Shenmue Characters Based on Actual People: Susumu Aketagawa, Takeshi Hirai, Akira Nagai, Yoshihito Nishii, Hiroaki Takeuchi, Manabu Takimoto, Hiroshi Tamura, Yoshihiko Tashiro, Hidekaze Yukawa, Kenta Shimizu, Jin Xin Nan, Takashi Matsuda

Several characters that appear in the Shenmue games have in-game models based on real-life people.  This is not surprising in the case of Shenmue III, where several higher-tier backers were included in the game as a reward for their pledges. What may not be so readily realized is that several of the people Ryo meets in the first game of the series, as workers or residents of Yokosuka, were also modeled on actual people, including but not limited to members of the project development staff and people associated with Sega.

Today's post presents the findings of research to identify and gather together as many of these characters from the early games in the series as possible.

Let's get started!

Characters Based on Actual People: Shenmue I

Susumu Aketagawa

In the game: He is the hard-working owner of Yamaji Soba Noodles in Dobuita who is now considering retirement.

In real life: The name and model of this character are those of the voice & recording director for Shenmue I and II, Susumu Aketagawa. He was invited to provide his own voice for the game, but  declined, commenting with a laugh in a 2019 interview that "I wasn't willing to go that far".

When he worked on the Shenmue project, he was approximately the same age as his character in the game, although they do not share the same birthday date. It is unknown whether he is a big fan of soba noodles, although he did mention in the interview that he used to enjoy going for a lunch of boiled whitebait on rice at a restaurant near the Sega offices.

Left: Susumu Aketagawa in the game is the owner of Yamaji Soba Noodles in Dobuita. Right: directing a recording session for Shenmue around 1998 (top-right) and in a 2019 interview (bottom-right).

Aketagawa-san's profile: retirement from the noodle business beckons.

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Tough Shenmue Quiz from the Recent Fan Meeting in Yokosuka | Translation

A special Shenmue quiz was held at last month's Shenmue Fan Meeting that was held on Christmas Eve in Yokosuka. The quiz was entitled "How About Trying a Mega-Tough Quiz?" (naturally, spoken in the vein of the owner of a Lucky Hit game trying to attract customers!).

In this post we present the translated quiz questions so you can try for yourselves (answers are hidden in spoiler tags).

• To read more about the fan meeting event, see our post Shenmue Fan Meeting in Yokosuka: Summary & Highlights

The quiz was devised by the MC for the event, Esra Krabbe of IGN Japan (who in fact organized the entire event together with Yokosuka City), with the promise that all the questions, while not easy, are potentially all answerable if you are familiar with through the games.

Give it a try, noting down your answers as you go. The answers follow the end of the questions, of which there are 6 in total.

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Shenmue Fan Meeting in Yokosuka: Summary & Highlights

Earlier this week, on December 24th, a group of Shenmue fans packed into a venue in Yokosuka, Japan for a Shenmue fan meeting, organized by Yokosuka City and IGN Japan.

Interest shown during the pre-registration period was so high that the originally-planned 80 places was increased by 50% to a total of 120, with attendees being selected by a draw.

The MC of the event was Esra Krabbe from IGN Japan, with on-stage guests including Masaya Matsukaze (the voice and motion-capture actor for Ryo Hazuki in the Japanese versions) as well as guests Eigo Kasahara and Hiroshi Noguchi.

Various Shenmue themed stand-up cut-outs (Ryo, Nozomi, Kurita-san, and a forklift truck) were set up at the venue. They are also part of the Shenmue Sacred Spot campaign and on other days are stationed at shops around Dobuita.

The talk show was also live-streamed to IGN Japan's YouTube channel (link to video). The chat took place in Japanese - and happily, English captions are being prepared.

In this post, we will summarize the live-stream footage from the event, with some highlights.

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Shenmue I & II Two-Hour Talk Panel with Masaya Matsukaze

The two hours of SEGA Japan's talk panel live stream discussing Shenmue I & II passed by in a flash, and did a great job of promoting its Japan release exclusively for PS4 on November 22nd. The stream included memories and comments from the guests, a quiz, and anecdotes from those who developed the original games.

Masaya Matsukaze, Ryo's voice/motion-capture actor for the Japanese version, was MC for the session and was accompanied by two of the original developers of the games: Eigo Kasahara and Hiroshi Noguchi (original roles: Planning Director and Real Time Movie Designer); they two have also been handling the localization of Shenmue I & II for the domestic market in Japan.

The guest panel consisted of members of the Japanese media, with editors/journalists from Weekly Famitsu, Dengeki Game Media, 4Gamer and IGN Japan.

A shorter stage discussion was held on the SEGA stage at the Tokyo Game Show in September with the same participants, but this time much more time was allotted.

Here is a selection of video grabs to give the flavor of the session.

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Shenmue I & II Discussion Live Stream on Nov 14th (Japanese-Language)

Sega Japan will be streaming a 2-hour talk panel on Shenmue I & II on Wednesday November 14th at 8pm JST.

The MC will be Masaya Matsukaze (Ryo Hazuki's Japanese voice / mocap). Hiroshi Noguchi and Eigo Kasahara (developers on the original games & now working on the Japanese localization of I & II) will also make an appearance. The discussion will be in Japanese.

The panel guests are members of Japanese media who are self-professed fans of Shenmue, including IGN Japan, 4Gamer, Dengeki and Weekly Famitsu.

An on-stage discussion with the same participants was held at the 2018 Tokyo Game Show, but the 30-minute slot was felt to be too short, hence the longer time allowance.

YouTube live stream:

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Shenmue at TGS 2018 | Event Visit Report

On Saturday, September 22nd, I joined the flood of eager game fans attending the first Public Day of the 2018 Tokyo Game Show. Information about the event in the days leading up to it indicated an exciting amount of Shenmue-related content, including a panel discussion, SEGA merchandise including a new official Shenmue T-shirt, and a hands-on play area at the SEGA booth for Shenmue I & II. Yu Suzuki himself had even made a surprise on-stage appearance during the Business Days.

Here is a report on everything Shenmue I encountered on my visit.

Getting to the Event

The day that dawned was gray and drab, with the smell of possible rain in the air. The event venue, as usual, was in Chiba prefecture at the sprawling Makuhari Messe convention center, so my alarm clock was set even earlier than Ryo's usual waking time for departing on the hour-and-a-half train journey.

Upon arrival at the convention center's train station, kitted out in my vintage Shenmue T-shirt I joined the flow of passengers heading in a single direction - no need to consult a map!

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