BattleFantasia Setting Documents

These scans of the early character designs for Battle Fantasia are from the May issue of Arcadia. I've translated or paraphrased some of the designer's comments, too.

The voice actors for each character are listed below. If you punch the names into Google, you can see what else that person has done. Emiko Iwasaki, the voice of Marco, is the director of BF itself. She also did these illustrations as well as illustration work for some of the more recent Guilty Gear games. The man who voiced Freed, Daisuke Ishiwatari, is the father of Guilty Gear. He did the game's original design, illustrations and music; plus he's the voice of Sol Badguy.


Click to enlarge.

Urs
VA: Hidemi Anzai

Towards the end of development, I was in a tight spot where I needed an adult version of Marco to be the hero. Urs came along to bust up the schedule, the planning, the beta test and the budget. That's just like him, I guess. At any rate, I'm glad it's over.



Marco
VA: Emiko Iwasaki

The concept here was to make a boy with a whiff of the Showa era*. Back when he was the hero, I wanted him to be more manly; but in order to differentiate him from Urs I made him increasingly silly. Charshu ["roast pork," the dragon] was a nickname that the staff came up with spontaneously.

[* - The period in Japan from 1926 to 1989. "Whiff of the Showa" i.e., "Retro."]

Olivia
VA: Masako Ookouchi

Olivia is like a maiden from an old-school girls' comic. I used my experience in the color guard as a base for her movements and the flag design. Some of her moves can be done in real life, so if you cosplay her please give them a try.



Ashley
VA: Hiroaki Miura

The concept for this character was male sexiness. I gave special attention to his handsome silhouette. Although he has a lot of tricks for snatching men and women, he's actually a mysterious man looking out for the princess like a character in a girls' comic.

Upper right: "Your voice is just like chocolate..."

Cedric
VA: Daisuke Sakaguchi

Cedric was initially designed to be a timid boy who grows stronger as he's dragged along with Marco. It turns out that we had too many runts, so his body was made bigger, and a high school student in breeches was born.



Watson
VA: Katsue Miwa

BF's mascot character! My tastes are no secret, huh? He was quite unpopular during development, so I had to push for him by myself like Juliet with Romeo. He may be frail, but we strove to design him so that he can be very strong if you work at it.

Face
VA: Takahiro Fujimoto

I wanted to design a two fisted gunman -- the coolest character in history! When we started modeling, however, he got a Bazooka. Then he started saying, "Texas!" and he became a more boisterous character.

Head poses -- clockwise from left:
Metronome, Blasting, Too Bad, Taunt, "Normal move air defense?", "The texture stretches, too", Time Out, Got Hit



Coyori
VA: Umeka Shouji

Because tension amongst the male staff members was high, it's not so much that I created Coyori as she came out on her own. Anyhow, I worked furiously on polishing the panty shots. It would have been nice if I had prepared more cute Japanese-style variations.

Donvalve
VA: Naoki Tatsuta

"I want to make his belly jiggle!" With that in mind, this character was made. We added some steam locomotive and robotic gimmicks to the model, but these don't come across very well on the screen.



Freed
VA: Daisuke Ishiwatari

A captain who travels the skies. Since he has a hook, people mistakenly think that Freed is a pirate. I used the image of a good Latin man, so the model's face turned out dark and handsome. Once Mr. Ishiwatari did the voice, the character really tightened up.

DeathBringer
VA: Naoki Imamura

This character was designed in the image of an RPG final boss. If I had had more time I would have liked to research the depiction of the flame mantle more. As development progressed he had fewer and fewer flames, and his rear end was left uncovered...