T-G: VALKYRIE DRIVE: Bhikkhuni's plot centers around Liberators and their supporters, Extars. What was the impetus behind giving VALKYRIE DRIVE this kind of hierarchy?
Takaki: The SENRAN KAGURA games focus on battle and communication, with each team containing five characters on average, and in more recent games we've added many more characters with even livelier personalities, but that has also meant that the focus on each character becomes shorter and less-personal. I (and also other SENRAN KAGURA fans too) have gradually come to feel sorry about this aspect.
So when developing VALKYRIE DRIVE, I decided to create a new way of thinking when creating the story drama by describing more about the relationships and the minds of the characters. In Japan, it is a very popular trope to have a cast of ‘Top' and ‘Bottom' for a pair of characters and the thought of the character in the ‘bottom' role taking initiative in the battle scenes was a very exciting proposition.
There was one idea that never came to fruition but sadly I couldn't make it happen, but I wanted to make it possible that each pairing of characters, rather than the defaults, would each have a unique weapon mode, but due to their being seven characters, that would mean many unique and possible combinations to contend with outside of the defaults.
