Author Topic: Kato Ultimania Interview Translated  (Read 1763 times)

ZeaLitY

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Kato Ultimania Interview Translated
« on: May 25, 2007, 11:06:33 pm »
An awesome guy named Tyler has volunteered to help translate certain materials and unlock information denied to western Chrono fans for years. First, we have an interview from the heir to the series, Masato Kato. Lots of interesting stuff concerning the planning behind Chrono Cross and the themes involved lies within, and perhaps the last paragraph suggests that some version of Kid really is in Tokyo. Still, that hardly makes sense with any other canon, so we'll have to see.

Kato Interview

Kyronea

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Re: Kato Ultimania Interview Translated
« Reply #1 on: May 26, 2007, 03:02:51 am »
It's interesting stuff, certainly. Pity it doesn't reveal much in the way of the Chrono Cross ending, or any other details we've been fuzzy on, but that was to be expected. I look forward to all of the other translated items, and I also thank Tyler for translating this stuff.

Chrono'99

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Re: Kato Ultimania Interview Translated
« Reply #2 on: May 26, 2007, 05:33:26 am »
It's interesting stuff, certainly. Pity it doesn't reveal much in the way of the Chrono Cross ending, or any other details we've been fuzzy on, but that was to be expected. I look forward to all of the other translated items, and I also thank Tyler for translating this stuff.

I think it pretty much explains the ending actually. Kato says CC is at its core a "boy meets girl" story, and then he says Kid (= a girl) might be out there somewhere in the real world waiting for the player (= a boy, more often anyway)... I think this pretty much confirms the "She's looking for you" theory about the ending.

And who cares about canon? People wanted a direct sequel, and Kato said no, broke all conventions and offered something much better than a mere CT2 instead. Similarly, people may have expected an "ending" to CC, and Kato said no way I'm doing something normal; he again broke all conventions and offered something much better than a mere fictional ending to a fictional story. With this ending, the force of the game was to precisely surpass the ordinary concepts of story, fiction, canon. It's above all that. It truely pays a fantastic hommage to the main themes of the series, dream, reality, potential, etc., by pushing the concept of alternate dimensions to its utmost limit and outright involving the player in the ending (or the reverse, rather, bringing the ending to the player's plane of reality). I really like what he did.

Damn, I find Baten Kaitos' "shocking occurrence" so elegant and mindblowing now that we have an explicit description of how Kato functions with storytelling...

Mr. Molecule

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Re: Kato Ultimania Interview Translated
« Reply #3 on: May 27, 2007, 07:48:48 am »
Lots of interesting stuff concerning the planning behind Chrono Cross and the themes involved lies within, and perhaps the last paragraph suggests that some version of Kid really is in Tokyo. Still, that hardly makes sense with any other canon, so we'll have to see.

Going by my reading of the article and by what Chrono'99 said, I think it's more that <i>some version</i> of Kid is in Tokyo, not that Kid/Schala from the CC world somehow & for some reason dimension-hopped. I guess the idea is that the player is Serge and they'll meet this world's version? Maybe it's metaphorical.

This is gonna give those in the Kid-and-Serge-get-married camp some ammunition