Disclaimer: The following article is a non-profit fan translation, all .hack title series are owned by CyberConnect 2 and Bandai Namco Entertainment, please buy .hack//Link -Zettai Houi Pack- and support the official release!!!. You can buy it on Amazon or any online store.
.hack//Epitaph of the New Testament
From .hack//Link -Zettai Houi Pack-
.hack//APOCALYPSE
The creator of the .hack series talks about the past and future of the series.
The .hack series has been in development for almost 10 years. We asked two people who built the series’ foundation, to talk about their memories of that time, including the behind-the-scenes and secret stories about the recent works of the series, .hack//Link during its development, and the “Future” of the series.
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Before we jump to the interview translation, I’ll explain a little bit about .hack//Link -Zettai Houi Pack- and .hack//Epitaph of the Testament.
As you know, .hack//Link was released in two editions, the regular edition released on March 28, 2010, and the packaging edition like the Zettai Houi Pack or Special Edition Pack released on March 4, 2010. The package edition, Zettai Houi Pack features:
- .hack//Link (Game Disc)
- .hack//Re-Birth Historical Disc (Recap-video from the previous series title).
- .hack//Epitaph of the Old Testament (Booklet about past titles of .hack)
- .hack//Epitaph of the New Testament (Booklet about current titles .hack//Link, interview, and teaser for .hack//Sekai no Mukou Ni).
- .hack//Dramatic DVD.
Now for the Epitaph of the New Testament. As the Epitaph of the Old Testament tells a recap and some info about the past titles of the .hack series, and the New Testament will focus on .hack//Link content related, along with secret setting for the Link characters, Interviews between Hiroshi Matsuyama & Kazunari Ito, and future tease for .hack//Sekai no Mukou Ni. Surprisingly the organization of MAMA was first mentioned there as well.
The interviews between Hiroshi Matsuyama and Kazunari Ito would be known as .hack//Apocalypse which tells behind-the-scenes and secret stories about the .hack series, along with the future series that will be stored later. Now let’s get to the introduction and the interview, which has now been translated.
Introduction
Kazunari Ito
.hack//Series Composition and Screenplay
Kazunari Ito is a screenwriter. He specializes in a grounded, realistic style that delves deeply into the events and characters. Active in various fields, especially in Anime. Major works include the Mobile Police Patlabor series and the Heisei Gamera series.
Hiroshi Matsuyama
Director of .hack//Series
Hiroshi Matsuyama is the president and CEO of CyberConnect2. He plays a central role in the production of .hack series. He is also known as a fan of anime and manga, and loves to incorporate a sense of passion into his work.
How did you two meet up during making .hack?
– First of all, please tell us how Mr. Matsuyama and Mr. Ito met for the first time.
Matsuyama: It all started when I came to Mr. Unozawa (Shin Unozawa, the current president of Bandai Namco Games Inc.) and I wanted to do an original RPG project. He said, “Okay. In return, I want you to make sure it succeeds.” But he said, “No one will touch it even if you suddenly release a new RPG. I’ll introduce you to someone (Whose name would bring in the customers), so tell me who you like to meet.” So I requested Mr. Ito (Kazunari Ito) because I loved “Patlabor” and so on.
Ito: Ah, yes (laughs). Before we met, he showed me two proposals, one for the dragon and one for the thief. Then he asked me, “What do you think about this?” I remember saying, “I don’t think that’s a good idea” (Laughs). And then another project came in, and he said, “Well, how about this one?” I said, “Why don’t you do this and this?” I said, “Well then, let’s meet!” I think that’s how it went.
Matsuyama: Did Mr. Unozawa contact you at that time?.
Ito: Well….. I don’t remember.
Matsuyama: What do you mean you don’t remember? (Laughs)
Ito: I vaguely remember that the first time we met was after the all-rush of AVALON (Laughs).
– How did the .hack production start from there?
Matsuyama: I can only say it now, but I wasn’t too happy with Mr. Ito’s reaction to saying “I’ve had enough with games” (Laughs). When I first told him that It was a game, he wasn’t enthusiastic at all.
Ito: I did play Sansara Naga and I’m full of it…. (Laughs).
