With Star Ocean: The Divine Force right around the corner, Twinfinite got the chance to sit down and interview legendary character designer Akiman about his work on the new game and the monumental task that is character designing. For those big Star Ocean fans out there, Akiman was also character designer on Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness and Star Ocean: Anamnesis.
Cameron Waldrop: What is it about Star Ocean that drew you in from a designer’s perspective? What made you pick this series to work on?
Akiman: The office of Square Enix is located on the east side of Shinjuku and I live around that same area. I would have acquaintances come up to me about projects and one of them was Star Ocean. Before I did Star Ocean, I did a lot of work on Street Fighter and fighting games. It was an abundance of fighting games, one after another, and eventually, I got bored of it. So I came to want more story-driven games, particularly RPGs like Dragon Quest. Square Enix also pays more than most companies and Star Ocean is a series about science fiction meeting fantasy, and I love both of those genres. You can’t really go wrong with that, so there was really no other choice than to say yes. I am very slow with my process, actually. A normal company would get mad at me, but Square Enix doesn’t.
Cameron Waldrop: With you saying you take longer, is there one aspect of a character you’ll laser focus on that slows you down?
Akiman: While focusing on one aspect might be part of it, I just try a lot until I am satisfied with the product. Sometimes I will create a schedule that I will consider normal, but sometimes that might not be the case and one day that date is just right behind me.
Cameron Waldrop: Is there some priority in what character or type of character you will tackle first when it comes to designing?
Akiman: There certainly is an order in which characters to design first. Normally, in the design process, the protagonist will be the first to have the direction confirmed so I would work on them first. But if that isn’t the case I will start working on other characters first. For The Divine Force, Laeticia and Raymond are the two protagonists, but in the initial stages of development, Laeticia wasn’t a protagonist. So I actually designed Marielle first to be one of the protagonists.
Cameron Waldrop: While you’re designing, do you listen to music? Is there some influence there?
Akiman: I do listen to music, but not to let it influence my character design, I listen to it mostly while I work because I get sad. There are times I will have to stop, though, before it affects my illustrations/designs. If there is a grand orchestra, I will have to stop so I don’t put too much power into my work. This rarely happens, but if there is a character who has a lot of fighting spirit, I will put on a song that also raises my fighting spirit. That song is the theme song to the newer version of the Mazinger Z anime. Otherwise, in general, the music doesn’t affect my work. (Akiman adds that when that song comes on he will do squats, and as it is a rather long song, he can get up to 140 squats.)
Cameron Waldrop: About how many revisions do most characters get? Is there some sort of average?
Akiman: It does depend on what character we’re talking about. For the protagonist Raymond, it feels like we revised the design 10 times more than for other characters. For the other protagonist, Laeticia, she was approved from an early rough design process, so there is that kind of difference as well. For another example, Malkya would have like five sides of designs whereas compared to others who would have three.
Cameron Waldrop: You mentioned liking that Star Ocean is science fiction meets fantasy, is there a side of that you like more than the other?
Akiman: I like both. My love of sci-fi started back in elementary school as it was very popular, particularly titles like Astro Boy. When I grew up there were lots of picture books about space and I would read a lot of novels, specifically ones called Captain Future. I would read a lot of space operas and things like that. At one point I felt like I wanted to conquer the sci-fi genre. Even after that, there were massive titles released in Japan like Space Battleship Yamato and Gundam. I felt like I couldn’t really escape it as American productions coming into Japan like Star Trek and Thunderbird. I consider science fiction very important to myself and my work. As for fantasy, I like it because I like Dragon Quest, simply put. Dragon Quest was also pretty much a social phenomenon, especially considering how much it sold. I recall a time that fantasy books were taking over sci-fi books. Around this time I was working on fighting games a lot, notably Street Fighter 2. Capcom only made fighting games at the time, so I felt like I wanted to move on to a different direction, particularly in the fantasy genre. I started to branch out and Turn-A Gundam is an example of that. While I feel I am fulfilled in creating sci-fi genre works, I don’t feel that is quite so with fantasy, and would like to work more on fantasy projects.
Cameron Waldrop: Considering this is the third Star Ocean game you’ve worked on, was there a different approach this time as you had the experience of the two previous games under your belt?
Akiman: For Anamnesis I made sure it would fit the trend at the time in Japan in terms of illustration trends. For [Star Ocean: Integrity & Faithlessness], it was my first title and there were a lot of things I was unsure about. So I just said to myself “this is going to be a fantasy game, this is fantasy” and that’s where I got my designs. In [Star Ocean: Integrity & Faithlessness], there is a certain female character in the game and when you think of which characters that girl can be in a relationship with, there were really only two options. Then for [Star Ocean: The Divine Force], I wanted to expand on those options. For example, Laeticia can be paired with Raymond or the other male characters. The same can be said for Raymond, he can be paired with Laeticia or the other female characters. I tried to come up with at least four options for these characters. The idea was to have an image of like a college in France where it is kind of unpredictable for who is going to be in a relationship with whom. That’s what I went after with [Star Ocean: The Divine Force].
Cameron Waldrop: With your earlier mention of wanting to work on more fantasy projects, is there some sort of bucket list series you’d jump at the chance to work on?
Akiman: Not really at the moment, because I have been wanting to focus on my original work and an original lP that I am working on right now. If I would want to work on something new, it would probably be a long way down the line. For right now, I want to focus on my original works.
Star Ocean: The Divine Force is out today, Oct. 27 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
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