<h2>sequence</h2>
Unconsciously, 2016 has entered the end, and for the game industry, it has entered the sprint stage of Christmas and New Year. Looking back at the industry in 2016, in addition to the still blossoming flowers and continuous creativity, many long-dormant Japanese works have been released, which has made the "lifetime" of countless people complete. Of course, everyone knows I'm talking about Final Fantasy XIV and The Last Guardian. But in addition, there is a game that has once swept countless players and become the enlightenment of their love, and after ten years of silence, it has once again appeared in front of everyone in an alternative way, that is, "Sakura Wars".
Speaking of "Sakura Wars", it is natural to mention the person who single-handedly contributed to this charming work - Prince Hiroi. Today's ACG cultural integration is basically composed of multi-party cooperation, but the only people who can really pick and guide IP across the major fields of ACG are probably the all-round Hiroi.
Prince Hiroi's resume also has many anime works that can be called childhood classics, such as "The Legend of the Demon God Hero" and "The Demon King"; before taking over the "Sakura Wars", Prince Hiroi began his career as a game producer in "Bee Society" Hudson's masterpiece " Outside the Sky " .
In the winter of 1994, Shoichiro Imoto, then vice president of Sega, threw an olive branch to Prince Hiroi and invited him to the beautiful island of Saipan. There, I entered the intersection with my true goal. Sega, who started as an action game at the time, entered the fast lane when wizard Yuzuki created the first 3D fighting game, VR Warrior, but this did not satisfy Sega's ambitions. Sega executives, represented by Shoichiro Ishimi, know that developing Sega's own AVG and RPG games will have a chance to confront Nintendo head-on.
"Sega wants to do something that will be passed on to future generations, so I want a special role." Shōichiro made such a request to Prince Hiroi.
Prince Hiroi coincided with Shoichiro Irie's ideas, and he agreed to sega's request to create a character, and immediately came up with a good idea:
"Mr. Inbred, imagine a picture of a group of girls standing horizontally in front of you under the blue sea and blue sky, and then 'snapping' a salute together..."
When Prince Hiroi returned to Japan from Saipan, the form of representation about the game had always been in his mind, and it could not be formed.
Until he returns to the company and sees his subordinates concentrating on a tabletop strategy game, where they use a small square to move through the grid on a hand-drawn chessboard full of hexagonal grids...
"Wouldn't it be interesting if the square representing the warrior was replaced by a girl?"
Elements such as AVG, Strategic SLG, and Love Nurture collided with each other and quickly took shape in Prince Hiroi's mind. Talented, he immediately picked up the brush and let his ideas jump on the paper, and then this ink-splashed "plan" was presented intact in front of Sega's senior management.
His epiphany inspired Sega's top brass, and Prince Hiroi also began a high-intensity team building work, and the team members he found were star-studded:
In terms of character setting, Prince Hiroi approached popular manga artist Kosuke Fujishima, who became Kodansha's ace manga artist with two popular works, Arrest Warrant and My Goddess, and then began to contact the game industry as a character set for the SFC game Fantasy Legend. Prince Hiroi praised the successful portrayal of many women in "My Goddess", so he decided that Kosuke Fujishima would become the character setting of the new work.
However, Prince Hiroi's request was not immediately approved, and Kodansha's editor, Kodansha, rejected Prince Hiroi on the grounds that Kosuke Fujishima was running a serial and had no time to split up. Prince Hiroi did not give up, and his persistence eventually impressed Fujishima and the editor. Kosuke Fujishima, who successfully portrayed female characters such as Natsumi Tsujimoto, Miyuki Kohayakawa, and Bellubandy, came up with a new idea – if the traditional kimono were modernized, it would have a good effect. However, Fujishima, who was first approached by Prince Hiroi, had a character setting of "catching up with a late episode".