Matsuyama: Yeah. But I told him that it was different from the game during SNES’s time. I played the current game tho. I also explained to them that they could do so many things with the presentation, but they didn’t say “Yes” even once (laughs).
Ito: If you carelessly say something, they will make you do it.
Matsuyama: I tried very hard to get people to agree with me wherever I was talking, but it just didn’t seem to resonate…. (laughs).
Ito: You mean Alice?
Matsuyama: That’s right. The motif was Alice. So, the name of what is now called THE WORLD was originally named Alice Land. That’s the first thing I went into…..
Ito: That’s not true (Laughs).
Matsuyama: They really said that (Laughs). “The motive is not a good one, to begin with”. So we decided to stick to the proper setup, so we started by asking Mr. Ito a lot of questions, right?
Ito: I don’t remember….. (laughs).
Matsuyama: Why not? (Laughs).
Ito: I mean, I don’t remember why I was supposed to participate. I think it means that I couldn’t escape from Mr. Unozawa after all.
Matsuyama: After all, when we told Mr. Unozawa that we wanted Mr. Ito, he said, “Well, that was quick.” After that, I thought to myself, “I don’t think this is the way to make an introduction….” (Laughs). In the end, we realized that we had to make our overtures. So, in a conference room in Higashi-Nakano (the location of Bandai’s Video Game Division at that time), we and Mr. Ito started talking about how to create the concept and settings. Right in the middle of the meeting, Avalon (film) was released, right?
Ito: That’s right.
Matsuyama: And I went to see it. It was the latest work by Kazunari Ito at that time, and after watching it, I told Mr. Ito what I liked about it. The main character has a habit of doing things (see p. 22, while putting his hand on the tip of his nose). I said, “This has something to do with the main character’s inner life, doesn’t it?” When I asked him about it, he said, “It’s an old habit of mine.”
Ito: (Indicating his fingers in the right hand) Here, there used to be a Pendako, back in the early years. In the days of handwriting. And I have a habit of smelling it sometimes…. (Laughs).
Matsuyama: Don’t (Laughs).
Ito: That’s about right (Laughs). Well, it’s also to ward off evil. It’s a cross.
Matsuyama: I see… that’s what I wanted to hear. At that time. Not “my habit” or anything like that (laughs).
Ito: “My habit” is the correct answer (laughs).
Matsuyama: You wouldn’t think that something like that could be born from such a trigger. When I asked around, I found out that some of them were based on some kind of backbone. While others were based on surprising sources, such as “Something at a family restaurant in my neighborhood.” I was surprised to find the original story in such a surprising place. I wondered if this is where the moments in Patlabor and various other Ito’s works where you feel the familiarity of everyday life come from. I don’t know if you’re conscious of this.
Ito: People do talk about Realism, but what makes it realistic is a sense of “Certain Feelings.” Whether it’s about a monster movie or a mecha robot anime, the people in it are no different from the real people, so it’s realistic to say “That happened, didn’t it”, and that’s how you feel close to the characters….. Did you talk about that at the time? (Laughs).
Matsuyama: Yes, I did. Because I was told that I should talk about it, and I was told no (Laughs). I think there are too many things to remember about the game, like settings and systems that need to be explained. But even so, if you don’t explain it, customers won’t be convinced. So at the beginning of the project, I tried to make it as easy as possible to explain, by starting with something like where everyone is different and looks different on the internet, but in reality, they are classmates or from the next class at the same school. When I told them that I wanted to start from the point of “That’s ridiculous”, they said, “That’s impossible, that’s unrealistic” (Laughs).
Ito: The only time that works is when it’s a gag.
Matsuyama: Of course, I didn’t want to make a gag, but I wanted to make something that would appeal to kids in junior high or high school at the time, something that they would be interested in during recess, something that would make them think, “Isn’t that what’s happened here?” So I said that I wanted to make a work that people would talk about, and I was told, “We can’t have a story where everyone is actually a classmate” (Laughs). It was after that, wasn’t it? Like Sanjuro in .hack, I really made him into an American.
Ito: In the beginning, I was supposed to be in charge of giving out bad advice like that, you know (Laughs).
