The Kazuma Kaneko Conspiracy

[@Genethagenius]

I miss Kaneko’s influence and designs on SMT sooooo badly!!! His art is what first got me to notice “Nocturne” in a preview in “EGM” magazine back in 2003 and from there I immediately pre-ordered the game and strategy guide at GameStop and have been an SMT fan ever since!

[@Larrue]

Oooh that's dedication

[@backupschmliff1156]

Larrue is probably the best MegaTen KZbinr. Everyone else talks about their opinions on certain games but Larrue actually digs deep to find the stuff not easily accessible in English.

[@Larrue]

That's ridiculously high praise thank you!

[@phillemon7664]

I second this, his journalistic integrity is something else.

[@its_heeho]

So true hee ho

[@4KGamingSMT]

+1

[@backupschmliff1156]

@@its_heeho Hee ho!

[@rustytoyota]

This dudes art style is something integral to me even liking Megaten

[@alvisplacebo]

I always thought that his departure wasn’t all that nice, his disappearance felt off. I hope at least that he’s financially well off. I really miss his art in games, DDS is my favourite :(

[@seth7726]

After Okada's sudden revival, I can see Kaneko coming out of nowhere just to speak about a game or a random interview anytime soon (just like when he was asked a few questions about ''the lost child'')

[@DragonKingX78]

Okada?

[@karamarakamarama]

@@DragonKingX78 Okada

[@ewerton8463]

what revival?

[@karamarakamarama]

@@ewerton8463 he did an interview for famitsu not that long ago and announced something (?)

[@ab-r2759]

@@karamarakamarama do you have a link to this?

[@juliusalimari]

I had a dream that Kaneko had an interview out of nowhere, and when asked his favorite modern Megaten game was, he simply said: Persona 5. And people went insane on Twitter and forums saying it was a conspiracy

[@KazuyaMithra]

Hey Larrue, Kaneko has an IMDB and an Anime News Network entry from his time as an animator under the name Kazuhiro Kaneko. He worked on Transformers, Project A-Ko, Ninja Robots, and Windaria.

[@Larrue]

Oh yeah I saw that

[@KaiMCGRPS]

I absolutely love that you do research on the creatives who are behind the games we love. I might be wrong, but I think you're pretty much the only person on KZbin that's doing this for MegaTen and Atlus.

[@its_heeho]

Hello hee ho

[@KaiMCGRPS]

@@its_heeho Hee ho!

[@DragonKingX78]

Yeah, it is cool that he covers the people behind the scenes.

[@lysander4084]

I just want to believe that Kaneko is enjoying life in his retirement. He did what was best and I'm 100% sure Atlus mistreated him. I'm also not a big fan of current Doi & Soejima works (playing too safe, sometimes too dull, although I see their skill), but Kaneko has some faith in them,so it'll be interesting to know what his honest opinion about their handling of series P.S. not sure about his last involvement since Persona 1 PSP new design looked like pure garbage (in my opinion) and whitewashes edginess in favor of marketability to modern persona fans. Conclusion: Fuck Atlus, but the irony, of course, is that I'l sure be playing their new games.

[@sickrandy2946]

I mean the suits at Atlus mistreating employees doesn't take away from how good their games are. They're being made by the mistreated employees after all.

[@dcard228]

I don't think it's fair to blame persona fans for Atlus whitewashing games for marketability. That's just how the market works these days.

[@hello-gx6oi]

White Washing? Are you talking about mark cuz he originally was not black in the original release

[@lysander4084]

@@hello-gx6oi whitewashing not in race but in trying to modernise p1 by forsing a purple key color and hiding overall gritty and dim palette (sorry if you got 2 answers KZbin's buggy)

[@raptorskilltor4554]

His back… but he did art commission for nft

[@jeezycreezy4220]

When it comes to anything negative about Atlus as of late, I find myself asking the same question, how much of it is the fault of Atlus, and how much is the fault of Sega? Atlus has never been a perfect company by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems over the past decade (right around when they were aquired by Sega) things have gotten noticably worse in many areas.

[@DragonKingX78]

It might be both, who knows.

[@jeezycreezy4220]

@@DragonKingX78 it is possible, but I'm not 100% convinced. Sega needs to make their investments on Atlus back, investments that run deeper than just the initial aquisition. Sega is the one footing the bill for development and publication of games, manufacturing of merch, marketing, ect. The SMTV and Soul Hackers 2 DLC controversies and the lack of free upgrade of P5R from PS4 to PS5 is most likely Sega's doing in order to make more money off of those products. As far as Kaneko goes, I can't say the full extent of Sega's involvment in that situation, but as far as removing his copyrights from artbooks, as was pointed out in the video, that most likely stems from Sega taking full ownership of Atlus' IPs and their associated images, which would include all artwork Kaneko did for SMT and Atlus as a whole.

