Saito Yosuke is hosting his annual Christmas special on NicoNico again today. It will start at 7pm (JST) at the following link:

Known guests include:

• Saito Yosuke (MC/Director）
• Anzai Takashi (SQEX)
• Kamiya Hideki (Platinum Games)
• Sakurai Masahiro (SORA)
• Fujisawa Jin (Story Note)
• Yoko Taro (Bukkoro)

For a little bit of insight on what may be discussed during this program, here is my recap from last year’s event.

Last year’s program was 5 hours and had 16 special guests. Topics varied from Dragon Quest to NieR to Saito’s other productions such as GEMS COMPANY. They discussed the TSND manga and live drawing event with Moriyama Daisuke, the Automata GOTY, and the NieR:Orchestra Concert 12018 blu-ray. Kouhei Takano also appeared in one of the DQ segments. He was the actor who played Kurenai in the first TSND play.

The Yoko Taro / NieR segment started about 3 hours into the program and mostly discussed the 2nd Anniversary. Yoko, Taura, and Okabe were the first guests. In total, the NieR segment was a little less than an hour, so with all the previously announced events going on early next year, I would imagine the majority of the talk will be about these topics:

• NieR:Orchestra Concert re:12018
• YoRHa Ver.1.3aa
• NieR:Theatrical Orchestra 12020

Just the other day it was announced that there will be another “Idobata Kaigi” livestream. This was the program back in August where Saito suggested that he’d like to start discussing Yoko’s new game. We’ll have to wait and see whether any tasty news on Yoko’s New Project will actually be dropped during any one of these End of the Year programs.

---

Yoko’s Segment

Not a whole lot of much importance was discussed on the show, to be expected.

Before Yoko came on, Saito showed the trailer for Babylon’s Fall and then talked a bit about the GEMS COMPANY acoustic live with Goto & Kawaji-sensei. Then they played the trailer for the YoRHa Ver.1.3aᵃ.

Then Yoko came out on stage with the Emil mask on and Saito asked how long Yoko can survive with it on… and Yoko responded, “I’m already dead.”

They tried to get a drink to cheers, but Yoko needed a straw (because of the mask) and apparently they didn’t have it ready at the moment. So then Yoko was like, “Ah, it’s okay, I don’t need it.” and attempted to drink without it. Once he was given a straw, he struggled to get it through the teeth of the mask. It took him a while, and Saito was asking him questions, but once he finally got it, he wanted to drink… “Could you talk for a bit while I take a sip?”

Yoko mentioned how he was really happy to have won the Users’ Choice for Automata, and he mentioned that Taura was about to cry.

Then Saito asked Yoko what sort of kid Yoko was in Junior High, and they had a questionnaire for the audience to choose either 1.) A Serious Student or 2.) A Slacker. Most people voted for 1!

It was about 10 minutes before Yoko had to walk off stage to remove the mask. He participated off stage for the rest of the program.

They talked a little bit about Yoko’s hometown in Nagoya. He used to go down to the arcade at a nearby service station on the highway to play games a lot. Cassette Vision was his first home console.

They discussed old games that they used to play as kids, Galaxian/Galaga, etc.. As a kid, Yoko was more interested in drawing and didn’t really intend on become a game developer or anything like that. He just knew he enjoyed drawing… and he liked playing games in the arcade. He eventually joined Namco and met his wife Yukiko there, among Okabe and Iwasaki. He really liked playing around with new technology and learning how it worked.

At some point, Saito asked him which he wanted to do more, be a Director or Supervisor, and Yoko replied, “Neither. I’d rather just go along with somebody else’s idea than have to bother with it myself.”

That was basically the flow of Saito’s solo talk with Yoko. It’s always fun to watch them talk, but there wasn’t really much discussed that we didn’t already know.

That was about it. The last bit was all of them playing some sort of card game called “ito”. It was mildly amusing.

As far as announcements go, to be expected, there weren’t any.