>>1619421
I apologize for the long reply that's incoming, I just thought I'd cover up all the points I could.
I see that the reimagining of Hiroyuki into a snow fox is a big problem for some. Like, I said, that's perfectly fine, but I do have to say that he is not a previous OC we had made up and then inserted into the game. He can be qualified as an "original character", but then again, so can Torahiko's uncles, and they have been received extremely well. We went through several design changes for him, and eventually settled on a snow fox for multiple reasons, all stemming from a long chain of circumstances.
- First, humans were written out of the narrative for various reasons (which I won't get into unless asked, as it would turn this into an even longer post).
- So, we decided on a fox because Hiroyuki, as well as Torahiko and Kounosuke, were known to be little terrors as kids, and became "legendary pranksters". Now, in Japan, foxes (or kitsune) are commonly referred to in legends as tricksters, so we naturally were drawn to foxes.
- His fur color is white (and he is an artic fox) both as a tongue-in-cheek reference to how much Hiroyuki complains about the heat (when everyone else seems pretty fine about it), as well as his name containing the word "Yuki" in it (snow). It seemed like a fitting name, and allowed us to give Torahiko a more affectionate nickname he would call Hiroyuki, since he is best friend (and has a massive crush on him).
- Rolling off the last point, we wanted to keep the name "Hiroyuki Nishimura", but wanted to give it more of a meaning than just "named after the founder of 2chan", hence why the snow fox idea was something we all really latched onto.
- And finally, like I said we all liked the design and the idea. While this seem like a more minor point, we all try to be on the same page when working on this game, so we always have someone keeping the others in check.
I also cannot prove how much we "understand the point of Morenatsu", but I can guarantee we did not make Homecoming with the idea of promoting our team's OC. We simply chose to give more character (and a face) to Hiroyuki, so he'd be more of a character in the story. I know some people can only identify with these faceless protagonists, but I've honestly never had any trouble identifying (or roleplaying) as a character with more personality. I know for some, the main appeal of these dating sim VNs is that they can pretend they are the ones dating all these hot guys, hence the faceless human trope, but I've always preferred seeing the interaction of these characters, ever since I've played Morenatsu almost ten years ago.
Making Hiroyuki more consistent was a big part on why he was rewritten like this. He was, honestly, pretty unevenly written in the original, and varied wildly between being a complete asshole in Kounosuke's route, somewhat likeable in Shin's and Juuichi's (until he rapes them, that is), and an absolute push-over in Kouya's route (where he notably even denies climate change). It was honestly quite a challenge to settle on *who* exactly Hiroyuki was, due to this completely different interpretations by the different OG writers. Ours takes his best aspect from several routes and add some of our own spices: he's a lonely kid who is sitting at a crossroad in his life (being right at the end of high school), and takes the opportunity of going back to Minasato to "find himself", so to speak. In a way, his journey mirrors what a lot of us went through when we first played Morenatsu, and we hope to reflect that by making it even more personal and relatable. What I'm trying to get across is regardless if he ended up furry or not, he was going to be written the way we wrote him.
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