Suda51 misinformation

Since the beginning of western fandom surrounding the works of Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture, there has been a plethora of misinformation frequently repeated as fact. There were various contributing factors to this, most heavily that Suda's games were translated out-of-order, with some still yet to be translated at all. Because of this, information about Japanese-exclusive games did not disseminate from various players, but from limited sources who did not necessarily know Japanese themselves, using combinations of Google Translate and assumptions to attempt to piece together the mystique of these forbidden games that were, somehow, connected to the games that had been translated up to this point.

These days much of that misinformation has been dispelled as more and more people got to play most of (though still not all) the games for themselves. But misinformation seems to swirl around Suda regardless; articles reporting on him and their comment sections still aren't quite sure which games he made and which were made by his company. There are also several persistent rumors about the production of these games that are not easily dispelled.

In this article I'll be taking a look at some statements that are often repeated as factual within Suda51 circles, and breaking down the truth. The intention of this is not to limit interpretation of story details, but merely to inform people of truths often overlooked - that said, the contents of the games will come up and some misinformation does still center around misunderstood story details. For this reason, expect spoilers for at least all major Suda written+directed games and associated materials.

Misinfo: "Moonlight Syndrome is an alternate universe to Twilight Syndrome."

It is sometimes stated that Moonlight Syndrome is an "AU" version of Twilight Syndrome with different versions of the characters, setting, etc., with no real relation to TS's story. This can be dispelled by simply playing the games, which are naturally still unavailable to monolingual English speakers at this time. MS's first chapter features the characters openly discussing the events of the chapters of TS; TS also has a secret final chapter that foreshadows and leads into MS. (My information on this is also fairly limited; those who have played more of the games than me could go into much further detail regarding the stories of these games.)

I believe this misinformation partially comes from the context that MS exists in the broader Twilight Syndrome "brand". Following the release of the first three games at Human Entertainment, which shared many of the same staff and followed the same characters and setting, Human began to go bankrupt and the rights were transferred to Spike, one of many companies that Human employees transferred to or started in its later years. At Spike (later Spike Chunsoft), more Twilight Syndrome games and materials were created that ignored the events of Moonlight Syndrome; however, these works didn't really have much to do with the events of the previous games anyway, instead featuring new characters and settings, meaning their continuity with the previous games is not particularly relevant to them in the first place. In any case, Moonlight Syndrome was not made with the intention of being separate from Twilight Syndrome as far as I'm aware, since it continues the characters' stories directly. Any separation between Twilight Syndrome and Moonlight Syndrome would seem to exist as a minor decision retroactively made by brand holders, and not by people involved in the actual creation of the games.

Misinfo: "Hand in killer7 is a document of an earlier version of the game."

This is one I've seen repeated a lot by many, many people. The basic claim is that the book "Hand in killer7" is some sort of planning document, or edited planning document, of the game at an earlier point in development before it was narrowed down to what we actually see in the game. This is sometimes used to suggest that we cannot interpret killer7 and Hand in killer7 as a holistic work and must separate them as different works or even "universes", and the evidence given for this is usually supposed plot contradictions between killer7 and Hand in killer7.

The simple way to debunk this is that it's never actually stated anywhere in the book. Books that provide further plot information on games beyond what's said in the game are very common in Japan, or at least were in the PS1~PS2 + etc. era. Reading the book after playing the game is a kind of multimedia experience; Masahi Ooka's writing of a Moonlight Syndrome book framed as a journal of an original character observing the game's events is what led him to be hired to become Suda's most frequent writing partner. As such, Hand in killer7 is a very normal product in concept. The way it introduces itself (which, perhaps key to this misinfo, was not translated in the Deltahead translation of Hand in killer7) makes the intention clear enough (excerpts, translation by sayakon):

Master, this book is a supplementary reader [SUBTEXT] for killer7.

Basically, a supplementary reader [SUBTEXT] for all the great and excellent players who saw the ending of the game to read when you aren't playing the game.

[...]

While searching for facts in comparison to killer7, depending on Master's personality, the line might be of different thickness and colour.

If it's clear, there is a possibility that a new POINT (MYSTERY) will be born.

In that case, try playing the game a second time. There might be a new discovery.

That said, even without such an introduction, the idea that Hand in killer7 is merely a detail of cut content is also fairly easily disproven by simply looking at its contents.

