Hershel on a sofa
What will he solve
“With all of the Persona designs for this game, I tried to imagine what kind of image each character would form in their head when they heard the name of their Persona. For example, Jiraiya is a famous ‘noble rogue’ in Japanese folklore who was a ninja bandit of sorts. There was more to the character, of course, but that’s probably all Yosuke would know. My own personal take on Yosuke’s character is that he is not a particularly artistic soul, and any visualization produced by his LIMITED IMAGINATION would be simplistic and cheap.
Jiraiya was the first Persona I designed for ‘Persona 4’, and as such, he played an important role in defining the general direction of the Persona designs for the game. I knew that having too many designs with traditional Japanese themes would prove boring, and wouldn’t fit in with the styles of the game world, so I filtered through many different ideas during the design process. As a result, I did more rough sketches for Jiraiya than any other Persona.“
-Soejima
"So when Yosuke heard the name ‘Jiraiya’, he would connect the notion of a ‘noble rogue’ with a ‘hero’, which would mean a red scarf is a must; he would relate ninjas to sneaking around, which is where the camouflage pattern comes from; and when it came to Susa-no-O manipulating storms, he would of course assume that Susa-no-O needs a turbine. In this way, each Persona’s design reflects its user’s personality as much as it does the nature of the Persona itself. Jiraiya has camouflage patterns on his clothes because Yosuke likes that sort of thing. Jiraiya and Susa-no-O both have a similar style because that is how Yosuke would picture ‘the coolest superhero ever!’. I avoided designing Jiraiya with any obvious joints in order to give him an appearance similar to those old toys that have a rubber exterior with wires inside to allow for freeform posing. This reflects the fact that Yosuke sort of views his Persona as a toy.”
-Soejima
tl;dr Similarly to how Chie influenced the overall tone & aesthetics of Persona 4, Jiraiya helped define the design direction of the protagonists’ Personas.
Previous Entries:
