Danganronpa and The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy creator Kazutaka Kodaka recently participated in a two-way interview for Famitsu together with Motoki Ohmori, lead vocalist of J-pop band Mrs. Green Apple. Despite being active in completely different areas of the entertainment industry, the two creators came together to discuss each other’s works and talk about their respective creative processes.
In the interview, Kodaka shed some light on how he fine tunes some of the most heart-wrenching scenes in his works. Apparently, a big criterion for judging if a tear-jerking scene is complete is whether it manages to move the creator himself to tears.
“When I’m finishing up a project, I work on it until I cry. Those scenes that people say made them cry – I create them all specifically to make people cry,” Kodaka says, citing the Shinigami scene in Rain Code, the ending of Danganronpa 2, and the endings to The Hundred Line as some major examples. “I personally select the music and the expressions for those parts, and I adjust the script myself. When I test play it and a tear softly falls down my cheek, that’s when I consider it finished. This is an absolute for me.”
Kodaka jokes that he is not really focused on actual work during playtesting, and prefers to test his games while zoning out. He calls it “a switch from being creator to being a user.” Playing from the user’s point of view, he tests whether the game would move him emotionally and eventually make him cry. “If I’m unable to cry, I switch back to the creator’s perspective and try to think about what went wrong. I’m always very conscious of making that switch.”
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is available for PC (Steam) and Nintendo Switch.
