Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka talked to Real Sound Japan earlier this week about his reasons for leaving Spike Chunsoft– the developer and publisher that originally turned Kodaka’s story about a death game mystery into a successful multimedia series. In 2017, Kodaka and several other Spike Chunsoft employees left the company to establish Too Kyo Games, whose first in-house IP, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, will be coming to Nintendo Switch in 2025. Some excerpts from the interview, which were translated into English by Automaton, can be seen below:
“I did not quit Spike Chunsoft out of dislike for the company. We have been working together on [Master Detective Archives] Rain Code ever since I left. The main reason was that I wanted to work on a variety of different projects at the same time, including not only video games but manga and anime as well.”
“Rather than forming a huge development team, I wanted to bring together a small group of people with the easy-going idea that we could all continue earning a living as freelancers even if the company were to go bankrupt.”
Too Kyo Games became the small group that Kodaka wanted, with the composer (Masafumi Takada) and artist (Rui Komatsuzaki) for Danganronpa bringing their talents to it. alongside Kotaro Uchikoshi, the creator of the Zero Escape series.
Kodaka also wanted to be able to do overtime without being restricted by Japanese labor laws that limited the amount of overtime hours an employee could work for a company. By becoming executives at their own company, Kodaka and the team were able to circumvent the issue, allowing them to put their heart and soul into their games.
“Myself, Masashi [sic] Takada (music), Kotaro Uchikoshi (scenario), and Komatsuzaki (character design) are company directors, so we can work as much as we want.”
Not everything has been great for the team, developing The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy has actually put Too Kyo Games in debt, but Kodaka believes that they are all capable of working under such pressure, and seems to be betting on the success of their upcoming game to pull them out of debt.
Oh, so that’s why the Danganronpa series is over and done for.
Kinda surprised that the Rain Code IP is not actually owned by Kodaka’s company. Also isn’t their latest one also published by another company (Aniplex)?