archipel

Archipel - Patreon Renewal

Hello everyone,

Together with Archipel Caravan, we are launching today a renewed version of our Patreon. After having teased about it for a while, here are the updates that are taking place today.

Tiers -

- $1 Supporter Tier | We wanted to keep a $1 tier to allow everyone to support us, and as before, it provides you access to the Discord, which we want to make more active. We plan on holding monthly AMAs with Japanese creators where patrons will be able to ...

New | Kazutaka Kodaka, Archipel Caravan

Hello everyone,

Today marks the launch of Archipel Caravan, our new series around creators from the Japanese game industry.

Our first video is an interview of Kazutaka Kodaka, creator of the Danganronpa series, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. During this interview, we wanted to learn more about Kodaka’s methods on game scenario writing, a big part of his games, many of which take part of the “death game” genre. 

As previously announced, we will be laun...

Announcing: Archipel Caravan

Hello everyone,

After having teased about it for a few weeks now, today we're proud to finally announce Archipel Caravan - an original series of weekly content themed on Japanese games.

During the last few months, we have spent time with directors, illustrators and musicians to create a variety of content that ranges from creator interviews, live performances all the way to more in-depth portraits, including a special reboot episode of toco toco.

Our first content will be re...

Soon on Archipel - Patron Update

Hello everyone,

We're conscious we've been a bit silent these days, however please be assured that we've been (and still are) active on creating new content.

We already mentioned that we are currently working on a big project related to Japanese games, which will be spanned over a wide variety of content - short, long and sometimes medium-length, that we will be announcing next month. 

Additionally, the Patreon will go through a renewal (since we haven't been very succe...

Ambient Session with Chihei Hatakeyama - a long rainy season

Hello everyone,

We hope everyone is staying healthy and safe.

We just launched a new video on the channel, taking on a different style. It was around the start of the rainy season, when ambient musician Chihei Hatakeyama let us in his home studio.

After a session researching some sound elements, he then improvised an original ambient composition. It surely game our minds a little breeze during these times.

As for future projects, we are currently working on our biggest...

Staying Afloat - Saving a ramen chain during the pandemic

Hello everyone,

We hope everyone is doing well, as we see some opening measures are starting to take place in several countries.

As we shared in last week's post, what originally started as a catch up leads us to releasing Staying Afloat, where Tomoharu Shono tells us the story of how he is managing his ramen restaurant chain during the pandemic.

From installing security measures to leveraging his 15 years of experience as a ramen creator to develop new products, he told us ...

Upcoming Content & Patron Update

Hello everyone,

We hope everyone is staying healthy and safe.

As shared in our previous Patreon post, our next release on the channel will be a non pop-culture project. A few weeks back, as we were catching up with people around us, we realized once again the impact the current situation has had on some industries and how it's affecting all of us. We discussed with Tomoharu Shono, who owns more than 10 ramen restaurants in Japan and overseas and whom we filmed with two years ago i...

Patron Update & Yoshitaka Amano Portrait

Hi everyone,

As the isolation days keep on going, first we hope that you and your close ones are all staying healthy. On our end, we've been exploring project ideas and how to adapt to the current situation (which is probably what many of you are also going through).

We have a new project that we will be launching soon, it won't be pop culture related but will remain human-focused, taking on a new approach. Some of our others projects (this time including pop culture) are unfortun...

Patron Update - Strange Times

Hi everyone,

First things first, we hope everyone is staying healthy during these crazy times we're living.

Japan is taking a strange course of action in this whole situation with only soft "if possible, not a must but it would be nice, you know, if you could at least try to avoid going out" (rough translation) guidelines that have just started to be taken these past few days. Still, looking at what is happening overseas and at the aforementioned lack of true initiatives, we remai...

Special: Inside Nioh 2 Documentary

Hi all,

Quickly sharing this in time before Patreon's maintenance!

We launched a new documentary today, a bit special this time as it is an editorial and video collaboration with Japanese local media Game*Spark, inside Team Ninja's latest title: Nioh 2. (Hence the new channel.) We had briefly mentioned this project in our previous Patreon post as a client project, which in the end is more of a partnership to bring more depth to the content via a solid editorial feature (coming in ...

Patreon Update - One year in.

Hi everyone,

As briefly announced in our Patreon post yesterday, we thought it was time to give a proper update to our patrons on where we are currently standing, and what we want to initiate in the near future. 