We know from early trailers that Sundance Shot was to appear in killer7, but the story portions of the book make no mention of him. We know from the later-leaked source files that there was going to be a character named Shigeki Birkin, but he also isn't mentioned in this book at all (he later would appear in Suda's "killer is dead" magazine novel.) Although the hik7 concept Miss Jacob is mentioned in the source leak, it was going to be owned by Holbert; in the book it's owned by an apparently-new character written by Masahi Ooka.

The question of contradictory information still remains, however; the statement that Hand in killer7 contradicts killer7 isn't literally inaccurate, but is perhaps misleading when used to suggest that they present two separate contradictory realities. Not only does Hand in killer7 contradict itself many more times than the game (in one instance, a character is said to have done something before he would have been born), this is explicitly discussed as a theme of the work. (Translation by Deltahead Translations.)

The "Smith Syndicate Incident" is legendary, now. There are plenty of fictionalized accounts of it. And, as time has passed, we are now unsure exactly what is fact and what is fiction. By this point, even those who were there when it happened probably feel the same way.

Maybe the least trustworthy thing is reality. Doesn't that seem right? In today's world, I think that makes most sense. As far as I am concerned, fiction seems true and it dazzles my eyes.

The concept of "a murder case in which every account of the details is contradictory" was used by Suda + Grasshopper intentionally back in The Silver Case. killer7 repeats this plot point, and in both cases these contradictions are noted by the characters in the work; also in both cases, some of the contradictory info comes from sources that would otherwise seem "objective" to the player (such as the timelines in both TSC's website and hik7). As is often repeated, "the truth and facts are different". So even when contradictions do exist, this is not a sign of objective incompatible "canon", but part of the explicitly-acknowledged worldview and themes of these works.

FOOTNOTE: There is a section in Hand in killer7 referred to as a "prototype comic" that is a short comic made from screenshots of the cutscenes used in early trailers, which does include Sundance Shot. This would obviously be an exception to all of the above, but is also clearly delineated as such; to me, at least, there does not seem to be any ambiguity about it being a bonus feature and not related to the extensive text of the rest of the book.

Misinfo: "killer7 was going to be a 'Kill the Past' game, until Suda cut all of those elements out."

This is somewhat related to the above; sometimes it is suggested that "Hand in killer7" has all the supposed elements that were cut out, even though looking at the actual contents would show otherwise.

There's a lot to be said about the very premise of this claim, most notably that Suda does not officially delineate his work between "Kill the Past" and "other things"; as far as I've been able to tell "Kill the Past" is largely a fan nickname for what might accurately be termed "Suda's continuing story" or "body of work", but this is a subject that could fuel two sections on its own, which it well might.

Because of these complications, tackling this claim isn't quite straightforward; we must break down what it's actually saying. However, it likely mostly springs from the aforementioned appearance of Sundance Shot in early trailers/etc. Sundance Shot, a mysterious character originating from TSC's opening, had his most prominent appearance in Flower, Sun, and Rain. killer7 is the game Suda made after FSR, and they have a lot of shared concepts; as such, the assumption here is that Sundance Shot's appearance in killer7 would have been explicitly and directly related to the events of FSR, and thus the whole game would be openly related to it in that way.

But in an interview in the back of Hand in killer7, Suda suggests otherwise (translation by sceneryrecalled):

- "There were once also plans for the infamous Sundance (the character from The Silver Case and Flower, Sun, and Rain) to make an appearance, I hear."

The intention was for Sundance to be appearing continuously throughout the game. Harman would repeatedly go back to the past, and the trigger for that would be Sundance. He would show up here and there throughout the stages, and he would guide Harman to the past. He also played another vital supporting role. I wouldn't get into, however, whether he's the same Sundance from my previous games.

It seems that the implications of Sundance being there would not have been explicitly addressed in the game. This doesn't mean there would be objectively no relation, just that it would be subject to interpretation and theorizing, just like many things in Suda's work, and just like the released version of killer7.

Speaking of which, the idea that Suda cut out connections to previous games like Sundance on principle alone is a strange one when other characters from previous games are still in killer7. Edo Macalister and Mithra appear explicitly, and their appearances call back to their own games. Other references - like Kevin's eyes being rumored to shine in the dark, or the appearance of a schoolgirl assassin immigrated from Japan who shares her name with TSC's mass-produced Japanese girl assassins - are also intact. How one wants to interpret these seeming connections is up to you and beyond the scope of this article, but Suda definitely didn't "cut them out"; I would argue their open-to-interpretation nature is representative of Suda's usual style, and not hints that connections were deliberately 'covered up' as part of a change of plans.

