Father of the Senran Kagura series, Kenichiro Takaki, decides to leave Marvelous.

Kenichiro Takaki is a video game producer most known for Senran Kagura, a series of ecchi action games about kunoichi at a high school for shinobi. For some time now Kenichiro has been voicing uncertainty about the future of the franchise. In December last year during an interview for Akiba Souken, he has commented on the worldwide trends regarding sexualized content in media affecting the game's development:

Recently, worldwide regulations regarding sexual depiction have been getting stronger, and in that respect, we have to make games in a way that they aren’t misunderstood. Certain things are harder than they’ve ever been before. Given that, I think [the game] is going to take some time… We want to make it happen, so right now we’re at a place where we’re thinking about how to do that, and various other things overall.

In February of this year he added to this by telling Inside Games during an interview that much of the game will need to be reconsidered. When questioned about his stance on Sony Interactive Entertainment’s policies toward lewd games, Takaki expressed his concern that such shifts may come to other platforms as well.

Following these concerns, Kenichiro Takaki has now decided to leave Marvelous. He has worked for the company for thirteen years, even earning his own subsidiary, Honey Parade Games. His decision was driven mainly by restrictions put on depictions of sexual content.

He will now be working with Cygames, a Japanese company known for massively popular titles Granblue Fantasy and Shadowverse. Takaki will be involved with production of console games, however, we don’t have any information on what exactly he'll be working on. He has expressed an interest in creating fantasy games like ones he remembers from his childhood.

His work at Marvelous will not be abandoned, though. In spite of his new dealings with Cygames, Takaki will continue his work on a new multimedia project that Marvelous began about a year and a half ago. He will also finish up with Senran Kagura 7EVEN, but warns that its development will take a while longer.

When interviewed by Famitsu about his decision, Takaki stated:

Even if my place of work or the nature of my titles change, what I show won’t change and I don’t want it to, I’m a game fan at heart; I tell dirty jokes and make irresponsible comments (laughs), but I’ll work my hardest to make games.

We would like to thanks Gematsu, for translating the articles.

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