Kazutaka Kodaka

Kazutaka Kodaka (小高 和剛, Kodaka Kazutaka, born July 8, 1978) is a Japanese video game designer, writer and mangaka. His work is known for recurring themes of contrasting hope/despair, luck/talent, truth/lies; mixing tragedy with dark humor, numerous plot-twists etc. He was an employee of Spike Chunsoft (formerly Spike) and is widely known as the creator and writer of the Danganronpa franchise. He left the company in 2017 and founded Too Kyo Games with other ex-employees.

Kodaka was born at July 8, 1978, and has lived in Tokyo his entire life. He was educated at a private boys' junior high school.^[1] He described his childhood saying that he had very few friends and spent his free time after school watching anime, though he would have wanted to be popular among his peers. Still, he studied diligently as it was the only way he could get results, but eventually he grew tired and only regained his enthusiasm when he became aware of a chance to study film at Nihon University College of Art, where he later majored and graduated, earning a degree in film studies.^[1]

The first video games Kodaka played were Wrecking Crew, Clu Clu Land, and Pac-Man.^[2] He enjoyed playing games a lot, holding a part-time job at a video game store while studying at university. His original career plan was to become a film screenwriter, but later went for a different industry: Kodaka had a strong desire to "make something original", and felt it would be easier to do so as video games instead of movies. He applied for jobs at both Atlus and Spike. At the time, Atlus had a bigger lineup of games with stories, so Kodaka pursued Spike, as he thought he would have a better chance at making an original game there.^[3]

While at Spike, Kodaka had an idea for a detective game;^[4] so he proposed an idea to the company that was known as Distrust.^[5] The concept was similar to that of Danganronpa, a battle royale style death game in a closed environment between high school students, but the idea was too gruesome and was consequently scrapped. After tweaking the concept, Kodaka successfully pitched it to the company and the game went into production, becoming Danganronpa.^[5]

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc released for PlayStation Portable on November 25, 2010. Selling 25,564 copies within the first week.^[6] The game hit 85,000 sold copies roughly three months after the release, which was enough for the CEO of Spike Chunsoft to call it a success.^[7] In the light of the success, the game received two sequels (Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony), a side story shooter game (Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls), an anime adaptation (Danganronpa: The Animation) and various novels and manga. Kodaka left the company in 2017.^[8]

After having left Spike Chunsoft, Kodaka and other six developers who had left the company simultaneously founded Too Kyo Games. The company's goal, according to Kodaka, was to create new intellectual properties and for the staff to make their own indie games.^[9] Also by the words of Kodaka, the company is for them as much a club activity as a business. He also mentioned that he would still like to go back to the Danganronpa franchise at some point in the future.^[10] Death Come True, the first game released by Too Kyo Games in June 2020, is written and directed by Kodaka.^[11] In November 2021, Master Detective Archives: Rain Code was announced as a collaboration with Spike Chunsoft, with Kodaka writing alongside Takekuni Kitayama.^[12]

By his own words, Kodaka centralizes on writing characters, and he has stated that he cannot write characters whom he does not like.^[4] But he does not begin the process of creating a story by thinking of characters first, he feels doing so would restrict him, instead the first step for him is to craft a compelling scenario on top of which he can build characters. He likes for the premise, the scenario, to be summarized in a couple of sentences. He says a game requires more investment from the audience so the scenario is the key to hook them. His desire is to create stories people find fresh, although he has noted that he sees a structure in his works and he admires writers whose stories go against structure. He also keeps in mind why the story is being written and gives the story a meaning.^[13] A display of that is the apparent statement by Kodaka that everything he has ever wanted to tell can be found inside Danganronpa.^[14]

Stories Kodaka writes often revolve around acts of human monstrosities, primarily murder. Further, he says he finds the lightness of killing in a story something that he likes and compares it to a black joke taken to the extreme.^[13] Kodaka's characters tend to have amnesia as it allows them to easily connect with the player.^[15]

Kodaka's works feature many references which signifies the influence of other authors on his creative process. Furthermore, Kodaka has specified on how he refreshes his mind when he is stuck with his writing, saying he does it by watching movies, anime, and reading manga, while paying attention to what interests him in those stories. Kodaka named David Lynch,^[13] Quentin Tarantino, and the Coen brothers as his primary influences.^[16] Another big influence on Kodaka is Kunihiko Ikuhara, whose writing Kodaka admires.^[13] Kodaka is also a fan of Goichi Suda's games, and told in an interview with Suda that they inspired him and his colleagues.^[17] He included one of Suda's games, Twilight Syndrome, in Danganronpa 2 as a homage.

• Kazutaka Kodaka on Twitter