Misinfo: "The word observer refers to a being with the powers of Kurumizawa."

This is arguably nitpicky, but it's also something I see a lot; people wondering if [x character] is "an observer" because of their mysterious or powerful nature. The implication is that they are thinking of something akin to the character Kosuke Kurumizawa, who is an "observer who is not observed".

As I keep repeating, these games are open to interpretation, and certainly much of The 25th Ward is extremely surreal and dense. Still, I think it's worth pointing out that the job of "observer" is defined or implicated at multiple points in the game to be a system set up in the 24th Ward that many people are a part of. In "digital man" Sakura visits a "free observer", Crazy Ken, to get info on Kurumizawa. Crazy Ken talks about "all the other observers"; this is a job that they all hold, but Kurumizawa is feared by them; he is something above them. Sumio also describes observers as such:

A human server.
An exabyte-sized mass storage system.
It only records dedicated observational
data on residents.
A type of extreme multipurpose solution.
A machine that uses the human body.
By keeping all of the data in an independent
body, the concept of security changes drastically.

Without getting into the details, observers are machines that use the human body to collect data (for, one presumes, the government), but Kurumizawa, the "observer who is not observed", has transcended the body entirely and leaves not just one but two corpses behind (one of which is referred to as a 'tape', something which Sumio's observer definition would seem to be a subcategory of).

The reason I'm spending time on this isn't because people needing to know the precise terminology matters; certainly Kurumizawa being referred to as simply "an observer" is not only correct but also something the game does many times. But I find it a bit confusing when people talk about the word "observer" in relation to other characters, because I'm often confused about what they're trying to say or imply about the character in question. This can be confusing in the games as well; indeed, Kamui calls himself an "observer" in TSA, but I don't think he is either A) an employee collecting data for a city with his body nor B) a digital man who can control perception. But if we don't look at what the games themselves have to say about what an "observer" is, it becomes difficult to parse eachothers' statements about the topic.

Misinfo: "As of Travis Strikes Again, Suda began crossing over his works into a 'Sudaverse'."

The gist of this is, because Travis Strikes Again includes much more explicitly "crossover" elements (such as a scene involving killer7 characters being done entirely in the style of a killer7 scene on old killer7 "sets"), it is seen as either a "beginning" point of a shared universe, or a special one-time occassion with more cameos than normal.

And for a lot of people, that's what it represents! If you've only played, say, killer7, No More Heroes, and Shadows of the Damned, for example, TSA featuring aspects from all of those interacting together seems notable; the game is also touted as Grasshopper's "20th Anniversary Project", so there's a sense of celebrating their past works as they look toward the future.

If we look at how Suda writes these things, though, weaving past works into current works has simply always been his modus operandi. When asked about such things at the time of Flower, Sun, and Rain's release, he said, "Everything is the same. Everything is connected." (translation by row: https://mobile.twitter.com/3_21stars/status/819324577696268288)

(Incidentally, despite his statement to the contrary, his Fire Pro Wrestling work would shortly begin to be connected as well, at first with minor references but now quite explicitly in i.e. NMH3).

Still, TSA does have an "all-star" feel to it with surprise appearances from characters from other Grasshopper games like Mondo Zappa, Nigel McAllister (from Diabolical Pitch of all things), a copyright-safe version of Juliet Starling, etc. that are different than, say, Yayoi having a seemingly minor role in FSR. One could again mention the "20th Anniversary" thing, but Suda's immediately preceding works (i.e. most things he made after his ~decade-long break from writing any released work) are actually pretty similarly executed. As his manga Kurayami Dance goes on, characters appear such as Edo, Yayoi, Travis, Takeru from Killer is Dead, and even one of the reporters from Michigan. Similarly, the 25th Ward remake's new chapter "black out" also features endings that refer to Kurayami Dance, Killer is Dead, killer7, Let It Die, and the at-the-time-upcoming TSA.

To put it shortly, although there is a shift in Suda's approach between NMH1-and-earlier and Kurayami-Dance-and-later, TSA was not the impetus of this shift, and his former approach was already made with connections in mind from almost the very beginning.

Misinfo: "Deathverse: Let It Die is developed by different people than Let It Die, because Grasshopper was bought by NetEase."

