While you were hunting vampires, IGA studied the blade
After Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night broke crowd-funding records in 2015, developer ArtPlay updated its Kickstarter page roughly once a month with new information, artwork, and reports on the game's progress. That comforting drip feed of news now appears to have dried up, with nearly two months gone by without a word. While it may be safe to say Bloodstained's staff are playing their cards close to their chest in preparation for E3 in June, producer Kōji Igarashi also put in an appearance at BitSummit this past weekend. Combining his trademark cowboy hat with traditional Japanese dress—even replacing his trusty whip with a sheathed katana on his hip—he took the stage to introduce Zangetsu, Bloodstained's second playable character. While Zangetsu had technically been revealed in artwork shortly after the Kickstarter campaign ended, Igarashi was now prepared to show off the character's polygon model. More than that, though, he wanted to specifically address his Japanese audience and—emphasizing his multicultural attire—explain what such an overtly Japanese character is doing in a game with Gothic horror trappings.
When development on Bloodstained began, Igarashi felt the need to include a supporting character who would ultimately fall on the same side as the protagonist but give them no end of grief along the way. (This trope should sound very familiar if you've played just about any of his Castlevania games.) Since Bloodstained is set in eighteenth century England, the role was originally planned for a strait-laced warrior evoking the image of the Knights Templar. (Never mind that the Templars were more tenth to twelfth century. Europe is Europe, right?) But then Igarashi asked his staff to redesign the character as a samurai.
He looks kind of familiar...but we don't talk about Lords of Shadow in polite company.
He met resistance at first, of course: The idea of a samurai fighting Judeo-Christian demons atop European architecture doesn't seem like the most natural fit. But his request came as the result of reflecting on the many games he's made over his long career—particularly the Castlevania series, which shared Bloodstained's general aesthetic—and realizing he never made one starring a culturally Japanese character. Hearing this, the game's staff relented and allowed him his wish. Zangetsu is a one-eyed, dual-wielding rōnin with a wooden arm animated by Shinto ofuda charms. He wears Western clothing, but his coat is tossed off one shoulder in a rugged samurai fashion (think Auron from Final Fantasy X), with nothing under it but a sarashi binding around his abdomen. Overall, his design is a relatively measured melding of cultural essences—just what he needs not to feel too far out of place in the world of Bloodstained.
Despite his simplistic reasoning for making Zangetsu the way he is, Igarashi said the character ended up fitting into the game so well that it gave him goosebumps. But the fact that he sees this as a big moment comes as no surprise if you recall his later years at Konami, when he arbitrarily inserted characters and imagery from Getsu Fūma Den, a forgotten Famicom game with a Japanese folk setting, into every game he could, from Castlevania: Harmony of Despair to Otomedius Excellent. At the time, one couldn't help but wonder if he was trying to subtly reintroduce that game to the collective consciousness to justify a proper comeback down the line, but of course that and any other plans he might have had went to waste when he and Konami parted ways. Since announcing Bloodstained, he's been nothing but open about approaching it as a continuation of his work on the Castlevania series, and now it appears he's also used the opportunity to satisfy his lingering urge to shine the spotlight on a two-handed heretic of the sword. Honestly, I'm happy for him.
Igarashi photograph courtesy of GAME Watch. Zangetsu image courtesy of 4Gamer