It’s now been a year since we launched our Patreon. With the final objective to be able one day to fully sustain the channel through the help of the community, we came to realize quite early in the process that maintaining a Patreon is close to being a full-time ac...

Hamada Washi, a 150-year tradition of Japanese paper making - Paper Trail

Hello everyone,

The start of the year has been a bit busier than we first expected and we have been (and still are for a couple of weeks or so) stuck on a few client projects.

Today we're sharing a video that we made a few years back, when we headed over to Kochi to meet Hironao and Osamu Hamada, two brothers and heirs to a 150-year tradition of Japanese paper making, after years spent in training with their grandfather Sajio Hamada.

This video was made as part of the New Te...

An Osaka drinking tour with SWERY

Hello everyone,

To start off the year, we spent a short time in Osaka, where we met game creator SWERY (Deadly Premonition, The MISSING), also known as the "drinKING". He took us on a tour where he introduced us to some his favorite places to drink in the northern areas of his native Osaka, where we also crossed paths with Mega Man composer Manami Matsumae or film director Kenji Goda, who has worked on the scenario for many of SWERY's games.

We hope you'll enjoy our travel log and...

Reminiscing 2019

Hello everyone,

It's that time of the year - and while we are planning for our content for next year, we thought we'd take a moment to reminisce on some of the moments we spent in 2019:

- Three hours away from Tokyo, wandering through the Capcom headquarters building and the streets of Osaka with the creators of the company's major two hits of the start of 2019: Devil May Cry 5 and Resident Evil 2: Remake.

2019-12-31 19:12:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Hiroyuki Takei - the soul of Shaman King

Hi everyone, 

After a long delay, we are happy to finally share our portrait of Hiroyuki Takei, the mangaka behind the world-renowned Shaman King series, formerly part of the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine’s elite, alongside iconic titles such as One Piece or Naruto.

We’ve had the chance to spend a full day inside his studio, in the outskirts of Tokyo, where he told us more about his evolution as a mangaka, the story behind Shaman King and its sudden cancellation, and the ne...

Upcoming content update

Hi everyone,

As we've recently announced, we will be renewing toco toco, keeping the same concept but under a new name. But in addition to that, we wanted to share an update on our upcoming content. 

First things first, our Hiroyuki Takei portrait is on the way — we are still pending final elements but we hope to be able to finish it soon. Then at the start of next year, we will be having the ultimate drinKING tour in Osaka with game creator Hidetaka 'SWERY' Suehiro, follow...

The return

Hi everyone,

We have a small announcement to make ー our series toco toco will be back, with a new name. Same concept, new guests. More to come soon.

Thank you for your continuous support!

ー the Archipel team

Unfinished chapter (Patron update)

Hi everyone,

Today we were supposed to release our portrait of Hiroyuki Takei, the mangaka behind the world-renowned Shaman King series. We were really looking forward to that release ourselves, as it was our first video in a while (if we don't count the recent TGS short videos). 

Unfortunately, yesterday we received some bad news. 

Upon sending the video for Takei's team to check, we were asked to change an element (that had been previously validated during the sh...

TGS Interview - Toshihiro Nagoshi | Fumihiko Yasuda

Hello everyone,

It's close to a month now since Tokyo Game Show ended. It feels like many people have given up a bit on the event, however the number of visitors remains high. In hindsight, Tokyo Game Show 2019 felt like a year of transition, with the next generation scheduled to come out at the end of next year.

For our last TGS encounter, we discussed with Toshihiro Nagoshi and Fumihiko Yasuda, who were presenting Yakuza 7 and Nioh 2, available to the public for the first time. ...

TGS Encounters - Yoshiro Kimura

Hello everyone,

The latest small interview from our Tokyo Game Show encounters is out.

Following our conversation with Kotaro Uchikoshi, we took a turn towards the indies hall, where we met Onion Games founder Yoshiro Kimura. He reminisced on the story of moon, a poetic antithesis of the RPG genre, soon to launch on Switch, 22 years after the original and for the first time translated in English.

We hope you'll enjoy.

Thank you for your support!

- the Archipel te...

TGS Encounters - Kotaro Uchikoshi

Hello everyone,

As recently shared, we will be publishing a series of small interviews, gathering some of the encounters we made at Tokyo Game Show this year.