Matsuyama: How about this? And then we would throw them out. They would return home almost empty. I would bring something that I thought would be pretty good, but it would cut down pretty quickly. I did this for about six months.
Ito: I think that while I was giving them bad advice, it became somewhat tedious and I said, “Then I’ll do it myself” (Laughs).
Matsuyama: At that time, you didn’t think that you would be together that often, did you?
Ito: Yeah, I never thought that….. was a terrible thing (laughs). I joked before that I only played Patlabor in my 30s, and in my 40s I mostly played .hack (laughs).
Matsuyama: That’s true (laughs). We sent you several proposals. One was an RPG about rising dragons, and the other was a Tactical Simulation RPG about thieves (Laughs). We decided that it wasn’t good enough, so we decided to reorganize the project, focusing mainly on the thieves. So, while talking with Niizato (Hiroto Niizato, lead planner of the .hack series), we came up with and stole the information, based on the keywords “Steal”. I came up with the Treasurer Hacker internet site. I was given contact information for another presentation, but it was just an address, and it looked like a screening room somewhere (Laughs).
The production has finally begun, revealing the secret behind stories that were never been told.
– Now, please tell us about some stories you had during the production of .hack
Matsuyama: First of all, it was difficult to create the background. For how long, it took me about six months to create a template.
Ito: Did it take that long?
Matsuyama: Yes, around the same time, I went to Moto-san (Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, the character designer for .hack) and asked him to draw one illustration image, and he took half a year to do it (Laughs).
Source: .hack//Archive 03 -IMOQ-
Ito: Ah~ (Laughs).
Matsuyama: (Moto-san) wanted to see how his artwork would work with 3D Models, so for some reason, he created Rei Anayami in the middle of the project (laughs). It took me exactly half a year to complete the project……. So I spent the first half a year setting up the project. And then, in the middle of the project, there was a time when Mr. Unozawa would come to the meeting room regularly. And at that time, he came up with a decision.
Ito: Speaking of Mr. Unozawa, the first thing that surprised me was when we went to Hakata together, he said on the spot, “We’ll make it a four-volume book” (Laughs).
Matsuyama: Yes, that’s right. At that time, the plot written by Mr. Ito had 8 chapters in total: Chapter 1: Infection, Chapter 2: Expansion, Chapter 3: Malignancy, Chapter 4: Mutation, and so on. We decided that the volume should be large enough to do it in four volumes, so we put two chapters together at that time some words didn’t make sense, so I changed them a little, and the title became something like “Infection Expansion”. From there, mysteriously, it just accelerated, didn’t it?
Ito: Yes, that’s right. I mean, it’s a situation where my ass is on fire (Laughs).
Matsuyama: Once the volume chapters were decided, we had a lot of ideas that came together.
Ito: That was when the game was finally getting off the ground. Mr. Unozawa suggested that we add an Anime prequel to the game (Laughs).
Matsuyama: That’s right. Then you had to redo the script again, didn’t you?
Ito: Yes. It was supposed to be written by Michiko Yokote (the Screenwriter, who was supposed to write the script for .hack//SIGN), but in the end, I was the one who wrote it…… with no money, but I had to write it myself. I think (Laughs).
Matsuyama: This isn’t right. Please sue the producer (Laughs).
– The whole thing was constructed through many twists and turns.
Ito: By the way, how long does the whole process of development take?
Matsuyama: About three years and six months. The first half year was before brainstorming, so it’s been three years since Mr. Ito got involved. The first half of the year was for setting up the storyline, while in the second half of the year, we talked about doing a four-volume structure and an anime. The following year, it became an anime series.
Ito: Oh, I see.
Matsuyama: So, we decided to make an Anime TV series that would tell the story of what happened six months before the game, with the four volumes of the game and OVA series at the center. As we had already finished the game, we asked Mr. Ito to concentrate on the Anime series. When I came to realize it, Mr. Ito had done all the work (Laughs).
Ito: TV Anime was the hardest part. I thought about running away at night (Laughs).
– Are there any other episodes that were difficult to produce?
Ito: Hmmm. Surprisingly, I forgot about the hard things, I only remember the good parts.