[@zeroskaterz92]

Gotten noticably worse how? Atlus have been consistently the same even before Sega bought them. Sega might've forced them to push out DLCs but then again, if you look at the way RGG Studio handle the DLCs versus the way Atlus handle the DLCs, you can't really blame on Sega entirely. It's all comes down to Atlus themselves on how to handle their own projects.

[@jeezycreezy4220]

@@zeroskaterz92 when I say Atlus has gotten noticably worse since the Sega aquisition, I'm referring to bussiness practices like the DLC stuff. The games themselves have been great, and there are some good things that have come from being owned by Sega, such as simultanious worldwide releases and access to incredible game engines such as Unreal.

[@zeroskaterz92]

@@jeezycreezy4220 Again, those shit aren't new. Atlus business practice has been consistently shitty even before Sega bought them. It's one of the reasons why they almost went bankrupt but they don't need to worry about that shit now because Sega backed them up.

[@illuminoeye_gaming]

"and i made a video on it, its in the card!" lmfao.

[@tastefull1682]

Larrue is so good at keeping the viewers attention - or maybe it’s how interesting each of the topics he covers are. He has covered everything aswell!

[@ffxiikd1426]

this is explained why we find his name before writin in different Kanji. awesome stuff Larrue

[@romacalor]

but how does this all relate to the black upper lip?

[@shinvelcro]

The first time I ever came across him was from a japanese saturn mag, it had a cover disk with interviews with him to promote the upcoming release of SMT devil summoner. It had bits on the whole game and I was hooked then, even more so when Gamefan had stuff on it getting a US release. Well, we know how that went.

[@matteste]

It is pretty telling just how much of a core Kaneko was for the series that the moment his involvement went away, the series pretty much instantly lost its way and has yet to recover.

[@christhethinker6791]

No, not really

[@nr2676]

And he returned as a NFT designer :D

[@JNCGaming]

Fantastic video Larrue thank you for all of this information on the topic. I really enjoyed hearing all of these facts you dug so hard to find! very impressive!

[@matteste]

And now we know he has left Atlus altogether, and that he did so some time ago. And as someone else pointed out, it is quite different from how it was when Meguro left. Meguro got all sorts of well wishes and the like and it was big news. Kaneko meanwhile just disappeared and we only know that he left from a second hand source well after he found a new place. It just creates the impression that the departure was not done on amicable terms. This mixed with other smaller factors makes it feel like they just had a lot of spite for him and just wanted to get rid of him. This despite how iconic he is and being one of the companies founding fathers.

[@kurisu3000]

Another gem produced by yours truly. Keep digging, brother!

[@lentarioamonikio6688]

Your videos have so much love poured into them . Cant stop watching them

[@Larrue]

Thank you!

[@AlexLopez-qz4tz]

Idk the way you say “They pee’d on his art” is so funny to me keep up the good work

[@inerd77]

To fair to the guy, he is almost 60!

[@thesuccVEVO]

If you could ask Kaneko anything, what would it be?

[@Larrue]

I'd ask him how he spends his retirement

[@madaggar9765]

Anniversary coming up, let's see what happens.

[@HS99930]

Excellent job as always, thanks for sharing!

[@4KGamingSMT]

Larrue your the man, thank you so much for this great content. I love Kaneko I feel like he's probably the most important guy in megaten. I don't know why but I just have this hunch that he got upset because he wasn't given much freedom or say and how he wanted things to evolve. SMT 5 is a great example of how it went downhill without him in my opinion. SMT 4 and 3 my favourite. And I think it's because there was a lot of involvement from him. I'm very sad that he left. I have a feeling he wanted to go more hardcore and create more but SMT 5 for me was almost like persona. Atlus really messed up not trying to keep him and listen to him because I feel like he made megaten. This is just my feeling and thoughts on what I think happened. I am also an artist and I can understand him. I can see his vision and his development through his games and since he left smt5 was just a disaster in my opinion compared to what megaten really stands for. Just the music composing of course is good and his demon designs that got carried over. I think I might be going hard on SMT 5 , but I think if Kaneko had involvement in it it would have been way better

[@juanmanikings]

Nah you are just exaggerating i also a fan of Kaneko but SMTV going downhill that just internet overreaction

