Interview between Miura and Persona's developers (Part 3)

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Part 1 of this interview can be found here.
Part 2 of this interview can be found here.

Puella is now working on the "Messages to Kentarou Miura" material, starting with Takashi Hoshi's story about how he met Miura, and the back story behind the DRIFT concept art. As a result, translation of this interview will be paused for the time being, and will resume afterwards.

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Mr. Miura:
No, no. *laughs* I also read light novels. It’s because I think it would be a big problem if I didn’t know what today’s youngsters think about.

I just want to say, watching “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime” that has been animated recently or “Overlord”, I thought “Wow, at last we have main characters who are not in a human form!”

As for this kind of “Naroukei” (1) genre, it’s the ultimate “2nd year of junior high disease” (2), isn’t it? However, I think it’s natural to wish to be “the center of the world”, going to a convenient world with an almighty feeling of “2nd year junior high disease”.

Because I think it hasn’t changed at all since our childhood, when Nagai Go-san had the kid with the helmet and armor mount on “Mazinger Z”.

However, until recently “center of the world” protagonists were in human form. But today it’s common for the main character to not have a human form, like the Slime who looks like an Omochi. (4)

The avatar that the human inhabits (3) doesn’t even have a human form itself. So it’s beyond looking cool or being unattractive.

I wouldn’t say something harsh like “he has so little confidence that he became such a thing…?” but he’s definitely not a romantic target from a girl’s point of view. Thinking that he sees himself as free of these concerns of looking cool or being unattractive, I imagine that things like school castes would be harsh (for him) in many ways. (5)

Mr. Hashino:
I’m in my mid-forties. Talking about the image of a game’s main character with our staff, my generation longs, unsurprisingly, for genius heroes.

However, among the staff who are in their twenties or thirties, some said “that’s impossible and we can’t relate to them. We should have ‘small fry’ people who help them in an RPG”. I felt a big gap (with them).

I think what Miura sensei has said now means this has brought us to (the creation of) the Slime at last.

── In the “Persona” series, the main character is pretty cool, isn’t he?

Mr. Hashino:
It’s because as Sensei said minutes ago, we hope that, at least in a game’s world anyway, we can play as a cool and ideal character. But this might be an old-fashioned mindset.

Mr. Miura:
Our generation was the “become somebody” generation.

There were so many people who wanted to be special, and it was considered to be good. But it seems it doesn’t exist anymore, and instead the sentiment we have is that we should “survive”. When that happens, I think it will change the meaning of fantasy itself.

As for our time, fantasy was just one of many amusements we had.

In those days, some kids were otaku-like game lovers, there were many delinquents and members of biker gangs, while some others were very active in a club.

All those kids had a way of communicating a bit with each other.

I also had delinquent friends, but I think this kind of communication is almost gone now. Everyone is scattered now. As for today’s young fantasy lovers, I think fantasy is a big part of their life, rather than one thing among others.

Then, real life and fantasy become so close that their own desires may get vividly into fantasy. The weight of fantasy is different from that of our era, the part of reality may become thinner (proportionally), I think, as fantasy occupies a larger part.

──They say entertainment contents as well as fantasy take up a big part of human lives.

Mr. Miura:
Right. So, if I talk with youngsters about the feeling of our era: it’s one pleasant thing among many others, so I guess there might be a gap (between me and them). However, on the contrary, it makes me ponder on how I should think to do something for today’s youngsters.

Generally thinking, I’d like to say “would it be good?” that we spend a huge amount of time and money on such a thing, though.

However, thinking about the world in the future, because it seems the rate of spending an enormous amount of time on Internet or such things will be generally higher, if I talk about the feeling of our era, I’m not sure it will be well listened to. This is another thought of mine.

I have to think hard about this. I myself don’t know the answer at all.

── Miura sensei, how did you first discover video games?

Mr. Miura:
I’m 50 now, and the Famicom came out during my high school days. However, I aimed to be a mangaka after entering high school. So I devoted my time to manga in the days when all of Japan was fired up about games. *laughs*

It was not long after I became a mangaka that I got room in my life to play video games.

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Note 1: “Naroukei” originates from a novel contribution website called “Let’s be (なろう) a novelist”. Now it refers to novels born on that site.

Note 2: In Japanese, 中二病. It’s not a real disease, but refers to behaving in a way characteristic of teenagers going through puberty.

Note 3: Miura uses the same verb, 乗る, that he used in the previous paragraph. It means “mount, ride…” It implies he sees “using an avatar” as fundamentally similar to “piloting a robot”.

Note 4: A mochi or omochi is a Japanese rice cake. It is round, hence similar to a "slime".

Note 5: The concept of “school caste” is self-explanatory, but it’s a coined word in Japanese that refers to the specific stratified culture they have, with kids being socially ranked by popularity.