Matsuyama: That’s right. But as for us, we were trained through trial and error for that project. Each time, we would come up with different ideas, and then bring them back home again.
Ito: I see, I didn’t know I was doing that. I forgot about it…… (Laughs).
Matsuyama: Didn’t we have a long meeting? It lasted 8 hours.
Ito: It was a long time. Very long.
Source: .hack//Epitaph of the New Testament
Matsuyama: After a four-hour meeting, we had dinner and then another meeting. We came from Hakata, so we had a lot of stuff to do and had to bring it back home, so we decided to draw in front of them. Sometimes we had dinner together and I’d try to get something out of the conversation. Also, there were times when we took the train together to Bandai Namco Headquarters, while we were traveling, Mr. Ito was reading a book. I asked him, “What are you reading?” I asked him what he was reading, he said “Hyperion”. It was a very thick book, and I heard rumors about it, but I had never seen anyone reading it before (Laughs).
Ito: Oh no. (Laughs).
Matsuyama: Then I bought the same book and tried to read it, but I had no idea what it was all about (Laughs).
Ito: No, no, no, HYPERION is an interesting book, you know? (Laughs).
Kazunari Ito’s scriptwriting style revealed!!
– Where did you start working after you joined the project?
Ito: After the setting was finalized, you created a kind of rough box, right? I created a plot to flesh it out….
Matsuyama: I was taught by Mr. Ito that he first draws a large rectangle on a piece of paper. Then, he divided it into 8 squares and wrote a keyword or something next to each volume story. He told me, “I don’t know about other people, but this is how I do it.”
Ito: You know, I didn’t originate that. There’s a scriptwriter named Hajime Arai, and he started this method, but it is quite convenient.
Matsuyama: I did the same thing when I wrote the script for the anime series. I thought it would be like the beginning and end of a comic book.
Ito: (while drawing on the whiteboard) Each story arc is a scene to be depicted. 30 minutes of TV, the first square is the prologue. The volume is about 3 pages of 200 words per page. Then, if you write 9 pages for each scene, you will have 30 pages in total for 4 scenes. This is where the commercial came in. The second half is the same way, and three pages are written for the epilogue at the end, for 60 pages in total. This is about the standard format. In the case of a movie, it depends on the time length, but it is usually 30 pages per chapter instead of 9 or something like that.
Source: .hack//Epitaph of the New Testament
Matsuyama: In a theater, what would ABCD be?
Ito: Yes, that’s right. In the case of theater, the middle section is divided into three parts, A, B, and C, with an epilogue. In the small window on the left side of the cells, we put subheadings. For example, “Anomaly,” “Reversal,” and so on.
Matsuyama: It’s like a theme of what to draw there. In the case of .hack, I write the Infection (Laughs).
Ito: With the keywords like that, it became much easier to visualize. Then, what happens in the “Infection” area is written down. With the nine sheets, two such keywords should be enough. If we consider that there are 3 or 6 sheets for a scene in each story arc, we can write 2 or 3 keywords. If you fill them in like that, it is easy to compose it as a whole…. I wonder why I told you this lol.
– I’m learning a lot (Laughs)
Matsuyama: Back then, we naturally worked on the game scenarios, but we had no idea about the theory behind the script of people who made movies, so the conversation was very new to us. I was able to absorb a lot. I also gained a lot from the fact that they gave me a lot of bad advice.
Ito: Really?
Matsuyama: No, no, yes. Now I can put it like this (Laughs). When the script was already in a certain form, and we were talking about how we would use the characters and what they would do, we would come up with ideas that we thought were impossible. For example, the Mistral from .hack is a case of point, but it’s impossible from a game developer’s point of view, so she disappears as a party character. That’s not an option (Laughs).
Ito: Yes, that might be true.
Matsuyama: Even those who liked the character and developed him had to follow up on him. Mia also became an enemy in the middle of the game, and I thought people would say, “Oh, no. There are so many taboos for a game developer.” But that’s why there is a story that can be told. I was impressed by that.
Piroshi (Piros) was born from their interaction!
