Part 5 of an English translation of the 2016 EXE developers’ interview from inside-games.
- From Professor to Meijin, how he became Meijin
By the way, are you called Meijin even within the team?
Everyone: That’s right. (laugh)
Nakashima: Everyone calls him Meijin.
Eguchi: I certainly don’t remember being called Eguchi-kun.
When did you become Meijin?
Eguchi: I appeared in the games starting from EXE2, but if we include promotional material, then it was starting from EXE1. I’ve got a terrible story regarding that.
…What do you mean?
Eguchi: At the time, we were doing events together with CoroCoro Comics and we got a request saying, “Give us someone to be Meijin” during Golden Week of the release year.
So, our boss at the time went around asking various staff members “Will ya fill the Meijin role?”. But since it was during the middle of Golden Week, nobody wanted to go. So gradually, the voice saying “Will ya go to Suzuka during Golden Week?” kept drawing closer behind me… I had a bad feeling and glanced behind me, and saw everyone was looking this way! Sure enough, he came to me and said “Yer goin’ to Suzuka during Golden Week!”. At the time, I had been in the company for two years, so I couldn’t say anything but “Ah, yes. I’ll go.” Thus I became Meijin.
If I recall right, at the time he wasn’t Meijin, but instead, a professor.
Eguchi: His character was a little unsteady, so he was Professor Eguchi at the time. Originally, he was supposed to fill the role of “knowledgable”, but we figured “just being knowledgable is weak, he’s got to be strong, too”. So we went with “he knows everything and is super strong” and he became Meijin. (laugh)
By the way, what’s the deal with your white coat?
Eguchi: Listen to this, okay? This thing’s banged up now, but it took 5 or 6 years to have it made.
Hm?
Eguchi: At the start, it was just a plain white coat. It also had some elastic on the sleeves. I asked the staff who gave it to me “what’s up with this?” and they said “we borrowed it from a hospital in the same building as Capcom’s Kanto branch”. (laugh) Plus, it obviously wasn’t good that we had to have it cleaned every time we borrowed it. Finally, after 2 or 3 years I was able to just buy a plain white coat.
Another plain white coat…
Eguchi: I used that one for a while but during EXE6, I had a white coat custom-made.
Kaji: But wasn’t EXE6 the end of the series? (laugh)
Eguchi: Yup, that’s right. (laugh)
Nakashima: Looking at it now, you’ve worn it in pretty well. (laugh)
Eguchi: This is the only one that exists after all. (laugh) I’d get this orange dust on me every time I wore it… Actually, this coat has a pair of leather fingerless gloves with it. There was a character that would be together onstage with me, “Soul Battler Takeshi”. One time, I couldn’t perform at an event, so I left it all to him. [1]
Upper text: “Employee ID card-like badge” “Takeshi”
Lower text: “No sleeves”
And for some reason, he’d bring my gloves! Plus, they were dripping with sweat. He’d always have them cleaned, but he’d return them to me in the same bag, so they smelled terrible… I thought “I can’t shake hands with fans wearing these!”, so I disposed of them and I don’t have them anymore.
So Meijin appeared in the games starting from EXE2, but you thought of his lines on your own.
Eguchi: That’s right. It’s pretty embarrassing. (laugh)
Speaking of staff characters, we’ve got Matsuda-san here as well, who was used as the model for Big Bro Koetsu… [2]
Matsuda: That was decided after the fact, wasn’t it?
Ishihara: In reality, most of the names that posted on the message boards were plays on staff names. Amongst them, we took “Koetsu” and later made him into “Big Bro Koetsu”.
At any rate, he sure stands out as a character, doesn’t he?
Eguchi: He was easy to use. (laugh) When I was thinking about the creation of characters on the message boards and their dialogue, I wanted the things each character said to be consistent, so I decided “this character will speak about this field”. Amongst them, Koetsu was in charge of “game advice”. Since Koetsu-san, the main programmer, was always teaching me all sorts of things; at one point “Big Bro Koetsu” was just born.
Matsuda: The name was decided first, so he doesn’t look anything like me. (laugh) [3]
What was it like actually playing that?
Matsuda: It was certainly embarrassing.
Eguchi: You’re saying that in front of me!?
Matsuda: First of all, my physique is totally different. (laugh)
I certainly thought he was really big. By the way, did you have other staff members coming you asking “put me in, too!”?
Eguchi: No, not that much…
Kaji: More like he just puts people in on his own.
Eguchi: Everyone in the development staff was shy, or rather they didn’t really want to stand out, but I had to think of a lot of names. But thinking them up became a pain so I just used the names of people near me.
Kaji: By the way Meijin, are you actually strong?
Eguchi: You’re really going to ask me that?
Ishihara: I get the feeling you just thought of ways to avoid battling.
Eguchi: Meijin has the whole “legendary 69 consecutive wins” thing in his lore but actually, the leader of the battle tuning staff is really good… At this one event, there was a free battle corner with kids, and he got over 100 consecutive wins there… If he beats me, I’d just lose face. So one of the kids that was watching came to me and asked, “between Meijin and him, who’s stronger?”. I did my best to avoid it by saying: “Well… I’m stronger… But Meijin’s got research to do, so he can’t battle today”.
But in reality, he’s not weak. Meijin is a figure that conveys “if you do this, you can become strong”, so he can’t lose. He won’t battle with people seriously. But one time, we had a “first to delete ShadeManV3 wins” competition and with a man’s barrage, people lined up and I cut them down again and again… (laugh)
Translated by Jumi.
Edited by MidniteW.
Japanese to English names:
ShademanV3 = ShadMβ
Notes:
[1] Soul Battler Takeshi was an announcer during the tournaments and had his own Card e-Reader for Rockman EXE 6. He can be heard announcing the EXE4.5 remix in the Rockman EXE 15th Arrange Best Track album.
[2] Big Bro Koetsu or Koetsu-nii-san was localized in the English names as Kiddo (BN2) and Koetsu in later games. He shows up multiple times in the BBS of the games.
[3] A NPC named Koetsu shows up in BN3 during the N1 Grand Prix and in Battle Chip Challenge.