The Episode II Official Complete Guide and the Xenosaga I-II Perfect Guide now also have sections

Following the Xenosaga Episode I Official Guidebook section and the Xenosaga Episode I Official Complete Guide section, I have now also made sections on the study guide for the Xenosaga Episode II Official Complete Guide and the Xenosaga I-II Perfect Guide, mostly for the sake of completion, since these two latter books do not have much interesting content.

I plan to add sections for the Episode III Official Complete Guide and the Episode III Perfect Guide as well, but they will require some time due to the amount of useful content they hold and may not be the next thing I work on. Most Xenosaga fans are also already aware of the more important content from these books.

I could of course do it faster by simply putting up the various translated text without trying to imitate the format and colors of the actual book pages like I have been doing, but the reason I do that for translated pages of official media and interviews is to make it easier and quicker to spot what pages and material have been translated and where the material is from. That way, there is less risk of someone accidentally translating something that has already been translated, and if someone wants to check the original Japanese text and retranslate a particular paragraph or sentence, they will also have an easier time locating it on the pages of the original source. And personally, I also like to get a general feel for the visual context and format the original text was presented in.

I am not a pro when it comes to web and blog design though, so if something looks really strange or bad on some page in your preferred browser or device then send me a screenshot and let me know.

Sections for the Xenosaga Episode I Official Guidebook and the Episode I Official Complete Guide have been added

The Xenosaga Episode I -Official Design Materials- book is not the only Xenosaga source book with lore content that is useful when it comes to Xenosaga analysis and referencing. Most fans know about the Xenosaga Episode III Perfect Guide and the slightly less famous Episode III Official Complete Guide as well. But there are more sourcebooks with lore content that is often overlooked, such as the Xenosaga Episode I Official Complete Guide, which I have now made a section for on the study guide along with the Xenosaga Episode I Official Guidebook.

Since I have been unable to acquire a new translator I decided to go with a machine translation for the moment. I know it is not optimal, but machine translations have advanced enough that they are not all that bad anymore. You can at least get the gist of what something is saying, and if I need to quote anything from it in the future I will probably just run those particular sentences with someone who knows Japanese. But I need to get these sections up so that I can progress with other articles that will or may reference parts in these books.

In defense of machine translations though, I will say that most of the older fan translations of Xenogears: Perfect Works and Xenosaga Episode I -Official Design Materials- were not better than current machine translations are, and in several instances, fan translations are actually significantly worse. Whenever the original text of an awkward or weird sentence done by a fan translator is run through a modern machine translation, 9 times out of 10 another translator will tell me the machine translation is actually better. The current Xenogears: Perfect Works scanlation from 2009 is so poor that a modern machine translation would actually have been preferable. Though back then the machine translation possibilities were just coming out and they were very inferior to what they are today, so back then Ichiban Manten and others did not really have a choice but to translate themselves with dictionaries and stuff just to get a general gist of what something was saying.

Back in the day there was also a slight elitism around who could read Japanese or not, with discussions often being shut down if the person making an argument could not read the original Japanese text. Knowing now that many of these fans who claimed to be able to read Japanese well enough did several translation mistakes, I am extremely wary of taking any one translator's word for anything, and if the text or quote is important enough as the basis for a theory or argument, then I will feel more comfortable if I have at least two translations of the same text done by independent translators who are not part of the same group. With machine translations having progressed to at least the quality of the average fan translator, we now have a much more egalitarian approach to Japanese text sources, and I fully intend to run most, if not all, translations also through machines from now on as an additional comparison with both fan translations and official translations when needed.

As an example, I decided to preserve jetfuel's old translation of the first page of the "remaining mysteries" section in the Xenosaga Episode I Official Complete Guide with machine translations provided next to them. I'd like you to read that, compare his translations that he "painstakenly translated" back in 2002, and honestly tell me you prefer them over the machine translations. I do not think most people will.