Matsuyama: Actually, there are a lot of more radical things, and we talked about how, from a game store point of view, it’s not good for customers. Like, no to that one, no to this one, no to that one, that one is systematic (Laughs). Then they said, “Well, I’ll give you the character from the side that made the game.” And he said, “His name is…. Piros!” (Laughs).
Ito: That’s when I started calling you “Matsuyama-san” and then “Mat-chan.” I remember saying to him, “You’re good enough for me!”.
Matsuyama: Yes, that was around that time (Laughs). But in the beginning, we don’t know how to treat them. And he’s someone who’s been watching his work on TV anime for a long time. I was saying to him, “Even so, Ito-Sensei, you know,” and he started asking me to stop calling him “Sensei” at a very early stage (Laughs). And that’s how I came to be called Mat-chan.
Ito: And I told him that the ‘Ma’ in Mat-chan is not a kanji character, but the hiragana ‘Ma’ (Laughs). Don’t think I’m the same as Matsumoto Hitoshi….. What is he doing? (Laughs).
Matsuyama: Right, those were the days….
Ito: There is no such site now.
Already nearing completion….. Response to .hack
– Where did you start working after you joined the project?
Matsuyama: It’s more a part of the unique elements of the game. For example, stories like Cubia getting stronger and stronger with each fight are relatively easy for both sides to accept. In terms of the plot of the series, there are enemies called the Eight Phases (Cursed Wave/Epitaph), and the fact that there are eight phases in four volumes means that if you defeat them two at a time, you can finish the series neatly, but it doesn’t work that way, in game-wise. So, in Vol.1, you only defeated Skeith. Because Cubia was born and ended without a fight. Vol. 1 created such a peak, and then in Vol. 2, 3, and 4, while fighting many phases, it produced enemies that grew and fought each other throughout the four volumes. We have also made several suggestions for such structures, and for stories that add various twists and turns to the setting. It also broke the bracelet in the process.
Ito: Hmm?
Matsuyama: You need a bracelet to beat the eight phases, but when you have the final phase left, the bracelet has already been broken. What are we going to do now? It’s good that we agreed that this would be the climax, but the creators also have to think about what to do (Laughs).
Ito: Oh, there it is.
Matsuyama: In addition, we have to connect the story with the anime called Liminality. What Tokuoka, Mai, and co are doing is having a positive impact on the game side. The story of the anime world and the game world have influenced each other. In addition, Kite and his team will face the final battle. In such a show, the story that the producer tells us is “Do your best to beat him” (Laughs). “Everybody comes out, join forces, and do your best to beat them!” That was it. I thought it wouldn’t happen (Laughs). In the end, it was resolved by Mr. Ito’s idea, but at the time I thought, “Oh, so that’s how it’s done…” That way of spreading and folding the Furoshiki is typical of Mr. Ito. I was impressed with the way Aura came out at the end of the game, and how well he used a knife.
Ito: I didn’t realize that (Laughs).
Matsuyama: Yes it is. When I heard about it, I already had an idea of what the scene would be like, so I just had to make it convincing. So when the last image clicked into place, I finally had a clear connection from the beginning to the end of .hack.
– Now that you have settled on what’s inside, for the progress-wise, how did it go?
Matsuyama: Making the game is like a race against time, so by the time I’m writing about Vol.3 and so on, I’ve already worked on Volume 1. If things change in the middle of the project, we can fix it later (Laughs). You make more and more. I’ve started making it from scratch, with the last volume that has yet to be decided.
Ito: Hmm? Isn’t that the same with anime TV series?
Matsuyama: Well, generally speaking, that’s true. But in the case of games, the scenario is given first. Otherwise, I can’t see the resources that need to be created. That’s not the case with anime, is it? In fact, you also see the reaction of the audience, right?
Ito: Well, I don’t have much time to do that.
– With the release of .hack which is also a year in the making, it seems like you’re working directly with the feedback.
Matsuyama: We check all the reactions, not only during game releases, but also during anime series broadcasts, in real-time, and to the internet (Laughs). It isn’t much different now, but I see all the reactions from the audience. So sometimes it’s said, “When we say things like this in various places, the producers don’t see it.” We’re looking everywhere (Laughs). And it was very painful (Laughs). I didn’t show it, but I was very depressed.
