Hideki Kawabata's Renders, Part 3 - Unused and Future Characters

Welcome to Part Three of our review of the art renders shared by AM2 developer Hideki Kawabata (previous parts can be found here: Part One and Part Two).

In today's post, we will finish our coverage of character renders with a selection of some particularly interesting ones, including some who may even be potentially included in upcoming chapters of the story.

Unused Opponent for the S2 Duck Racing Event?

This character render is simply named "Female Martial Artist". She is dressed in a sleeveless red tunic-style dress that features a high collar with decorative fastenings down the chest. A gold hairclip or comb holds back her hair on one side, and she has a green sash around her waist.

"Female Martial Artist" (29 March 2000)

This character was unused in the games, but the text does hold a clue about her development background: part of the description reads "Okabayashi Special-Order Hidden Character".

It is probable that "Okabayashi" refers to Yoshihiro Okabayashi, who managed the Event Planning team responsible for creating in-game events - in fact, he was responsible for secretly creating and including duck racing in Shenmue II if the player follows an intricate set of steps to unlock it.

Okabayashi's name has cropped up elsewhere in past posts too, when it was hinted (many years later) by a fellow project member that he was fond of ponytails on female characters:

"The reason the rejected Izumi Takano appeared in Shenmue II was due to strong campaigning by Mr. O from the Planning team. He is a big fan of ponytails!"

The description indicates that Okabayashi may have made a special request to Kawabata to create a 3D model of a martial artist, with the words "hidden character" suggesting that she was planned as an unlockable character rather than featuring as a main storyline character.

It would seem likely that this female martial artist model was created as a candidate for one of the opponents Ryo needs to fight to access the duck racing in Shenmue II (in the released game, Ryo fights the characters of Izumi Takano and Eileen Edelweiss instead).

Shenmue II: Ryo needs to defeat Eileen in order to access the secret duck racing event

Elder Yeh's Character Was Fully Modeled in 1997

A surprising inclusion was a character model render showing the instantly-recognizable character of Elder Yeh, created mid-1997.

Elder Yeh render (26 May 1997)

Shenmue II took the story only as far as Shenhua's house on the outskirts of Bailu Village, and so this character model was never used. However Shenhua did speak vaguely to Ryo of "the old lady" in the village, likely a foreshadowing of Elder Yeh.

Shenhua mentions an "old lady" in Bailu Village, during the walk in Guilin in Shenmue II.

Remarkably, Elder Yeh's appearance in 2019's Shenmue III is strikingly faithful to the original design from 20+ years prior.

Elder Yeh (Shenmue III)

A Mysterious New Character: Mao

The next character is perhaps one of the most intriguing in the whole set.

This first image shows a female character, who is identified as Mao, dressed in heavy, winter clothes including a thick coat and scarf, holding onto her woolen hat. The ribbons attached to her hat, as well as her scarf and belt are blown horizontally by a strong wind, as she stands in a heavy downfall of snow against a dark background.

Her clothes resemble traditional Mongolian clothing.

CG render: female character in a snowstorm (24 Jan, 1998)

Some small details that can be noted about her costume are the short yellow and red tube that hangs on a white string from her neck - perhaps a wooden flute.

An item hangs around Mao's neck

Another notable feature of this image is the stream of five white sparkling "stars" that seem to originate from her eyes, potentially suggesting some kind of supernatural ability.

This is interesting, since her name, 昴, pronounced Mao in Chinese, is itself a star-related reference. It represents the star cluster known as The Pleiades ("Seven Sisters"), part of Taurus the Bull:

The Pleiades (image credit: Rawastrodata on Wikipedia)

However, the pattern of stars in the image appears to be much flatter than their real-life actual layout.

Another render shows Mao's full body model, with her heavy leather boots. Her character ID is given as "ARU", possibly derived from the way her name would be pronounced in Japanese: "Subaru" - like the vehicle maker, which has stars in its logo representing Pleiades.

Mao (6 May 1997)

In Japanese, Mao's name would be pronounced like the well-known vehicle maker, which uses the stars  of Pleiades in its logo.

There is also a page showing Mao's wide range of facial expressions, such as laughing, playful, annoyed and thoughtful.

Mao's facial expressions (6 June 1997)

In this second promotional-style image, things get interesting as we see an image of Ren superimposed above Mao, with clouds around him, contrasting with the snowy dark environment of Mao.

Ren and Mao

One key change with the depiction of Mao here is her mournful expression and tears can be seen welling in her eyes, making it clear that this is the source of the emerging white "stars":

It can be recalled that Ren is said to have a Mongolian background. Below is Ren's profile that mentions his background of being from a "Mongolian horse tribe" from the official Shenmue I & II website, and there has also been concept art in the past showing Ren on horseback:

Ren is said to be from a "Mongolian horse tribe" (on-screen translation by Google translate)

Concept art of Ryo on horseback (from the goodies images included with Shenmue II)

This raises the possibility of Ren and Mao sharing the same upbringing - whether they are childhood friends, or perhaps even related. Given the numerous renders of Mao in this collection, was she to have played a major role in the upcoming story?

One further clue that has been hiding within the VFRPG Chapter tiles that were shared at GDC 2014 now becomes apparent. The character sketched on the left side of the central circle, next to Ren, has been unidentified until now, or assumed to be Shenhua. However, this was also puzzling given that Shenhua seems to already be present on the right side. Now, following the discovery of these renders, a hypothesis has arisen in the fan community that the character on the left is in fact Mao, in her hat and scarf.

Chapter Tile 6: Mao's face can be seen on the left, with Ren

And, speaking of Ren's Mongolian background...

Ren in Mongolian Costume

Adding further to the Mongolian theme, the collection also provides a model sheet of Ren with a note that it is a "Mongolian costume".

Wuying Ren (Mongolian costume, 23 March 2000)

So there had clearly been a strong Mongolian theme planned revolving around the character of Ren. Will this be introduced in future? It remains a possibility, based on Yu Suzuki's cagey response to a question in the community interview carried out by SkillJim and myself in 2024:

Q: Could you tell us a little bit more about Ren’s origins and his Mongolian tribe link? 

YS: I can’t say too much about it because I’m not yet sure exactly how secret we have to keep this information. I don’t want to give something away. You’ve kind of put me on the spot! It might be a spoiler, so I don’t think I can say, sorry!

We felt that this response in a sense does confirm that his background will come to play an important part in the story to come.

Hu Hao - Potential Shenmue 4 Content

This model of a young boy, whose name is given as Hu Hao (Kokō in Japanese, from which his ID of "KKO" is derived) might at first be thought to be a minor NPC or perhaps discarded candidate model of Wong:

Hu Hao (17 November 1997)

However, we can make a useful connection with an early design document that sheds some light on a greater role planned for this character.

On hearing his name, it rang a bell - we have come across Hu Hao before! In an earlier blog post, we looked at an unused map of Suzhou that was published in the Shenmue Premiere art book. And one of the buildings marked on this map was labeled as "Hu Hao's house." Furthermore, it is filled in a solid color that suggests it is a location of importance.

Hu Hao's house, as seen on the map of Suzhou (at the bottom in this image)

Given that we know that the next location Ryo will be visiting in the story will be the city of Suzhou - another revelation from last year's Yu Suzuki interview - then we may be able to meet Hu Hao in person in the next game in the series!

That brings us to the end of our deep dive into the characters. In the next post we will be wrapping up this mini-series with some of the CG landscape and promotional renders.

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