As a non-traditional gamer, Prince Hiroi's development method is also different from others: generally games are developed to a certain extent and then composed by composers according to basically determined content, but "Sakura Wars" began to develop from music. The all-round prince Hiroi took the lead in finalizing the theme song and interlude for the game, and then gave the rest of the task to the palace music producer Junta.
"We fight for justice, even if we have to gamble our lives, we will not hesitate, this is the Imperial Strike Regiment." The imposing lyrics and Tanaka's fair Chinese and Western composition techniques make the theme song "檄! "Imperial Strike Team" has become an eternal classic for countless players and anime fans, and it still makes players' blood boil to this day.
Under the advice and operation of Goku Akahori, the creator of the Cosmic Knight series, Prince Hiroi made the game into an animated chapter back body, and at the end of each episode, an animated sub-trailer was added. Animation will also appear in the game with the plot, and this practice of not relying on simple text narration is a good interpretation of the worldview carefully crafted by Hiroi and Akabori: the combination of steam × magic, the overhead Taisho era, a series of mysterious events, the special organization of the incarnation of the song and dance troupe "Imperial Chinese Strike Troupe" and the evil organization "Black Nest Society" headed by the demon monk Tenkai. In this series of battles, the "two swords and two swords" (Spirit Sword Wild Eagle, Excalibur Annihilation, Light Sword Invisible, Excalibur White Feather Bird) derived from the "Demon Artifact" of the Ancient Era are set up with Japanese legends, and the stories that occur around it are also relished by players; although the image of Lingzi Armor is not brilliant, it is relatively "simple" compared to many of the bodies of "Dragon Fighter" and "Demon King", but due to the super popularity of the game, "Sakura Wars" has long been requested by players to participate in "Super Robot Wars".
Although it is also a robot work, Prince Hiroi has never been interested in "Machine Warfare", and there are even rumors that Hiroi has released such a decisive statement as "Unless I die, Sakura Wars will not enter Robot Wars". The reason why Hiroi resisted "Machine Warfare" is largely because the ""Machine Warfare" series often makes drastic changes to the plot of the original work, which in Hiroi's view is a great disrespect to the original author. This also shows the value that Hiroi cherishes for his own works. And this cherishing is reflected as early as the game development process.
Prince Hiroi and the production team spent almost twice as long constructing the worldview as other games, and after repeated upholstery, the idea was perfected, but this practice also planted a factor of instability for the entire project. What is more troublesome is that The role setting of Kosuke Fujishima has not been finalized for a long time, and Prince Hiroi simply began the voice actor audition. Hiroi also has a special request for voice actors, who want to read the dialogue in a singing voice. Voice actors who came to the interview crowded the theater, showing off their talents to the fullest. The cute and sweet voice of one of the voice actors deeply impressed Prince Hiroi.
The actress, Tomosa Yokoyama, voiced the heroine Milk in NG Knight Ramnai &40, and two years later took on the most popular role of Sasami in the popular work "Heaven and Earth Useless". And her various OP and ED performances made her a first-line voice actor at that time. Prince Hiroi thus decided that she would sing "Oh! Imperial Strike Regiment".
However, Sakura Maemiyaji is not Prince Hiroi's favorite character, and Maria, who played CV of Uyukiko in "The Legend of the Demon God Heroes 2", is Hiroi's favorite. Based on the smile of her classmates whom she admired in college, Hiroi created Maria, who combines strength and weakness. Soon the other main characters have their eyebrows in succession, and everything is ready, just waiting for the original role of Yasusuke Fujishima.
On the last day of 1994, Red Entertainment's fax machine suddenly sounded a noisy sound of running, and one original manuscript after another was spat out and superimposed to form a heavy archive. Kosuke Fujishima, who had not seen an echo for a long time, finally sent a manuscript, and Prince Hiroi was shocked after reading it. This special development process of setting the music first, then the voice actor, and finally the character seems to be doomed to be an extraordinary game, and it is also doomed to game development is not smooth.
Until early 1995, the game was going well, but Prince Hiroi was really feeling the pressure.
