Tekken Director Katsuhiro Harada has been working on the legendary fighting game series since its very first entry, and as a result, he has seen and done a whole lot when it comes to game development. In recent weeks, the longtime game creator has been sharing behind-the-scenes insight into some of the Tekken franchise’s characters, and just a few days ago he discussed something very interesting pertaining to one of the series’ more recent newcomers.
In a fully packed tweet, Harada talked a bit about Josie — the game’s fighting representative from the Philippines who made her debut in Tekken 7 — and how a last minute design choice he made ultimately ended up taking heavy criticism from fans.
Harada has been sharing some truly fascinating details about the Tekken series lately. We just recently learned more about Eliza, another newer character in the grand scheme of things, and why she is unlikely to return as DLC in Tekken 8 despite being a fan favorite.
This time, though, Harada talks a bit more about Josie and the process of designing her for Tekken 7.
“The background to the birth of Josie is that there has long been a lot of TEKKEN fever in the Philippines in Southeast Asia,” Harada’s tweet begins. “The Philippines has had a lot of TEKKEN arcades since the 1990s, and I myself have visited the country many times with sales staff and had contact with the community.”
Harada goes on to reveal that he originally wanted to include a male Filipino character on the roster for Tekken 5 in 2005, but notes that he couldn’t quite come up with a good concept for the fighter so he gave up at the time.
“When the time came to introduce [Josie] in TEKKEN 7, I decided that ‘this time, in order to make it happen, I’m going to borrow the abilities of many people, not just my own’, and asked Shimazaki-san (who designed Reina, Kazumi, and Bayonetta) to design her,” Harada said.
Apparently, had Shimazaki not come up with the costume design for Josie, it was possible that the character would have ended up not being added to Tekken 7 at all.
Josie’s inclusion into the Tekken series started off as promising as Harada explains that everyone was quite happy with her reveal, but there was also a fuss brewing in the Philippines over it.
“It was in the news in all kinds of media (including general media, not just gaming media), and there was even a bit of a fuss that involved the official Twitter of a Philippine government agency,” Harada said.
Harada recalls the one major regret he has about designing Josie, and it comes in the form of a last minute decision to make her personality lean more towards being a “crybaby.” While making these kinds of last minute calls had worked for other fighters in the past (and the rest of the development team trusted Harada’s insight here), apparently this one trait made fans fairly unhappy overall.
“Also, the original Josie was not particularly a crybaby,” Harada explained in the tweet. “When the recording started, I added the ‘crybaby setting’ in a hurry because her Win pose and other performances and character traits were not showing any individuality at all.
“In the past, there were many cases where the ‘character’s personality’ of Jin, Heihachi, Alisa, Bryan, Dragunov… etc…etc.. was created by my sudden instructions at the time of voice recording or animation production, so the staff did not doubt this idea.
“However, I feel that the fact that Josie was a crybaby was not well received by fans, and while I’m sure there were many people who liked it, at least I felt at the time that I received a lot of criticism regarding Josie’s crybaby character.
“Interestingly, I can’t remember the episodes that were successful, but I remember in great detail the things that ended up being mistakes. It would be a lot easier if it were the other way around…” Harada concluded.
The background to the birth of Josie is that there has long been a lot of TEKKEN fever in the Philippines in Southeast Asia. The Philippines has had a lot of TEKKEN arcades since the 1990s, and I myself have visited the country many times with sales staff and had contact with the… https://t.co/eOzeleB6zr
— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) November 19, 2024