A translation of an interview from the November 2021 issue of V-Jump, with Digimon Ghost Game series director Masatoshi Chioka regarding the series.
Interview with series director Masatoshi Chioka-san!!
We’ve held a conversation with Digimon Ghost Game series director Chioka-san, who is in charge of supervising the general story, about things such as his points of focus in the story and what thoughts he plans to include in it!
Q: Chioka-san, at what point did you come to be involved in the production for this series?
A: While they were still at the stage of the very first planning stages, the producer, Sakurada-san1, called out to me. It was right around that time when they were roughly thinking of the proposal to have it be “episodic” and “with a horror feel”. From there, we had more and more planning meetings, finalized the ideas that came out, and they had me put together and submit the tentative draft for this project.
Q: Please tell us about the main concept for this series.
A: Digimon Ghost Game is meant to have a horror feel, and Digimon will be seen as being like youkai.2 Digimon have their own way of life, sense of morality, and interests, which come into conflict with those of humans and cause there to be a mismatch, causing fear and trouble for humans…This is a story of how the protagonists will resolve those issues. This is a very new kind of context to place Digimon in, so creating this series involves us putting thought into how we can take the Digimon and background lore that Bandai has created and re-interpret them in the “horror” context. And, of course, we’ve chosen Digimon that seem like they can work well and play an active part in this story not only through their background lore but also through their appearance.
Q: What kind of personalities do the protagonists Hiro Amanokawa and Gammamon have?
A: Even within the world of Digimon, Gammamon is treated as a “new species”, and, without any fear or hesitation, he comes to learn all sorts of things about the human world. He’s a character who comes across much like a third- or fourth-year in grade school. Gammamon has a very cute design, so we’re writing the story in such a way that you can see him having a cute scene in each episode. Hiro Amanokawa is the kind of person who keeps poking his nose into incidents by his own will, and while he’s not the type to cause problems, he has tons of curious spirit when it comes to incidents that are caused by Digimon, and actively gets himself involved in them. In addition, he’s the kind of character who takes things very deeply into consideration whenever he tries to figure out how to approach an incident.
Q: Please tell us what your impressions were when you first saw Tenya Yabuno-sensei’s3 character designs.
A: The other characters ended up going through multiple rounds of adjustments, but with Kiyoshiro’s design, every single person who saw him immediately went “that’s it!”, so his was finalized immediately. So with Kiyoshiro at the core, we were able to finalize Hiro and Ruli’s designs around him.
Q: Please tell us if there’s anything we should look out for during the first episode.
A: The first episode features “Clockmon” causing strange phenomena. Before anything else, we’d like you to get a feel for how Digimon can be in the “horror” context, and what atmosphere it has. Also, I think this series will be very different from all of the ones before in terms of how Digimon get involved with, think of, and act towards humans, so I hope you can look forward to it as a new kind of series. The second episode and beyond will feature all different kinds of Digimon, which will cause all sorts of strange phenomena, so please look forward to it. We’re really putting serious effort into making this series a truly “scary” one. Digimon have their own levels such as “Child”, “Adult”, and “Perfect”, but in accordance with the theme, the levels of “scariness” will also change alongside the Digimon levels. As the story proceeds, Gammamon will also evolve, and the other Digimon involved will also increase in levels, and the scariness will increase even further. Although there are some Digimon that want to be scary but can’t be scary no matter what they do (laughs). Please look forward to it.
–Thank you very much!
- “Sakurada-san” = Referring to producer Hiroyuki Sakurada, who also served as an assistant producer on Adventure and Adventure 02, as well as producer for Xros Wars and Adventure:. [↩]
- Youkai = A type of spirit in Japanese folklore. [↩]
- Tenya Yabuno = The original character designer for Ghost Game, previously known for being the artist for V-Tamer 01. [↩]