[@4KGamingSMT]

@@juanmanikings maybe hope you are correct, I guess after SMT 4 and 3 the expectations is also very high, high standard, it is a good game SMT 5, I guess I am exhausting but I feel something is missing that really takes away from what it could have been

[@louish5068]

Kaneko is great, I particularly love his earlier work rather than his work on Nocturne. Its clear that he just retired based on his interviews. There is no evidence of him being mistreated especially as he is still credited with demon design to this day. Cant believe people think he was just because they dont like the new blood at Atlus. Atlus are still amazing and make amazing games

[@juliusalimari]

5:02 DOES SOMEONE HAVE THIS ART OF THE DEMONS BATTLING IN THE CITY?

[@Larrue]

That's just a design document not art

[@juliusalimari]

@@Larrue is this design document scanned online? Id love to see it.

[@Larrue]

It was just shown in the documentary, I just used the footage from that haha

[@xerontokyo]

@@juliusalimari Doubt they will post official design docu those things are confidentially.

[@juliusalimari]

@@xerontokyo sad

[@august...4847]

This is a masterpiece, Amazing video larrue

[@joebriscoe2973]

7:22 is when the explanation start.

[@kratoscar2008]

Damn just saw a SMT IV Apocalypse fight video out of nostalgia and now get recommended this. YT was useful for once.

[@italovictor5117]

Great video. Went in depth on the subject matter subbed!

[@Larrue]

Thank you!

[@-Siknakaliux-II]

Where do you find your information? I know searching for Japanese terms on google is one thing, but im wondering if theres more Im missing. (example for someone wanting to find information about whatever game/series interests me) Thanks

[@Larrue]

Most of the time it's books, magazines, and interviews. It helps significantly being able to read in Japanese even a little bit.

[@-Siknakaliux-II]

@@Larrue I see. Unrelated, but how would you find about differences between either character names or things when comparing the media/game from japanese to english? The problem here I have is that a character's definitive name is revealed in the game's japanese staff roll (but the game doesn't give the character's full katakana). However in the english version it blurs quite a bit because only the first bit of their name is given with their last name implying it's different than the japanese games'. The staff roll in the english however removes the character's names and their voices, along with the other project details however.

[@Larrue]

I usually draw on the books, guides, magazines at that point

[@spudsbuchlaw]

I look forward to any MegaTen related documentary!

[@DragonKingX78]

How much was he involved in the DDS games?

[@Larrue]

The story was based on ideas he had among other things like designing the characters

[@Kageryushin]

@@Larrue Incidentally, DDS was also drafted by Yu Godai, who left the project partway due to health issues, leaving the overall plot in an incomplete state. She later went on to fully fill in what she intended for the narrative in the Quantum Devil Saga light novel series. A lot of the places where the dev team had some amount of a plot outline but had to fill in improvised content because the details hadn't been fully defined by Godai become clear when you look into QDS.

[@Larrue]

@@Kageryushin Yeah her draft was based on Kaneko's ideas I believe her work only extended into the first game, QDS is a pretty different beast altogether.

[@Kageryushin]

@@Larrue I'm certain Kaneko had involvement at the idea stage, but the narrative execution of DDS up until Seraph enters the Sun (you know, when the plot kind of starts sucking a bit) was really Godai's baby. In a lot of ways, it's clear from QDS that it's actually a very roundabout reimagining of SMT2; the whole idea of artificially created ubermenschen being brought up in a virtual reality going off the rails set up by their creators and eventually coming to a (sort of) confrontation with God, the source of the issues plaguing the setting, although the details of the story are dramatically distinct. In that sense, it _is_ fundamentally based off Kaneko's ideas, but I'd say it's very clear from QDS what Godai was bringing to the table, and it definitely wasn't just content from the first game. The entire basis of the real world outside the Junkyard was already conceptualized by Godai and is much more detailed in QDS. Cuvier Syndrome, the nature of the Sun, the Karma Society and Lokapala, many of the characters staffing those organizations, that the Embryon all had "real world" counterparts they were based on - all of that had already been determined by Godai, but details such as "why it's relevant that Angel is both Sera's mother _and_ father" which were basically just weird little minutiae in DDS2 are actually explained in QDS. Although there are plenty divergences in execution between DDS2 and QDS (Heat temporarily betrays the party for reasons he thinks are morally just in both stories, but he never becomes Vritra in QDS, for example), the biggest difference is ultimately that, once they leave the Junkyard, it takes place entirely on the ruined Earth, and the Sun never becomes a dungeon with all the filler that entails. Since you have considerable skill in Japanese, I would highly recommend reading it, since it really puts the plot of DDS as a whole into a much clearer perspective. That said, I do feel the need to warn you ahead of time that Godai is a brazen fucking fujoshi with all that entails, but I doubt you give a shit about DDS for the shipping.

