Kazutaka Kodaka

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 himself results, but eventually he grew tired of it 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]

In Spike Chunsoft, Kodaka had an idea for a detective game;[3] so he proposed an idea to the company that was known as Distrust.[4] 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.[4]

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc released for PlayStation Portable on November 25, 2010. Selling 25,564 copies within the first week.[5] 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.[6] 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.[7]

After having left Spike Chunsoft, Kodaka and the other six developers who had left the company simultaneously, founded a new company, Too Kyo Games. The goal of Too Kyo Games—according to Kodaka—is to create new intellectual properties, and for the staff to also make their own indie games.[8] 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.[9] Death Come True, the first game released by Too Kyo Games in June 2020, is written and directed by Kodaka.[10]

By his own words, Kodaka centralizes on writing characters, and he has stated that he cannot write characters whom he does not like.[3] 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.[11] A display of that is the apparent statement by Kodaka that everything he has ever wanted to tell can be found inside Danganronpa.[12]

Stories Kodaka writes often revolve around acts of human monstrosities, primarily murder. Kodaka is mesmerized by the difference of reception to an action in the real world and in a fictional world, he also mentions that it is aimed at people who can make a difference between a game and reality. 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.[11]

There are lots of references in Kodaka's works that signify influence of other authors. Furthermore, Kodaka has specifically elaborated on how he refreshes his mind when he finds himself stuck writing without ideas, saying he does it by watching movies, anime, and reading manga, while paying attention to what interests him in the stories. As his primary influences, Kodaka has named David Lynch,[11] Quentin Tarantino,[13] and Coen brothers.[13]