Metaphor: ReFantazio has been wildly successful in terms of critical and player reception, and the new, highly-regarded RPG is exceptional for the developers of Shin Megami Tensei and Persona for reasons beyond the accolades.
The Atlus 35th Anniversary Edition of Metaphor includes a special history book for the studio, which features a surprise cameo from Tekken’s Director.
Longtime head of the Tekken Project team, Katsuhiro Harada, was among the 35 developers to be included at the end of the book to talk about their own history / relationship with Atlus and their games.
Harada took things even farther than most by also showing off his skills as an artist with a bonus sketch of presumably his favorite character from Persona 5.
That would be for Futaba Sakura from the Phantom Thieves gang, and his portrait is actually pretty cute.
We don’t typically get to see these sorts of skills out of the veteran developer, so this is cool.
Thanks to MarkMan, we can also see the full message he left in the book too.
This is really cool to see in the Atlus 35th anniversary book!! pic.twitter.com/Fx5eKYmyMC
— Mark Julio 『マークマン』 (@MarkMan23) October 15, 2024
“Happy 35th Anniversary! This is supposed to be Sakura-san… Atlus-san, please unban me…
“Congratulations on 35 years of Atlus. I decided to draw Sakura-san from the Persona series, since I felt an affinity with her as a fellow glasses character (although they’re sunglasses in my case).
“Thinking on it, our relationship goes all the way back to when Namco published Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei… Back in 1987, I was still a student and hadn’t joined Namco yet, but I remember getting pretty hooked on it as a player.
“While it feels like I’ve only made trouble for you recently, I’m looking forward to us working together.”
Click images for larger versions
We’re not really sure what trouble he’s talking about, but sounds like they probably blocked him on social media, which is funny considering he’s in Atlus’ book.
The text bubble with Harada’s sketched head is also basically him asking to be unbanned too.
Tekken’s Director posted that he received his copy of Metaphor recently as well with a photo and scan of the drawing he included.
On top of that, he also shared his first draft of Futaba’s sketch that Harada claims his friends stopped him from completing because they felt she looked “a bit erotic.” — so it seems he started over with a more neutral expression.
Incidentally, my first drawing of Futaba Sakura for the #Metaphor : ReFantazio bonus “Atlus Brand 35th History Book” was stopped at all costs by my friends because it was a bit erotic. this one…
ちなみに当初描いてたやつは若干エロいのでは？という理由で知人に制止されました。 pic.twitter.com/6W2eOhJ25b— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) October 16, 2024
Now Harada is probably getting bombarded with requests to put Persona and Metaphor characters in Tekken 8, which probably wouldn’t be all that odd at this point beyond the clashing art styles.
He did already try and get KFC’s Colonel Sanders into Tekken as a guest, so nothing may be off the table.