Ito: In the case of SIGN, the second half of the series was created with a lot of pain and suffering, yet the final episode was connected to the game, so the story was incomplete, and it was not received well, in a sense.
Matsuyama: Well, It was a complete story for Tsukasa….
Ito: Yes, and then a viewer said, “I’ll try to live hard too.” I’ve been saved by that. I’m glad I did.
Matsuyama: In fact, that’s what happened to the producers. This is a great reference point for the production, including some harsh opinions.
– When you mentioned SIGN, how was the production?
Ito: When did the TV anime series start?
Matsuyama: it was during the second year of development.
Ito: Was the entire scenario for the game already written at that time?
Matsuyama: It was finished already.
Ito: I see. We finish the scenario for the game and then we do LIMINALITY.
Matsuyama: Then, when we were working on Liminality, Mr. Unozawa mentioned something about an Anime TV series. Therefore, the production of Liminality was temporarily halted.
Ito: Really?
Matsuyama: Yes, that’s right. At that point, the game was scheduled to be released two and a half years later, but we were told that it wouldn’t take two and a half years to make the anime, so we started working on the TV series first (Laughs).
Ito: Oh I see.
Matsuyama: After SIGN anime started, the production of Liminality in Bee Train studios itself continued in the later half of development……
Ito: I don’t know about Liminality, but SIGN would not have been possible without Michiko Yokote.
Matsuyama: That’s right. You were there for the second half of SIGN, or rather from when you worked on SIGN to the beginning of G.U. right?
Ito: There you go. So, I faded out before I knew it. When you’ve been doing this for a long time, there are a lot of things that happen (Laughs).
Matsuyama: Not at all (Laughs).
The second season project [G.U.] has begun!
– Where did you start working after you joined for the project?
Ito: It’s easy to say that the .hack series sells itself with various simultaneous developments, but it uses a lot of energy.
Ito: When the game is over and you think, “Oh well, the goal is in sight,” they move on to Liminality, and then, when the end is in sight, they say, “Yes, a TV Series”….. Such repetition was very draining (Laughs). So by the time the second season came around, I was ready to run away again (Laughs).
Matsuyama: Was that already the case during the second season?
Ito: Hmm (Laughs).
Matsuyama: For the .hack series second season project, Niizato and I started writing a proposal during the development of .hack//vol.3 (Outbreak). At that time, the project was not yet called G.U. but rather .hack2nd. So we started the training camp in Hakata for this project, and at that time, Mr. Ito had already brought a student who had never met me before (Laughs). It’s like, “He’ll do the rest” (Laughs).
Ito: I will check it at least once. But I won’t be writing about it (Laughs).
Matsuyama: At that time, we had a pretty good staff. And that’s when things started to get going.
– What was the initial concept behind G.U.?
Matsuyama: With .hack, we took a variety of different approaches, and as a result, the audience has expanded, I think many people enjoyed the work as a whole, but with G.U., we wanted to make it more like a shonen manga, so that each character has its fans. We wrote the first concept proposal and started its development of G.U. but it went in two or three different directions.
Ito: I did, didn’t I? It took a long time until the production started, didn’t it?
Matsuyama: It took a long time. It took almost a year just to set it up. I had to throw out the setting that I had been working on for six months and start over. In the beginning, “The World” was outdated, and different online games were popular, and the project was about going back and forth between some of those games. One is a warring state game, the other is a PK-main game, and so on. Nevertheless, we reorganized the game, because it’s good to have such a broad story, it didn’t take shape at first.
– How did it develop from there to what it is today?
Matsuyama: At first, the content of the game was pulled from the .hack series, with characters like Balmung and Orca appearing in this state.
Ito: Uh, yes, I think you’re right.
Matsuyama: However, there’s a definition of the sequel, and if you make a legitimate sequel to the previous work, you’ll only be discounting a percentage of the audience of the first work. So I decided to draw a line between this series and the previous ones and say, “Nice to meet you, this is .hack.” That’s how G.U. began. Inside, it’s fine to show that “Actually, the real life is the same as the previous series,” but I wanted to make it completely unrecognizable at a glance. We also had the idea of keeping the main characters together. Haseo was active in Anime (ROOTS) and later in Games (G.U.)
