In the past few years, Japanese games saw a return to critical acclaim, and a chain of releases that charmed not just the usual niche fanbase, but also a much wider audience.
Games like Persona 5, NieR: Automata, NiOh, the Yakuza series, and more reawakened in many the love for the Japanese development culture colored by awesome stories, and complex characters that are often missing or more diluted in the west.
Today the YouTube channel Archipel, which you possibly know for the Toco Toco series of short documentaries/interviews, released a longer-form video titled Ebb and Flow – Conversations on the recent momentum of Japanese games.
The video features several well-known developers including NieR: Automata‘s Yoko Taro, Yakuza‘s Toshihiro Nagoshi, NiOh‘s Fumihiko Yasuda, Gravity Rush‘s Keiichiro Toyama, Persona 5‘s Katsura Hashino, and more as they explain their views on Japanese development and on the games that charmed the audience worldwide.
You can check it out below. If you want to see more videos by the same team, you can enjoy more of these lovely videos on Yoshitaka Amano, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, SWERY, Goichi Suda, Daisuke Ishiwatari , Keiichiro Toyama, UME, Katsura Hashino, Yoko Taro and Kazutoshi Iida.