Since the flower group in the game is a song and dance troupe, the voice actors need to carry out corresponding song and dance training, especially the voice actors are mostly in contact with game production for the first time, and there is still a long way to go to meet the requirements of Prince Hiroi's "living people interpreting a fate and a fate of love". This unprecedented game of female group portraits can be described as a thought of heaven and a thought of hell, full of unknown dangers.
"Be successful no matter what." Shōichiro said this when he received Hiroi's project, and he was actually a little worried at this time.
"Then leave it to a professional producer." Prince Hiroi replied with a sharp heart.
However, six months after the game went into real development, the problem really arose. The development situation was far from reality, which caused the production team to disagree, the development process was chaotic, and the release date was pushed back and forth, putting the whole project in a crisis of being cut off at any time.
Sega took over the final decisive development operation, and CS2 department research executive Ōba Norikatsu led his subordinates to join the production team, turning things around at once. Oba ended the chaos with his vigorous approach, and as a science student, he sorted out the development progress and redistributed the work.
Tanaka and Ohara are responsible for the UI interface and SLG combat operations respectively, and Oba focuses on how to make the game's original "LIPS" system "come alive", adding time-limited selection settings and multi-linear options to make the game more paced and interesting.
Prince Hiroi was so impressed with Oba's methods that he even called him the "savior" of the development work. At the same time, Hidenori Matsubara, who was named by Yasusuke Fujishima, joined the team, injecting the "soul" into the animation production team, and after a year of arduous training, the voice actors were finally able to bring personality and life to the characters, so that the game finally began to move towards the goals set by Prince Hiroi.
The love AVG and SLG components of "Sakura Wars" complement each other, the LIPS system makes the game appear more changeable, in addition to the official intentionally or unintentionally shaped the cp of the god and sakura, the player can also make the god extend the "magic hand" to the beautiful women of the flower group according to their preferences, oh, it is a "raider". The arrogant Kanzaki Heavy Industries (the producer of the Reiko armor), the big miss Kanzaki, the thick branches but not losing the girlish taste of Kirishima Kanna, the wayward Lolita Alice, the cheongsam glasses lady Li Honglan, the strong and fragile Maria, there is always a taste suitable for the player. It also shows that Prince Hiroi is familiar with the elements of love. Compared with the tide of love and game breeding brought about by "Heartbeat Memories" at that time, "Sakura Wars", which added a good world view and richer elements, is undoubtedly a step further.
In the "CESA Awards '96" (today's Japanese Game Awards), Sakura Wars overpowered final fantasy VII, which had not yet been officially released, and became the winner of the annual grand prize. But in addition to winning awards, the game's acclaim and popularity are the most needed results of the work that has twice the original budget, but what is the reality?
On days when there were no cherry blossoms opening, Sakura Wars was officially released, and Prince Hiroi, as a producer, still had trouble sleeping and eating despite the start of a long holiday in name. Finally he called the head of sales, and then he had no intention of continuing on vacation.
"Sell crazy!" This is Prince Hiroi's summary of the game's sales. On the first day of release, the inventory of Sakura Wars on Akihabara Electric Street was snapped up, and those who were at the back of the queue had to travel from place to place in order to get a disc with the cover of The Shinguji Sakura Sasaki wielding a knife.
Everything was difficult at the beginning, and with the first success, the success of "Sakura Wars 2 Wangjun Precious" was a natural consequence. On the basis of success, Sakura Vs. 2 Wangjun Precious has better optimized the system and animation, and the addition of co-op mode makes the variables in the battle more abundant; the newly added animation producer Production I.G brings better CG and animation effects, making the game's expressiveness more improved.
The two new female characters who joined the game - the Italian red aristocratic girl Orihime from the European "Star Group" and the silent German girl Rennie, and Fujieda Kaede replaced her dead sister as the deputy commander of the imperial strike, once again enriching the element of love. The new flower group had to fight against the "Niggy Ghost Society" headed by the Minister of War, the descendant of the ancient Yin and Yang Division, Kyogoku Keigo, and the Ghost King, and the "Five Elements" composed of King Kong, Wood Food, Water Fox, Train, and Earth Spider made the Flower Group suffer a lot, making the battle around the Demon Artifact rise to a new height again.