But do not worry. Machine translations, whenever they appear, will be clearly marked as such. In the lore books sections they will be marked with gray text. Using machine translation, I also finished up what was missing from Part 2 of the Official Design Materials book, mainly the interview with Tsutomu Terada. I do not think these last untranslated bits were worth bothering some translator's time to fully translate, and that is another reason why machine translation should be seen more positively, because there is a lot of text in these types of books and sometimes you just want to get the gist of things and not waste your own or somebody else's time.

Fictional works that influenced the Xenosaga series

I have of course not forgotten about Xenosaga. Here is the beginning of an article series centered on analyzing Fictional works that influenced the Xenosaga series. While playing through Final Fantasy VI I noticed that it had similarities not only with Xenogears but also with Xenosaga, so before I leave FFVI behind to analyze other media I figured I should also write the article covering Games that influenced Xenosaga. It has been added to the Articles section.

New article series: Fictional works that influenced Xenogears

I can finally present a new article I have been working on over at Patreon, centered on analyzing Fictional works that influenced Xenogears. While the plan is to cover influences from all kinds of media, I decided to start with an article covering Other games that influenced Xenogears. While this may not sound as interesting as influences from Anime, Cinema, TV, and novels, it is actually a vital article that is likely to get linked to and referenced in most of my texts going forward, especially when it comes to things like the History of Xeno and Takahashi's modus operandi when it comes to writing stories.

In combination with this I have also launced the new Articles section I had been planning to add for a while. I was originally going to start the Articles section with three other minor articles, but the slowness of translations and lack of available translators have caused me to postpone those articles. If any of my readers know Japanese well enough and are willing to help with translations of both Xenogears and Xenosaga material and interviews, but especially Xenosaga stuff, then please contact me.

Xenosaga Official Websites Translations

As regular visitors may have noticed, all the pages from the Xenosaga Episode I -Official Design Materials- have now been added, even if it is not 100% fully translated. At least the important stuff is there. I have now also made a page for translations from various Xenosaga Official Website information that may be of interest to preserve, especially for hardcore fans interested in the evolution of the story. It is interesting to see how similar some of the early descriptions of the story are to Xenogears Episode I from Perfect Works.

In addition, a previously unknown Xenosaga interview from Japanese magazine THE PLAYSTATION 2 VOL. 252 have also been discovered. However, only a fragment of what can be seen on a photograph has been translated thanks to Lugalbanda. I plan to add the info to the History of Xenosaga article whenever I get around to updating it.

Rejoice, all ye! The time for feasting has come!

The Xenosaga Episode I -Official Design Materials- book translations are back, in a new section here on the Study Guide. This section will include all of the translations, including those by Gwendal and Spherix that were never preserved on the old XenoTensei project page. Now they will be made available again, for old and new Xenosaga fans to feast on when delving deeper into this detailed universe. Currently not all the translations are up since the whole thing requires a bit of work, but you can check the "Last updated" date to know when new pages have been added. (I won't mention new updates to it on this front page until the thing is completed.)

Also, the Study Guide now has jump links again. Jump links galore! You may have noticed this if you have been a regular visitor the last week or so in the History of Xenogears and Xenosaga section or the Xenogears' Guide to translation errors pages. But if you have not you can try them out now.

Having figured out how to do jump links on the blog there are now many possibilities for improving various sections on the site and what I had planned. I might even try to put up the Xenosaga III Perfect Guide translations eventually using a similar approach to the ODM. For more information on my plans along with previews, follow me on Patreon.

A short Xenosaga III era interview with VAs has been added

A short interview with the Japanese voice actresses for Shion Uzuki (Ai Maeda) and KOS-MOS (Mariko Suzuki) from Volume I of the 2006 Xenosaga III Weekly magazine has been translated by Lugalbanda. The two VAs mainly talk about a podcast they were doing on the official website around the time Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra was released in Japan, but it is one of the few Xenosaga III era interviews that I have been able to find so I thought it might be good to have translated.

