it's all a tutorial for the last bit.

Nasu: The last 10-20% of the game is where it gets to the real showcase. While the famous plots like Gundam and Mazinger Z are playing out, the game is also laying out the groundwork in the background for the original protagonists, giving them key moments at major junctures. The current SRW game does a nice job of concluding it by drawing together the ideas of the last enemy and the ideas of the protagonist. When you pay close attention to that, you can tell that SRW has some very well-written scenarios.

Nasu: From a writer's standpoint, it makes me marvel at how they can untangle such a jumbled-up mess. Simply telling one original story would be simpler, but that's not what they do. They present a game where lots of different stars get moments in the sun, all while giving you a story that comes off like an original movie version. It's the details that make it so enjoyable.

Terada: Why, thank you!

Q: It's about time to wrap this up, but I'd like to remark on something... I was not expecting Mr. Nasu to be so knowledgeable about SRW and mecha anime.

Nasu: I'm an otaku, what can I say? (laughs) Sadly, there are fewer boys these days that enjoy mecha. That's probably at least in part because of how peaceful our country has become, of course.

Nasu: I'm not speaking in support of war, but the idea of using your own strength to topple large governments or companies or hostile nations in combat was very much a common notion until the postwar period. I've had that impressed upon me by my dad since I was a young boy. Nowadays, I feel like a different mentality is spreading, the idea that fighting just isn't worth it. That if you hate someone, you just wish they'd drop dead without you having to fight them. What's sad to me is that it's not a matter of whether it suits these people, but that they're just plain not interested in robots from the start.

Terada: I feel like it's the duty of people who immersed themselves in mecha stuff in the 70s and 80s to make sure it gets inherited. If something isn't made by people who loved robot shows, kids aren't going to watch it. Kamen Rider is an example of a show that succeeded in that inheritance. Ultraman and Super Sentai shows also succeed in crossing the generation gap, which I find amazing.

Nasu: These days, there are fewer mecha anime that bridge the gap between sentai stuff and Gundam. No more Brave series, that's a big one.

Terada: A lot of shows are made for kids, and personally, I wish they'd make more mecha anime that targeted a slightly older audience. If we could bridge that gap, that slightly older audience might take an interest in lots of other mecha anime.

Terada: I think Japanese people have a particular fondness for large, humanoid objects, too. We wouldn't build giant Buddha statues otherwise. Those go all the way back to the Nara period. There are various reasons for current trends, but much as we don't want to stop producing period dramas, we should also keep creating mecha anime. After all, the Transformers (*) movies are a huge hit overseas.

(*) Transformers: What started out as a line of toys from Japanese toymaker Takara (now Takara Tomy) was branded as Tranformers in North America, a line of transforming robots that took off massively and spurred comic and movie adaptations by Marvel Comics. After numerous remakes, Hollywood finally created a live-action movie adaptation. The movie being alluded to in this conversation is Transformers: The Last Knight (released in theaters August 2017), part of a trilogy of movies.

Nasu: Hell, the new Transformers movie is about King Arthur. That threw me for a loop! (laughs) Talk about your liberal interpretations! Is there such a thing as TOO liberal?

Terada: The reason that American comic book hero movies like the Avengers are so big right now is because the movies the heroes come from all share the same setting, right? And isn't Fate a story about heroes? In that sense, it might not be the same as mecha anime, but I hope you can create a work that can be the crossroads between the two.

Q: Any last words of encouragement for each other?

Terada: I would love to see you create a mecha anime, Nasu.

Nasu: If I got a major shot at it, I'd take it. At least once, anyway.

Q: Anything from Nasu to Terada?

Nasu: Please hurry up and release the Double G Unit 4 (*). Telling you that is the whole reason I came today. (laughs)

(*) Double G Unit 4: Double G refers to the Dynamic General Guardians, original robots featured in the SRW series. Unit 1 is the Dygenguar, Unit 2 is the Aussenseiter, and Unit 3 is the Raioh. In the story, a fourth unit is said to exist, but it has yet to appear.

Terada: Whoa, really?! Uh, okay, sure. (laughs) I've got some ideas for it.

Q: I shouldn't be surprised that Mr. Nasu used his last words to nerd out over SRW some more. (laughs) Thank you both for coming today.