In the first month of release, "Sakura Wars 2 Wangjun Precious" recorded 400,000 copies of sales, and the overall sales volume also increased compared with the previous generation, which is also the best stage summary of the Imperial Hua Strike Tuanhua Group series.
As the game moves from SS to the short-lived DC era, the members of the Imperial Strike Group Flower Group temporarily left everyone's sight.
The production team moved the stage of the game to the "romantic capital" of Paris, and the appearance of the Paris Chinese Strike Troupe brought new changes, the new members with a strong European and American style are refreshing, and the only constant is the big god Ichiro who is the embodiment of the player.
In terms of the animation production that Sakura Wars is proud of, Production I.G continues to lead the production, but the technology has improved again. Using the traditional celluloid style works (first hand-drawn original words and film through photography, the computer is responsible for post-processing) and the increasingly mature 3D technology combined with the mature 3D technology of "NEO CG", coupled with "Mobile Suit Z Gundam" mechanical designer Ming Gui Mika took over the mechanical design work, making "Sakura Wars 3 Paris Burning" becomes the best picture in the entire series, leaving aside the popularity factors brought by classic characters such as Masayaji Sakura, just from the game content, "Sakura Wars 3 Paris is Burning" It's the pinnacle of the entire series.
After that, Sakura Wars was in a worse situation like Sega at the time. Because of the sudden discontinuation of the DC console, "Sakura vs. 4 Love Bar Girl" accelerated the development progress to avoid losses. The result of cutting the original planned development time by half was the reduction of the length of the game. Despite the return of Sakura Maguji, it is no longer able to hide the downward trend of the game.
When Sega withdrew from the home console hardware industry, "Sakura Wars" also said goodbye to its own console, and the first three parts of the "Sakura Wars" series were transplanted to Sony's handhelds and consoles, and at the same time actively carried out Chinese, hoping to open up new markets, but unfortunately there was no good orthodox sequel as the basis, and the game IP could not be sustained.
Although "Sakura Vs. 5 Goodbye, My Love" landed directly on PS2, at this time, Oba Noritsu had left Sega and officially became the president of the game company GungHo, beginning to develop in the handheld field and later in mobile games, and the success of "Zhilong Maze" is beyond words. It seems that a new channel has been opened up for Sakura Wars.
The new game is set in another international metropolis - New York, almost all the members of the previous flower group have ended, and the male protagonist of the game has become the nephew of Daijin Ichiro - Shinjiro. Although the game's performance has improved, the game's style has changed drastically and familiar characters are unacceptable to die-hards. The game's sales fell into a trough, which also put the entire IP of "Sakura Wars" into silence.
Sakura Wars is an IP with a wide variety of works. It can even be said that "Sakura Wars" can be called a model of pan-entertainment.
As an all-rounder ACG producer, Prince Hiroi naturally does not limit the high-quality IP such as "Sakura Wars" to a certain field, which is also an important reason why the work can penetrate the hearts of the people.
As early as the success of Sakura Wars, they began to seek to show the unique charm of this IP in more diverse forms.
The puzzle cube game Sakura Wars Flower Group Battle is the first derivative work to be developed, followed by a super short story in the form of a radio program with some mini-games "Sakura Wars Steam Radio Show" and "Sakura Wars Imperial Strike Pictorial" also have a good response.