Judging by the interview, it seems a lot of the show consisted of taking messages from the audience and even relaying some questions to the development staff. I wonder if anyone has saved any of those podcasts or if anyone fluent in Japanese ever listened to them? I never came across any discussion about it even back in the day.

Unearthing yet another early Xenogears staff interview!

It was sort of a good thing I got a Twitter/X account recently since it alerted me to another previously unknown interview with the Xenogears developers thanks to Linnaea who dug up the March 1998 issue of Famitsu PS in a tweet. Thanks to Siris who bought and scanned the magazine, and Will Bill who did the translation, we now also have this nice little interview preserved.

I have also updated the History of Xenogears article with some quotes from this interview. Probably this is the last early Xenogears interview we'll find. But then again, I thought the last one was also the last and there weren't any more. So who knows. Maybe another one will eventually get unearthed. I also know there are at least one or two Xenosaga interviews that were lost in time and never recovered.

Added an "About" page and starting a Patreon

I have added an "About" page for the study guide that provides some basic information about the site. You can now also follow me on Twitter/X if you want, though I am not sure how often I will be using it.

I have also set up a Patreon since economic times are tough and I think it makes sense to start earning something from my hard work over the years, especially if you want me to stay around and regularly be active on maintaining the site. I still plan on finishing it up regardless, but having supporters on Patreon will definitely motivate me to finish it quicker. Otherwise I might just go back to sleep for a while until another dawn wakes me up again.

As a special treat I have put up the first part of the Xenosaga Story Analysis on Patreon, which will not be published on this website for some time. I might also put up some exclusive stuff on there, and share plans for the site I do not normally share, but I have not decided yet. Translation work will not be posted on Patreon however, since I am not charging money for other people's work.

The History of Xenogears article has been updated

As regular visitors may already have noticed (especially if you have read through the History articles in the last couple of days), I have expanded the History of Xenogears article (Part 1 of the History of Xenogears and Xenosaga) with information that has emerged since the last update, including the early lore draft that Yasuyuki Honne shared earlier this year on his Twitter/X page for the game's anniversary.

Having not read through the article in several years I was able to look at it with fresh eyes and found that some parts needed to flow and connect better. So I re-arranged some parts and also properly introduced more of the other people on the development team rather than expecting people to already know who they are. I think it makes for a much better read now. But most of the additions are in the "Developing the game" chapter of the article.

I have also gone back to the original structure of the History article series by dividing Xenosaga Episode I and Xenosaga II/III into two separate articles or parts since I think it makes for an easier read. It also brings more room for other sections in the top cross-column on the site where I want to add sections for "Articles" and "Links." I have not really made any additions and modifications to the History of Xenosaga articles yet, but I plan to. I am just waiting for translations of previously untranslated Xenosaga Episode I lore pages that may be useful to reference and examine.

A Xenogears interview with Takahashi and Hiromichi Tanaka from 1997 has been added

An old Xenogears preview interview with Tetsuya Takahashi and Hiromichi Tanaka from the November 28, 1997 issue of Weekly Famitsu has been translated by trexalfa. There are some interesting things revealed in this interview, especially in regards to the connections between Xenogears and Final Fantasy VII. Like many people have speculated, the similarity between Fei and Cloud Strife is not a coincidence. Furthermore, it seems that both the Shinra company in Final Fantasy VII and the Holy Empire of Solaris in Xenogears derive from early ideas by Tetsuya Takahashi when he was still on the Final Fantasy VII team.

Takahashi also reveals that he intentionally gave Fei "amnesia" at the start of the game so that he could subvert this common trope later. It is an interesting read so be sure to check it out if you are interested in the development of Xenogears. Another interesting detail is that Xenogears also had the working title "Project X" just like Xenosaga later did. Since Xenogears also went by the working title "Project NOAH," I assume it changed to "Project X" later on during development when they knew the final title would start with an "X." I will try to add some of this information whenever I get around to updating the History of Xenogears article.