This is a pretty minor and simple misunderstanding; people see the announcement of Deathverse, don't see the Grasshopper name, and assume "it's because Grasshopper is no longer owned by GungHo, publishers of Let It Die, but by NetEase." The usual extrapolation of this is that the developers of Deathverse are unrelated to Grasshopper/Let It Die and it is merely GungHo using the branding.

This is not so; at some point between Let It Die's release and the release of Travis Strikes Again, Suda downsized Grasshopper into an indie team so he could focus on writing and directing again. Rather than letting the excess employees go, the previous "Grasshopper" (which was, seemingly, largely made up of staff that had worked on Let It Die, including director Hideyuki Shin) was rebranded as Supertrick Games. This name was soon enough listed as the developer of Let It Die on various official sources, either alongside or replacing Grasshopper's name. This all happened long before the new, smaller Grasshopper was acquired by NetEase or Deathverse was announced.

As such, the developers of Deathverse, Supertrick Games, are the developers of Let It Die and could be thought of as a "spin-off" of Grasshopper. Supertrick staff also have contract and special thanks credits on TSA and NMH3, so the two teams would seem to be on good terms and still assist eachother with development.

Misinfo: The killer7 "Plot Analysis/FAQ"

One of the most famous pieces of killer7 analysis is the "Plot Analysis/FAQ" written by James Howell, who has also written thematic analysis of games such as Metal Gear Solid 2 and 4, and a video series analyzing No More Heroes 1. To preface this, I'd like to state that I am a fan of James Howell's work and do not dislike his killer7 analysis, nor do I intend to demean it as a "bad interpretation", or suggest that it is bad because it does not necessarily get all its plot details correct. It's an interesting work and highlights various insightful points and themes.

The reason I bring it up here, though, is that some of the claims made in it are treated as "canon" by numerous people talking about killer7 when they are actually not stated in the game or, in fact, the opposite is stated or intended. My problem is not that Howell made a mistake or interpreted the game differently than Suda + co. (Hand in killer7 was still in the process of being translated at that time), merely that statements only made in it have been copied onto wikis, etc. and presented as if they came from the game. Although I have no data on this, from my observations of conversation about the game I would estimate that people refer to this fan analysis much more than they refer to Hand in killer7 when talking about the game, which strikes me as strange. Although people can and will favor interpretations that appeal to them over what's "canon", understandably so, if those interpretations are all coming from a single source being passed around as an "explanation" for the game (and with precedence over further fiction works such as Hik7), it would seem that rather than people favoring their own personal interpretations, they are merely substituting someone else's as "canon" in their minds.

All that said, I'm just going to point out a few statements of "fact" made in the document that are repeated from time to time (though not necessarily because they saw them in the document).

"Benjamin Keane killed Greg Nightmare" - I thought this was stated in-game for a long time myself, but as far as I can tell, it was simply Howell's intuition on what he thinks happened. It's not necessarily wrong, but it's just a guess; what really happened to Greg is still a mystery.

"America shot the missiles at the end of Sunset, saving Japan" - An easy mistake for anyone to make; after all, why would the missiles at the end of Sunset be being fired off of the West Coast (towards Japan) if they didn't come from America? But if the undisclosed Asian countries who fired the missiles targeting Japan sent them on a direct course, America wouldn't have time to intercept them anyway, so the plot of Sunset couldn't happen; seems they fired them around the world instead. That might seem unlikely, but everything about Sunset's final scene suggests that Garcian and Mills watching the missiles go over their heads indicates that it's too late to intercept them, as they've now passed over America. Their dialogue is about "destroying nations", and how sad they are that they've "gotten used to this". Then we hear an explosion along with the name of the chapter, Sunset - the setting of the country of Japan. In any case, this is confirmed explicitly in Hand in killer7, but I think this being the intention is quite evident in-game.

"Ulmeyda destroyed a stadium" - Another easy mistake to make on first glance; Ulmeyda seems to be telling people the stadium is gonna blow up, and then he cries out in pleasure when it happens, so he destroyed it, right? Well, we instinctively think this, but it's not actually stated at all, and we're not given any sense as to how he did such a thing; indeed, Hand in killer7 says that it was destroyed by Heaven Smiles, one might presume the audience he's speaking about. Ulmeyda fears the Heaven Smiles, so it would seem unlikely that he would have arranged this; if I may editorialize a bit, I think part of the point of Ulmeyda's character is that he is actually a benevolent person beneath his shady and eccentric appearance as a cult leader, so I don't think he would have committed mass murder for no apparent reason.