Prince Hiroi is very good at digging out new elements from the story of this story, "Daijinichiro Struggle" takes Daijin Ichiro, the captain of the flower group in "Sakura Wars", as the point of view, telling the story of what happened before and after the performance of the stage play "Red Lizard" in "Sakura Wars Song Show", the backstage of the flower group and the Teito Grand Theater. The game is interspersed with live-action performance clips of The Red Lizard at the right time to increase the player's sense of realism in the theater. During the reign of Sakura Wars 3 and Sakura Wars 5, they also produced the spinagas Sakura Wars Story Mysterious Paris and Sakura Wars V EPISODE 0 Wild Samurai, the difference being that the previous game was a puzzle solving AVG based on the new character Akira Kojiro, which was an ACT game that made a new attempt within the original framework.
In terms of attacking new game areas, Sakura Wars also spares no effort. In the field of handheld machines, "Sakura Vs GB - Flower Group Entry" and "Sakura Wars GB2 Thunder Battle" with extravaganza colors have become the supplement to the canon, using new protagonists and original plots, and can be linked with the "POCKET SAKURA" pedometer released on June 25. When the Nintendo handheld entered the DS era, it also launched the maze RPG game "Dramatic Labyrinth Sakura Wars Because of You", which is the only work in the series where three Chinese strike groups appear together.
In addition, "Sakura Wars Online" landed on the online game terminal, providing another communication channel for "Sakura Wars Fans"; when the mobile game Xiaohe showed its sharp corners, Sega launched the mobile game "Sakura Wars Club"; in Japan, where Pachinko is popular, Sega also took advantage of the trend to launch the "Actual Battle Pachinko Victory Method!"! CR Sakura Wars".
In addition to the game, Sega also did a very good job in software and data set mining, and launched the SS software "Sakura Wars Flower Group Communication" on Valentine's Day in 1997, which included a large number of character settings, live performances and other information, and supported high-quality MPEG playback with SS peripheral device movie decompression cards. There is also the desktop set software "Sakura Wars Telescreen Club" series and various digital data collections (desktop program collections, theaters, etc.), which are the must-receive peripherals for many "Sakura Wars fans".
According to the Japanese ACG routine, anime is naturally also an essential element. Since the game itself is presented in the form of animation, many of its elements do not even need to undergo much processing to form a popular animation work. "Sakura Wars" was first serialized in the form of an OVA, and as the popularity of the work rose, "Sakura Wars TV Edition" and the animated movie "Sakura Wars Event Photo" were also launched one after another, complementing the game.
Sakura Wars has more impact than that. The game's script is composed of Goku Akai, who is also an excellent novel author, and his official fiction works are still in serial production; the original case is also serialized by Prince Hiroi and Yasuke Fujishima, and the official manga written by Masaichi kushi is still updated from time to time after two moves, and the number of single volumes of the manga has reached 12 volumes; plus manga such as "Sakura Wars Show Theater" and "Sakura Wars Group" and a series of spin-off novels written by famous screenwriter Hiroshi Kawasaki, "Sakura Wars" The printed works are quite large, with more than thirty novels and comics combined.
At the beginning of the rise of "Sakura Wars", "檄! Released as a single, "Imperial Strike Troupe" sold 150,000 copies, which undoubtedly made a good start for the newcomers, and then the "Complete Song of The Imperial Strike", which included a total of 12 songs including the theme song of 6 heroines, further sold more than 200,000 copies. Such achievements were rarely matched by game music albums at the time. Two years later, the music of Sakura Wars 2 Wangjun Precious once again sold 150,000 and more than 200,000 in almost the same way.
What is even more groundbreaking is that Prince Hiroi, who is bent on reviving the art of song and dance, let the game go out of the second dimension and shine into real life.
The song and dance skills that voice actors have worked hard to practice to play the characters in the game have been given more room for display. They often participate in radio shows, radio plays and public performances as the "Imperial Opera Flower Group".
Every summer, Sega presents a series of musicals starring voice actors, the Imperial Opera Group Flower Group Special Performances, a tradition that has lasted for more than a decade; in addition to regular performances, concerts and ballad shows for Christmas, Countdown to the New Century, Chinese New Year, and other festivals have been recorded on CDs, further enriching the portfolio.