– Do you have any correspondence with Mr. Ito in that area?
Matsuyama: For G.U. We received a lot of suggestions. We worked together on .hack for about three years, so we didn’t get any bad advice on the G.U. Project.
Ito: I didn’t even have the will to do it (Laughs). What year was it when G.U. started?
Matsuyama: Technically, it was 2003.
Ito: At the time, I was mildly depressed.
Matsuyama: Oh, year, that is true. In 2003, Mr. Ito was no longer able to write. I spent two years working on the anime TV series with my apprentice, and going to Bandai Visual at the time for meetings while also writing the script for the game. Then, in the middle of the project, we decided to split it into an animation team and a game team, and Tatsuya Hamazaki, who had written the script for the manga (.hack//Legend of the Twilight), joined the game team, while the animation team was developed under Mr. Ito’s an apprentice. That’s how .hack//G.U. was released in three volumes, from 2006 to 2007.
Ito: But I’m secretly writing the anime (ROOTS) too (Laughs). I don’t know outwardly, but I think you can tell by my name.
G.U., LINK, and Beyond!
– When did the G.U. Project start and what was the next step for the series development?
Matsuyama: The G.U. project fully began development in 2003, and the second half of its development started in 2005, so we had all the materials we needed and were ready to go. The first volume (G.U. Rebirth) production was already finished according to the schedule, and the second volume was in production based on the feedback from the customers who played it. So volume 2 (G.U. Reminisce) came out in September, along with the last episode of ROOTS, and volume 3 (G.U. Redemption) came out in the following year of January. Between Vol. 2 and Vol.3, I wrote the proposal for G.U. TRILOGY (Film) and that was my schedule. And it was actually in January 2007 when we began to work on TRILOGY. At the same time, we began to create a prototype game for Link. That one didn’t start working as a project until the Spring of 2007.
Ito: (Looking at the movie list) When I saw this, there were some that I didn’t know either, I didn’t recognize some of them.
Matsuyama: Yes, I think there are a lot of things you don’t know. Some of them were newly added to this project.
Ito: I see, that’s great.
Matsuyama: But in the end, there are a lot of manga and novels in the work.
– You have been involved in the majority of them, but is there anything you would like to leave out in this series?
Ito: I don’t know. I think there are always unfinished things. When time passes and I look back at it objectively, there are always things that I should have done differently, but now, I’m not going to do it that way. But when I do it, I love it and I’m ready to die (Laughs). I feel like I do my best every time.
– LINK is positioned as the final chapter of the series, but when do you start to see the series ending in your mind?
Matsuyama: When we were doing G.U. and setting up LINK, we had a rough idea of how the story would end. So from about the second half of G.U. and so on. Well, the chronology story timeline continues after LINK, doesn’t it? I’m working on that now, but the timeline I’ve posted here goes beyond that, so I’m not sure how I’m going to portray that. I haven’t decided whether it would be a medium or anything (Laughs).
Ito: Is this game, the final chapter for the series?
Matsuyama: Yes, this is the final chapter of the game. As a project, this is a final project. We started with the game, and now we have manga and anime. So, in terms of chronology, this is the third season of the project.
Ito: Oh, I see.
– In G.U. TRILOGY, there was a scene at the end that led to LINK. Was this already a tease in the works for the next series?
Matsuyama: Yes, it’s true every time, not only for G.U. TRILOGY. I’ve been working on a series of works in various media. So I’ve been working on it. When we were working on .hack, we worked on a manga called LEGEND of the TWILIGHT and we included some of that material in the book as well. At the end of Vol.3, there’s a reference to G.U. which we had not even announced yet. Similarly, in G.U.+, I wrote TRILOGY, LINK, and so on.
– What are you working on for LINK and Beyond?
Matsuyama: That’s probably the part you can somewhat imagine from the chronology of this book. Well, it’s 2024, four years following the Link incident. That is the next part of the story.
Ito: Is that so? (Laughs).
