After 31 years in video games, Persona director Katsura Hashino simply acquired a ‘Newcomer Award’ and $5,000 from the Japanese authorities

Katsura Hashino has been doing this some time. The designer, most well-known for his work as director on Persona 3, 4, and 5 in addition to, most just lately, Metaphor: ReFantazio, has been working at Atlus since I used to be actually one yr previous, all the way in which again in 1994.

So it is with amused bafflement that I carry you the information that Hashino has simply been awarded Japan’s (tempo your self) “Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s New Face Award within the Media Arts Division of the Arts Encouragement Prize” (by way of Automaton). Atlus tweeted that he had obtained the prize on Monday.

That is to say he is the recipient of a prize that the Japanese authorities particularly offers out to, um, new faces. Newcomers, you recognize. On the award’s official web site (machine translated), the physique accountable for the prize refers to it as a “Newcomer Award” and notes that it comes with an 800,000 yen (about $5,000) prize.

Hashino richly deserves an award, after all. The mark the Persona collection has made beneath his stewardship is gigantic, and Metaphor: ReFantazio is a rattling good time too. I simply discover it humorous he acquired one of many two “new face” awards as a substitute of the opposite two prizes, the much less particular “Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award” which, by the way, comes with a much bigger 1.2 million yen ($8,000) prize.

After all, none aside from Hideo Kojima acquired the latter prize again in 2022, though by that time Kojima had been engaged on video games for 36 years. Maybe 35 years is the cut-off, the purpose at which you are now not a newcomer? Maybe Japan’s authorities is staffed by Asari-like politicians who all dwell to be 1,000 years previous.

Anyway, neither Hashino or Atlus appeared significantly put out by the brand new face award, so perhaps I’m the one taking loopy capsules right here. Stay tuned for the Japanese authorities’s upcoming 30-under-30 awards; I hear prime prize is tipped to go to Beat Takeshi.