Geez... I didn't mean to kill the mood. Let's turn those frowns upside down!
At least the nature of Yu and Yosuke's relationship has been accurately preserved.
I'm really glad about that. It makes me smile how the "partner" thing is now in another level of friendship.
Pretty interesting that it was the first time soejima did deformed characters.
Thanks for the translation pepsiman!
Cool bits of info:
-They were thinking about the EO collaboration since two (three now?) years ago.
-Soejima didn't want PQ to be just a "fan-service game", hence why he put a lot of effort in drawing the characters and the choice of purple as the main color over blue and yellow.
-The boxart was difficult to do, but he's glad he could put all the 20+ characters in there, and is anxious about how people who have played the previous games will feel about the characters.
-Chie was the first character to be redesigned, since she'd be the hardest to get right because of her jacket being the only memorable thing while trying to have her original appeal.
-Junpei was one of the most toughest characters to pull off. Like Shinji and Kanji, they are easy to design because as a character they are distinct, but when you squish Junpei down he gets tougher to draw, a problem Soejima faced with Yosuke and two protagonists. But Junpei stands out because he had a hard time with his face, and he turned out to be quite the character.
-About Akihiko: Since the Persona games are in the same timeline since the first game, that means they all have to age. For P4A, Akihiko underwent some pretty distinct changes, but for PQ he tried to make sure to retain his original P3 era essence. This turned out to be tricky because of his head and body proportions, even the first one turned out to be like six heads tall.
-Zen and Rei: Since the point was to make the new characters fit the Persona cast, he initially drew them as he normally would, and then proceeded to deform then. Zen's appeareance is meant to show his agressive and protective side, like his spiked choker. The Bow Gun is meant to show that he's not to be messed up with, but the truth is that from the game design side they wanted to have a weapon that could attack from afar. The most obvious thing that stand out from Rei are her flowers in her hair, and Soejima notes that things like that and Zen's cape aren't there without a reason, and as the player progresses through the story they would see why. He made sure that, since they're a pair, they would contrast each other to anyone looking at them. He usually had them wear mufflers, but that could hampered character movement so he settled with the final designs.