Matsuyama: I already explained that to you (Laughs).
– Do you ever talk about what happens after LINK between the two of you?
Ito: No, I don’t think so.
Matsuyama: Yeah, me too. I drew the groundwork for the game LINK. I told them that there was a game called LINK and that I was thinking of doing something like that after that. I just explained at the very least how it will work before and after the game. If we get too much into that, it wouldn’t be pure as a piece of work.
Source: .hack//Epitaph of the New Testament
– So to what extent is Mr. Ito involved in the base of the .hack series?
Matsuyama: I think it was mainly during the first season that the reality of the roots of .hack was formed. If The World is such a game software, the company that operates it must be like this, and with such a company’s size, it would not have its main headquarters in Japan. This kind of reality is rooted in our minds, from which the chronology or form of the following years is created. You only said specific settings during the first phase, right?
Ito: Yes, indeed.
The roots of the series project are still about the Epitaph and the Secret of Aura in the first season.
– And you’ve been able to expand on that?
Matsuyama: Yes, that’s right. Nothing has changed in the Epitaph of the Twilight since then.
Ito: Ah, I was so great at writing the Epitaph of the Twilight, lol.
Matsuyama: That was the beginning. I have no idea what “Krufffff = pig run” means anymore. I thought, “This guy is a genius!” That’s amazing.
Ito: Actually, the Epitaph of the Twilight was written when I was still working as a production manager.
Matsuyama: Really?
Ito: At that time, I was writing a proposal called The Legend of the Dusk Dragon, which included an Epitaph of the Twilight. But I thought “I probably won’t use this anymore.” and then I used it for the .hack series.
– Now, please tell us about Aura, the iconic character in the series.
Ito: The character Alice from the original project Alice Land is the prototype, right?
Matsuyama: That’s right.
Ito: But, I don’t remember what Alice from Alice Land looked like.
Matsuyama: I don’t remember at all (Laughs). There were no pictures, just the setting. There were some catchy parts from “Alice Land” and some parts that were easy to understand from the picture point-of-view, so we decided to take those parts and make them up in the .hack series. And, as is still the case today, AI is a unique element to the game, isn’t it? Of course, AI will continue to evolve in the future, but at the time, we were talking about what would be waiting for the End of the Evolution of AI (Artificial Intelligence), and we decided to make Aura the symbol of the Ultimate Evolution of AI. Furthermore, in the vein of “Alice Land,” it would be a little girl. Probably innocent. Like it was just born. It was kind of white and fleshed out like that.
Ito: It’s not that .hack was born from nothing, but Alice Land was a first step that would lead toward creation. One of the elements that remains as a result of our efforts to actively use what is available is Aura.
Matsuyama: That’s right. Aura was not just a motif of a little girl from Alice Land, so we decided to use her, but to make it work in .hack, we needed a process to create it, and for that, we needed an AI named Morganna Mode Gone. There was Morganna to create Morganna Mode Gone, there was The World as the ground to create Morganna, there was Harald Hoerwick to create The World, and for that, there was Wielant, and so forth, with straps to create such an existence.
Ito: And so the Epitaph of the Twilight came in.
Matsuyama: Once we were able to tie it all together, it was rather quick. For Aura to be born in the game .hack, it was necessary for its predecessor SIGN to go from a state like this to this, and what about G.U. after the Twilight Incident? I guess it is because it was born as the Ultimate AI. There was a gap of three years for that. After all, .hack is a work with your unique reality. I think the biggest lie of them all is Aura.
Ito: It’s like Gamera (Laughs).
Matsuyama: They are very comfortable. But if you treat them too comfortably, they become obsolete. As a symbol in a work, it must remain special. It’s not just a god. Aura suffers a lot for that reason (Laughs). I think that’s probably one of the interesting things about .hack, that she’s supposed to be perfect, but she suffers so much.
– Finally, do you have a message for the fans of the series?
Matsuyama: Well, I think that everyone who has received our work (.hack//Link) so far has their own perception of what has happened so far. For now, the third season begins with LINK and I hope you will enjoy it to the end.
Ito: That’s the only way to put it.
– Thank you for your time.
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