[@Larrue]

Oh I've read it haha

[@BlackerMan]

I encountered kaneko’s work first with digital devil saga and persona 2. At the time I didn’t like p2 but dds was easier for me to digest because I was a ff fan.

[@spudsbuchlaw]

I'm suprised Kaneko hasn't left like Okada or Meguro

[@Caribbean-Man]

damn atlus og art dev team sounded like a gang of guys who just wanted to make art and not be bothered.

[@dutchielander2478]

I believe Atlus wouldn't be as big as it is now if Kaneko didn't work with/for them. Same with Shoji Meguro's music tbh. Kinda pisses me off. The most memorable things about all the SMT games are the art, setting and the music. Just look at SMT5 or SH2 and try to tell me with a straight face this is the "top Atlus craftsmanship" we all know and love from SMT3, 4, SJ, SH, P3, P5. It's not, i would even say it's lukewarm garbage with a side of ketchup. Thanks for the vid, L. Good stuff!

[@submarineautist]

Is the subtitled version of the interview footage in the background available somewhere? Thanks

[@Larrue]

Yes it's here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rV7HZaSdi7B3mbc

[@harry00boyon]

and then kaneko back with mobile game company

[@CAVEDATA]

I got another conspiracy for you. My neighbor is annoying. Also i dont prefer blue cheese on salads.

[@mac9365]

Damn all your videos have me hooked, I usually watch yt while doing something else but this had my full attention. Keep it up!

[@dongodongo12]

This anniversary will determine if smt ends for good

[@DragonKingX78]

This statement doesn't make any sense..unless you mean "determines if SMT ends for good."?

[@JNCGaming]

i would love to hear from Kazuma Kaneko during this 30th anniversary via an interview or something, who knows

[@dongodongo12]

@@DragonKingX78 smt is not doing great in terms of pleasing hardcore fans, smt 5 was a dissapointment storywise and tone for many fans, nocturne hd is a mediocre port, strange journey redux removed kaneko art, smt music removed from Catherine full body, all the 3ds and ds games are trapped on that hardware and becoming expensive, no ports of older games, still no hope for localozation of jp only games, fans have to pick up the slack translating, no more spinnofs like devil survivor or devil summoner, soul hackers 2 betrays the original's vibe while being a mediocre game that sold poorly, the anniversary is the chance to really please the hardcore smt/megaten audience, to see if atlus really care about the franchise enough to not feel it "ended"

[@dongodongo12]

@@DragonKingX78 yeah i meant if

[@sonicsucks2961]

@@dongodongo12 Why mention other franchises like soul hackers/Devil summoner when you're talking about SMT? Those games aren't SMT spin offs, they're their own series of games. Anyways I agree, hopefully Atlus has something great in store for us soon, INB4 Nahobino mouthwash

[@doseybear7920]

Brung your theme music back eh?

[@Penbin123]

Kaneko was such an integral part of Atlus that without him SMT isn't the same, the last Atlus game that I actually liked was DeSu 1, everything else has been either meh to okay for me.

[@Tatsuya_S]

Respect

[@Potionem]

COOL THUMBNAIL 👀

[@Larrue]

Thanks I made it myself on my alt account

[@Potionem]

​@@Larrue :face_holding_back_tears:

[@demi-fiendoftime3825]

Or maybe the man just got old and tired and retired

[@Larrue]

He's not really that much older than Doi, Soejima, Meguro or Hashino

[@lonk341]

Less than 3 mins into the video and this guy has advertised 3 of his videos already. No thank you

[@orangejuice8279]

🤓

[@vassel6643]

Me when a channel documenting lost media and interviews for everyone to see documents lost media and interviews for everyone to see.

[@NickvanaOfficial]

Yeah tbh shit got annoying

[@somagd64]

As much as im done with atlus games and have no passion for anything they make anymore its great to see you make another great video

[@Larrue]

Thanks man, I just have my long list of video ideas to make and once I'm done with that list I'm done making content

[@shimapanzer9930]

damn tolkien shitting on atlus from beyond the grave

[@somagd64]

@@shimapanzer9930 They haven't made a good game since SJ OG what can i say

[@nkoonkukoo]

@@somagd64 Facts man, SJ DS is the real SMT V. This new age Atlus isn't my cup of tea.