We just released the first one, a conversation with Kotaro Uchikoshi, writer and director of the Zero Escape series, to discuss AI: The Somnium Files, his latest story-driven adventure game. (We apologize to our Archivist-tier patrons for not being able to offer Early Access this time, we have been stuck on some unexpected c...

Patreon update: TGS encounters & Hiroyuki Takei portrait

Hello everyone,

Tokyo Game Show is now behind us, and we thought it was the right time to give you a quick update of what's coming next on the channel.

During TGS, we found some time to catch up with a few game creators on their latest work, that we will share in a small series of short videos over the next weeks.

Regarding our portrait of Shaman King mangaka Hiroyuki Takei, we decided to spend a bit more time on it, now scheduled for next month!

Thank you for your sup...

Soon on Archipel: Hiroyuki Takei, a day with a mangaka (Working title)

Hello,

Thanks again to everyone supporting us on Patreon! Our number of patrons is slowly (but surely?) growing, and your support means a lot to us.

We just finished shooting today with mangaka Hiroyuki Takei, known for the Shaman King series. Had the chance to spend a day following him in his studio, a home to many treasures...

Coming soon.

- the Archipel team

New on Archipel - Iga's Lair

Hello everyone, 

Our latest video, Iga's Lair, is now online.

We met with Koji 'IGA' Igarashi, who founded his company to begin development on Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, answering fans' long-time demand for a new 2D side-scroller action game. IGA turned to Kickstarter in order to develop the game, raising more than $5.5 million in 2015.

As he reflects back on the story behind the game, he was joined for dinner by Yohei Kataoka, the creator behind "Tokyo Jungle",...

[Early Access] Iga's Lair

Hello to all our Archivist patrons,

Our latest video, Iga's Lair, is now available in early access. 

We met with Koji 'Iga' Igarashi to discuss the story of "Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night", that raised $5.5 million on Kickstarter in 2015. He was then joined by Yohei Kataoka, the creator of Tokyo Jungle, another game resulting from alternative funding.

We still have some work left on the video, but hope you'll enjoy!

Thank you for your support!

- the Arch...

Iga’s Lair - soon on Archipel

Hello everyone, 

It's been a rather busy month on our end, but we're back to share a quick update on what's coming next on Archipel.

In a grim and mysterious place far away from big game studios, we sat down with Koji 'Iga' Igarashi, known for his work on the Castlevania series, willing to know more about the story of the recently released Bloodstained. Standing today as one of the most successful Kickstarter game projects from Japan, Iga will tell us more the process behind ...

A Dream Cast - Part 2

Hi (again) - the second part to our Dreamcast documentary is here.

Closing our series of conversations, we've asked Hiroshi Iuchi, Kenji Kanno, Masayoshi Kikuchi, Rieko Kodama, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Tetsu Okano, Yoot Saito and Hiroaki Yotoriyama about the reasons of the Dreamcast's short lifespan, the impact it had on them and on the industry.

We hope you'll like it! 

Sharing again the link to Part 1 in case you missed it: 2019-07-06 15:31:33 +0000 UTC View Post

A Dream Cast - Part 1

Hi everyone,

With a slight delay, the first part of our Dreamcast documentary, A Dream Cast, is now online.

We discussed with eight game creators who are behind some of the Dreamcast's most iconic titles, as we pursued the console's story and legacy, 20 years after its release.

Thank you for your support and we hope you’ll enjoy.

- the Archipel team

Dreamcast Documentary (Out July 5th)

Hello everyone,

Our Dreamcast documentary is just around the corner. In a similar manner to Ebb and Flow last year, it is as we previously mentioned a series of conversations with some of the creators of the most iconic titles on the console, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

It will be our longest content on Archipel to date, which we will be splitting into two parts. We will release Part 1 on Friday, July 5th AM (EST/PST), while Part 2 will be following the ne...

Short update (longer one coming soon)

Thank you for your support on the Discord after our latest (and last) toco toco episode with Keiichi Okabe. Archipel continues, as we are currently planning our next phase of content (more updates coming soon).

Looking back at some of our past videos, there were a few parts where creators gathered to talk around food/drinks, leading to really interesting conversations.

Say we made content around casual dinners between creators, starting with past Archipel/toco toco guests, who wou...