The entire Xenogears Story Analysis is now up

All parts of the Xenogears Story Analysis (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4) are now up in the Story Analysis Section, including a fifth part devoted to material cut from the game.

Part 2 and 3 are mainly restorations of the old material, while Part 1 and Part 4 are almost entirely new writings with just a few bits moved to those sections to make Part 2 and 3 less long. But even Part 2 and 3 have considerable improvements, additions and corrections made to them, so the Xenogears analysis that was on the old version of the study guide should now be discarded and replaced with this version. Once I have restored something on this site, I would appreciate it if people do not keep spreading my old version of that material anymore.

Originally I was never satisfied with my "Plot Analysis" as I called it back then, since I never actually intended to make a complete coverage of the games' narrative. It simply seemed too big of an endeavor to summarize and analyze it all, and it was not something I had ever seen anyone else do either. But after getting requests to do something like that and seeing how it was probably necessary due to the many confusing parts of the story and dialogue, I eventually attempted it in the form of taking notes while watching the cutscenes. But the result was too disjointed and ranty. In the end I was only satisfied with some parts of it, and disliked the rest.

This time I have managed to construct the entire thing a bit better by examining it in the context of a narrative structure properly to provide better segments and focus. And the result is much better, to the point I can finally say I am mostly satisfied at last. There are a few parts I am a bit ambivalent towards, but I can't figure out how to write it better, so I leave it as it is for now. At first I did want to shorten the whole thing a lot more, similar to Part 1, but realized that there were a lot of details that I myself had forgotten about that I appreciate that I wrote down back then. So I did not want to discard as much as I thought I would.

But after working on restoring these articles I also remember why I got tired of analyzing Xenogears, with all the problems with the translation which is not just limited to the game but also the version of Xenogears: Perfect Works that is complete (the one by UltimateGraphics) which is also full of inaccuracies. Correcting all the errors out there is simply too exhausting. Even the transcription of the official English script that everyone uses (the one at GameFAQs) is badly transcribed and contains multiple errors. One of these errors even show up on the Xenosaga Wiki! Hence I urge anyone quoting the official script to instead use this new website I came across that ripped the script from the actual game files so that it is 100% accurate (apart from maybe the opening movie). Though who knows how long that website will be up. I used to use the script on Xenogears: God and Mind fansite which was also accurate, but that site neither exists anymore nor can it be accessed through the Internet Wayward Machine. This is the kind of tedious stuff Xenogears scholars have to deal with it.

Of course, it is precisely because of these problems that a study guide for Xenogears is necessary. But making one is not always fun. It took me several weeks longer to finish these articles even after I thought I was finished with them, due to the numerous things I had to double check with a translator to make sure I was not making theories based on flawed or inaccurate translations. Several rewrites resulted from this. I was hoping to be done by April with restoring the Xenogears Story Analysis, yet right now it is the end of June. I need a break from this so do not expect the Xenosaga Story Analysis to be be done this year.

But I will probably do some more work on existing pages this year. Already, both the Guide to translation errors and the Perfect Works section of the study guide have been given massive updates the last couple of days. And I am thinking of dividing the Translation guide into two pages, one for each disc of the game, to make it easier to find the lines you want to check. The History of Xenogears article is also overdue for an update.

Anyway, I have already made more updates to the study guide this year than I have the past four years so at least that's something. It was not something I planned to do this year but came as a result of me playing through Xenogears for the first time in over 10 years. I enjoyed the actual gameplay a lot more than I remembered, though some puzzles were surprisingly difficult and I had to look at some guides since I could not remember their solution at all.

Study Guide Update

I am currently in the process of fixing up some things around the study guide, having reorganized the interviews a bit, adding stuff to the Xenogears translation guide and Perfect Works sections (as you may have noticed if you are a regular visitor), and I also want to make updates to a few other articles. The story analysis pages for Xenogears are more or less finished but they need proofreading before I publish them, and since these pages are much longer than the first page it will take a few more days. I ended up dividing the whole thing into four parts, but the second part is already published now.

