Catherine producer interview (part 4)
By tansuikabutsu 7 Comments
Hashino: We went for a "cool bum" feel. He's an indecisive type who can't make up his mind, but in his own way he's a man who faces whatever is in front of him and does his best. It makes it easy for players to project themselves into him. We did decide to make him a handsome man, though. We thought if we made him ugly no one would buy the game (laughs).
- I heard you based him on on Vincent Gallo in "Buffalo '66" [1].
Hashino: His image of a man who isn't just putting on airs is a motif that is easy to understand.
- How about girlfriend Katherine's image?
Hashino: It's a pattern you see a lot -- they're in a love-hate unbreakable relationship, and she's a beauty that makes other men jealous without fail. She's also the hard working type. When strangers look at them they think, "why isn't he marrying this beauty?", but after they speak to her they realize she's hard to deal with (laughs). She's a character that reflects that kind of story. By the way, Mitsuishi-san, who plays her, has a similar personality and basically played herself. In the scene where she discusses marriage plans with Vincent, she really got into it and made the men at the recording studio nervous (laughs).
- On the other hand, how is cheating-partner Catherine [2]?
Hashino: First and foremost, she's a young woman with that hard to describe appeal. In addition to that, she's the type who can easily strike up a conversation with older men, so 30 and 40 year olds think she's perfect. We wrote her in a way that you can't help but feel a delusional attraction to her (laughs). Regarding her voice, we needed someone who could be both cute and carry a sense of devilish grimness and danger, and Sawashiro-san was perfect. We then thought who would be good as someone who is warped around by those two women, and asked Yamadera-san to play Vincent.
- Vincent's friends are also fully realized characters. Did you write them around well-established models of adult men?
Hashino: When we just started writing the game, Japan suddenly succumbed to a wedding rage. Just a short while before, there was a lot of criticism about the large number of men who didn't want to settle down, but suddenly it was like the entire country said "let's all get married!". Since it doesn't match our game's theme, I thought it would be great if that fashion quickly disappeared (laughs). At that time, men who didn't bother with love relationships and found them too much trouble were interviewed in books and magazine articles. It feels like we put these kind of types all around Vincent. By the way, when we were writing the drunk babbling of those four men at the bar, I thought bitterly that if they were the Persona characters the conversation would probably be much more positive (laughs).
- Since you just talked about "Stray Sheep", the bar in the game, why did you decide to use a bar as a central location?
Hashino: Just like using love as a theme, it was a result of thinking about what gathering place most adults have in common. I'm sure there are people out there who are of a more outdoors type, but I think the general tendency is to go and have a drink after work and on weekends. We decided to go for the atmosphere of a bar at the corner of a town, which you go into to see who's around when it's too boring to just go home after work.
- By the way, it seems the action takes place abroad, but it still has a familiar atmosphere to it.
Hashino: To be truthful, we don't have a real reason why we chose to make the characters foreign. It's probably because we had that strong image of Vincent Gallo. At first we thought our protagonist will be this really cool character, and thought of Gallo and Paul Newman. We realized Paul Newman was a little too old, so we modeled the bar owner Wakamoto-san plays after him instead. In addition, we named all of Vincent's friends after Hollywood pretty boys [3] (laughs).
[1] Vincent Gallo: A charismatic American actor. Gained fame for directing and starring in the movie Buffalo '66 (1998). In the movie, the main character, Billy, who was just released from prison, decides to lie and bring a wife along to show his parents, kidnaps and threatens a girl to go with his plan. Even though Billy was clearly up to no good, many men identified with some parts of his character.
[2] Catherine: Regarding naming the game after its two female protagonists, Mr. Hashino had this to say: "We wanted to give it a horror movie touch, so we named the game after the female characters, much like in movies such as Carrie and Miseri. The reason we named both characters the same is not something I want to spoil, but I can say that to Vincent it's the characteristic name of his mind's model woman".
[3] Hollywood pretty boys: Johnny = Johnny Depp, Orlando = Orlando Bloom, Toby = Tobey Maguire.
My own comments:
Regarding the voice actors, the article doesn't add anything about them since they're all well-known veterans. Here's a little about them.
Katherine's Kotono Mitsuishi: Acted in dozens of television series, movies and video games, but is best known for the title role in Sailor Moon and for Misato in the Evangelion franchise. My personal favorite role of hers is Excel Saga's Excel, and realizing that was 12 years ago makes me feel fucking old.
Catherine's Miyuki Sawashiro: A relative new-comer compared to the rest of the cast. but got lead roles in many shows in recent years. It's interesting how the roles in Catherine match age-wise: Sawashiro is 27 while Mitsuishi is 44.
Vincent's Kouichi Yamadera has been in tons of famous works, from Evangelion to Ghost in the Shell to Ranma 1/2 and Pokemon, but you most likely fondly remember his lead role in Cowboy Bebop as Spike Spiegel.
The barkeep's Norio Wakamoto also appeared in dozens of work, and is famous for playing villains. Video game players may recognize him as Street Fighter's Bison and Castlevania's Dracula.