The voice actors who originally lived behind the scenes walked to the front of the stage and showed their charm in addition to their voices through song and dance. This was the beginning of the era of voice actor idolization, each voice actor had his own die-hard fans, and even Michie Tomizawa, who served as a voice actor of Kanzaki, no longer served as a voice actor because of the sake of Aifu's godson, and the production team also specially held a retirement commemoration event for Tomizawa and produced an OVA of "Kanzaki Eisen Retirement Memorial".
Although the song show of "Sakura Wars" has not been heard from since the last one held ten years ago, the widespread popularity accumulated across many fields has given "Sakura Wars" the capital to move from online to offline. In June 1998, Sega opened the "Taisho Romantic Hall Ikebukuro Main Store" in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, specializing in selling a variety of "Sakura Wars" peripheral products, and a year later opened the "Taisho Romantic Hall Shinsaibashi Store" in Shinsaibashi, Osaka, and in its glory days, the annual sales of the two stores were more than 300 million yen.
Although there has been a significant decrease in news about Sakura Wars in the past decade, it has not diminished people's love for this classic.
In mid-November this year, Sega held the "SEGA Fes" game celebration in Tokyo's Akihabara, as part of the celebration, Sega also held the "1st Sega General Election" online, but the result of the long-lost "Sakura Wars" was the leader, in the "Expectant Comeback Department" election, "Sakura Wars" beat "Shenmue", "VR Warrior" and "Eternal Arcadia" and other works to become the champion; in the general election of the works department, "Sakura Wars" was even more powerful than "Sonic", "Like Dragons", "Dragons", "Sakura Wars", Many masterpieces such as "The Tale of the Persona" became the final big winners.
In order to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of "Sakura Wars", in addition to Prince Hiroi saying that he is preparing an orthodox sequel, Sega also made frequent moves in 2016, although Prince Hiroi refused to "machine combat", but it does not mean that he refused to cross-border and linkage with other games. In recent years, the "cross-border plan" series, which has been more well-known, is jointly developed by the three major manufacturers.
As a 20th anniversary event, Sega began to link up works from major markets in East Asia. In its own base in Japan, Sega took the lead in the popular mobile game "Chain Wars" and "Sakura Wars" launched two waves of interaction, the flower group members coefficient appeared in ink; and then with the super large fantasy RPG "Blue Fantasy" began to link, the flower group members appeared in the "Blue Legend" style, the generations of heroines have appeared, becoming the player's travel partners, choosing Jinguji Sakura, Arija Fangting or Jemini Sanlez, which is a happy trouble. During the limited period of the event, players can also enjoy special missions to see the original plot interpreted by the three major Chinese strike groups.
Perhaps due to the weakness of the Korean game industry in recent years, compared with the "linkage strategy" in China and Japan, Sega directly launched a new work "Sakura Wars, the Beginning of the Legend" in South Korea, but both in terms of style and gameplay are very different from the original, and have not caused more repercussions.
In the larger Chinese mobile game market, Sega will target the popular work "Spiral Realm Line", which as an influential JRPG game in East Asia, the producer invited the famous Japanese animation director Yukimitsu Ohashi to direct the opening animation, invited famous voice actors such as Rie Naimiya, Uchida Cai, Haruka Tomatsu, and Michimi Nishida as the voice actors, Akira Yoshikawa, who is responsible for the localization of the Chinese version of the "Sakura Wars" series, as the producer this time, and Karen, the painting supervisor of Motozo Animation Co., Ltd., as the art director. Coupled with the diamond coffee crow known as the "king of light novel short stories", the worldview setting, young composer ZETA made BGM, creating a collection of local Japanese fantasy RPG.
Although SLGs and JRPG have been difficult to regain the glory of the console's heyday, they still have their own good living space in the field of mobile games. I hope that the cross-border linkage is just the beginning, and the "Sakura Wars 6" that has been living in our dreams can meet the players as soon as possible, once again bringing everyone the impulse of blood and the joy of love.