INTERVIEW: Daichi Katagiri of Sega-AM2 (2011)

When I first started gaming.moe, one of the things I wanted to do was republish a bunch of interviews that appeared in foreign-language magazines. That kind of fell by the wayside in favor of the endless fountain of writing ideas that seems to erupt from my brain — republishing old stuff I’d already written kind of felt lazy when there was so much else I wanted to create.

Of course, sometimes circumstances get in the way of actually accomplishing what you want, and that’s exactly what happened this month. So,once again, I find myself going back to the well of interviews to republish.This one, though — this is something I’ve been saving for a special occasion, like a fine wine waiting years to be uncorked. So I say, what better way to top off 2017, a remarkable year for games, than with a 2011 interview with Sega-AM2’s Daichi Katagiri, one of the people I respect most in the industry?

This interview was originally published in IG magazine, a French publication that also ran the IKD interview I posted here a while back. This interview is a little over six years old at this point, so it’s rather amusing to look at some of Katagiri-san’s comments and go “I think I see what he was hinting at there!” So grab some champagne, get your noisemakers ready, and ring in 2018 with one of Sega’s best and brightest.

Continue reading

Figure review: figma Akira Yuki and Sarah Bryant from Virtua Fighter

I knew the day would come where I’d be reviewing a figma on this site — Max Factory figmas, along with Bandai’s Tamashii line, are essentially the standard for Japanese pop-culture action figures in terms of size, quality, and price. There are a ton of figmas based on a wide spectrum of anime, manga, games, and the occasional real-life figure, all recreated in 1/12 scale with a good amount of articulation. Of course, not all figmas (figmae? figmata?) are made equally: some are clearly better-made and more interesting than others, but generally, the quality baseline for them is pretty solid — the “bad” figmas aren’t so much poorly-made as they are a bit on the dull side in terms of playing with them.

I was actually expecting the first figma I’d review here to be Kazuma Kiryu from the Yakuza series, as he was due out in August, but he got hit with a serious delay, pushing him all the way back to a December release… which makes me think that the manufacturer discovered some horrible engineering flaw as they were wrapping up production and they needed to redo the whole thing. It’s okay though, we have something that’s just as blue-blooded Sega as our hot-blooded ex-Yakuza pal: Virtua Fighter figmas!

If you’ve been following the site for a while, you probably remember me being really excited about these back when they were first announced at Wonder Festival a few years back. Hell, I’ve been a VF fan for most of my life, why wouldn’t I lose my mind over VF characters finally getting the figma treatment? Sure, they were the polygonal VF1 models and not the slick, realistic models of VF5, but at least they were something! And let’s face it, there’s something really lovable about that flat-shaded model 1 look.

But enough talk. Let’s review some plastic! Ready… GO!

Continue reading