Suda Fables

[Arale]

A new Suda51 project has been announced, focusing on the worlds of his already existing games.

Famitsu article is here. There are no English news articles on it yet.

I don't speak much Japanese, but to my understanding it will be a series of articles(?) beginning January 1st, 2016. It also says that the first one will be about Killer is Dead, but I don't think it's talking about the video game. Suda actually used that name twice, the first time for an unfinished killer7-related novel published in magazines about Dan Smith's time as a police officer in Seattle. There's barely any info about said novel online, but there are scans. I believe that that is the "Killer is Dead" referred to in this article.

Anybody who can read Japanese, please correct me on anything I am wrong about. This is just my estimation of the project. I'm sure there will be some kind of English news article sooner or later. I'm personally hoping that this might bring light to the "Killer is Dead" novel for the English part of the fanbase, so that it may get a translation...

[OnlineVideoSurfer]

Well, when I have more information I can comment more, but it's timely to me since I just replayed Killer7 for the first time since it came out, and I'd be curious to know any new information about it. It's a very flawed game to be sure, but it has a wonderful world and (for lack of a better way of putting it) an edge to it that I still appreciate even today.

[cj iwakura]

Suda created a brilliant, brilliant world for the Kill The Past series, so I hope he shines some light on it(and eventually releases The Silver Case here).

[Arale]

The first part was posted.

It appears to be the first part of the "killer is dead" story from the magazine scans. So although technically nothing new, it's still something that hasn't been translated - maybe somebody will do it soon? Well, that would rely on enough people over here actually realizing that this Suda Fables project exists, and as far as I can tell hardly anyone does. One post on tumblr and this thread and that's about it.

The original announcement did mention that there would be stuff both old and new.

[GamerL]

"we're talking guys that beat off fives times a day!"

[Arale]

But this Stay-cy they love, she's- she's an ILLUSION... but in the NEW AGE, they won't be tricked by ILLLUUUUSIONS anymore!

From what I can tell there are some new characters in this story, as I'm seeing names I've never seen before. I don't know how to romanize them properly, though.

[Chronis]

So any news on this? If not, I'll accept more Ulmeyda quotes instead.

[Ryu the Grappler]

Part 2 of the "Killer is Dead" story was just posted.
www.famitsu.com/serial/fable51/

[Arale]

Also, a while back, somebody attempted to translate the first couple paragraphs of part 1.

It's engrish, for sure, but you can still get the gist of the premise - a killer who wields a bat named Shigeki Birkin receives a threatening letter from Curtis Blackburn, and meets up with Dan Smith.

[Arale]

Part 3 of the story was posted. Interestingly enough, it seems that they went to a hotel and it mentions a "front man", I think it may be referring to Edo Macalister. Maybe the story explains what Edo was doing in the Hotel Union...? Well, I doubt it. This is all just speculation from what little I can read.

[cj iwakura]

Sounds a lot like what I expected KID to be; something that actually ties into Kill The Past. Why do I feel like he was forced to cut those ties and make it stand alone?

[Arale]

I think he was just too busy, I mean he was just one person on the writing team. Too many writers and directors involved to make those kind of careful, precise connections. Either way, his returning to it at all by republishing this is more than we've gotten in a while. I just hope they get Let It Die out of the way already so we can see what kinds of ideas Suda has that don't have to do with using the online features they now have access to, since that seems to be all that game is, an online feature test. Unless they changed it a lot since the last time they showed it again.

[cj iwakura]

It sounds like it's mired in production hell, but I guess we'll see. KID was a good game, but it still felt like it was missing things. He also talked about how Kadokawa made him add in the gigolo segments to add more sexuality:

There was a strong request from our publisher, Kadokawa Games, to include sexy female characters, so although we originally only had Vivienne and Mika, we started to add even more to the game. We added a "gigolo mission" in order to boost sales. As for the female character designs, Kadokawa's demands became very overwhelming, to the point that there wasn't room for my own ideas.

We had just finished an earlier project, Lollipop Chainsaw, and I really didn't want there to be this image of "Grasshopper = erotic". Lollipop's backstory wasn't supposed to be erotic at all, but it turned out that way because we added the shell bikini costume(among others)later in development.

However, that was done because the publisher, Kadokawa Games, had a solid idea of what sells, and that became a good learning experience. The development was hard, but in the end, we had fun making this game.

[Arale]

We're up to part 4 now. Wish we were getting some proper translations, but...

It's too bad that Kill the Past fandom is so nonexistent especially nowadays. Looking into this, as well as the games themselves I'm noticing lots of connections and parallels that just aren't very well-documented. I hope to renovate the Suda51 wiki to list more of the connections but, well, we'll always be missing some if we don't have English versions of the writings.

[Arale]

Exciting! Today's story is a new one! まっ赤な女の子

I have no idea what game it's related to, if any. It might be related to Suda's original manga Kurayami Dance (which will be getting an english release, by the way!) or a wholly original story.