The Japanese studio’s flagship franchise during Guilty Gear’s hiatus, and the most played fighting game in Japanese arcades for almost a decade, Blazblue was entirely designed and directed by Toshimichi Mori. From its creation in 2008 with Blazblue: Calamity Trigger, he was the artistic director, the screenwriter and the battle glider appointed, he who had started to write a fiction on this universe from his high school years.
The franchise had been quiet in recent years, the last title in the series of main games, Blazblue Centralfiction, dating all the same from 2015 in arcade, and 2016 on consoles. If the crossover Blazblue Cross TAG Battle sold very well, it never really managed to convince, with many fans waiting for news of a real sequel from Arc System Works. The only real novelty was the launch of Blazblue Alternative Dark War, a gacha on mobile launched in early 2021 which was a resounding failure, leading to the closure of the servers after a year. Hope had been revived at the beginning of the year with the arrival of rollback on Blazblue Centralfictionas we mentioned in the Tounez Manette of the show 534.
For years, he was the director of one of Arc System Works’ two development studios, Team Blue, while Daisuke Ishiwatari led Team Red, in charge of Guilty Gear development. By 2020, the now much larger company had announced an internal restructuring plan, and Toshimichi Mori had gone from being creative director to chief brand officer (branding fellow). Last week, his name disappeared from the organization chart, and he confirmed his departure on Twitter.
ご報告です。 pic.twitter.com/wACWEOfxVh
— 森P (@zatuyoP) September 25, 2022
“I, Toshimichi Mori, left Arc System Works after many years of service. After helping develop Guilty Gear X at a company called Pickpak, I joined Arc System Work. Following the development of many fighting games, I was able to make my masterpiece, BlazBlue, and I had the opportunity to meet many players over the years. The many experiences I have had over the past 20 years since joining Arc System Works have been particularly rewarding.
I can only express my gratitude to the staff at Arc System Works, the people who helped me and the players who supported me. Thank you very much. I am leaving Arc System Works. I am truly sorry for any distress this may cause to Blazblue fans.
I hope to be able to continue the franchise in some form in the future, and I will do my best to do so. So I ask you to continue to support me.”
It is currently unknown which company he will be joining, but Tekken Franchise Director Katsuhiro Harada has announced on Twitter that they will have dinner together on Monday evening. It is recalled that Arc System Works and Bandai Namco have had a fruitful working relationship for several years, and that following the success of Dragon Ball FighterZ, Bandai Namco published Guilty Gear: Strive.