I am also looking to come into contact with Gwendal, Trexalfa, and Quiddity/Sheamon if any of you guys are reading this. It doesn't matter if you happen to read this in 5 or 10 years from now, contact me anyway if you can. My E-mail can be found in my blog profile here on Blogspot, or you can just reply to this blog post.

From now on I will also add a "[Last updated]" notice somewhere at the beginning of each article so that, in the case of people saving the study guide pages for their own personal archives like last time, they can check to see if they have the latest update saved for each page. This was something I originally had on the old website but for some reason did not retain when I moved to this blog. But hopefully it will not be necessary for people to save these pages since the reason I restarted the study guide project on this blog was to make sure it stays up this time.

And speaking of that, I decided to listen through Retrograde Amnesia's Xenogears podcast lately since I heard from people that they often reference this study guide, and I was a bit surprised by their first comments near the end of "Xenogears Podcast 4: Booze is My Life Companion [Dazil]":

Chris: "According to the translation notes on the, um, there's a great website I found called the Xenogears and Xenosaga Study Guide..."

Eric: "That sounds wonderful."

Chris: "Yeah. Somebody put... Whoever this person is I love you. Somebody put a bunch of interviews and translation notes and all kinds of things about this game on a old Blogspot site."

Eric: "Great. So it will be gone in a couple of years."

Chris: "Yeah exactly... With the intent of preserving this information. But anyway, according to the translation notes on this site, ..."

I don't know why they think this study guide might be gone in a couple of years because it is on Blogspot, but as of this year (2024) the study guide has been up on Blogspot for 8 solid years, which is longer than the brief 3 years it was originally around as a website hosted by XenoTen. 8 years is also longer than Zenosaga.com and many other big Xenogears and Xenosaga sites were around for in the past. Part of the reason I did not let someone else host the study guide was because I have seen how almost every Xenogears and Xenosaga fan site have disappeared from the net already. But moving the material to a free service hosted by a big global corporation like Google that has been around since 1999 and is still here will likely make it stay up for a long time, unless something seriously bad happens to Google.

I am also pleased to see that the Wayward machine has been saving this blog with all the images intact, should anything happen, although I suspect that the images on the Wayward pages are only visible because they link directly to this blog and if the blog disappears so will most of the images on the pages saved on the Wayward Machine.

Anyway, I'm not sure how this blog/website looks on all the browsers out there, but if anything looks strange or off let me know. If you have problems posting comments then try a different browser since that solved the problems I had responding to comments for a while. Most browsers also have a feature to zoom in and make the pages larger if you think the text and images are too small. When I first started this blog I was using a lower resolution and I am unsure I should make any changes to the size of the layout and text at this point.

An interview with Hirohide Sugiura from 2020 has been added

An interesting interview with the co-founder of MonolithSoft, Hirohide Sugiura, from the June 4th edition of Famitsu 2020, has been translated by Lugalbanda of Xenomira. The interview is not exactly news, but when I found out about it I knew it would be worthwhile to make it available on this study guide. Previously, only a part of it was translated by Oni Dino of Nintendo Everything. The part he translated was this:

Sugiura: It all started when I played Xenogears back then. I was in charge of another game at the time, but Xenogears really stood out prominently among the rest, and I fell in love with it. Afterward, we put together plans for a Xenogears 2, but Square at the time had a lot of financial investment in their movie division, so it was extremely difficult to get things put into production internally. Despite that, I knew somehow I had to make something from these ideas, so I chose to go my own way.

That must’ve been some impression Xenogears had on you.

Sugiura: Tetsuya Takahashi, Yasuyuki Honne and 27 others felt the same. So with the help of Masaya Nakamura (founder of Namco), we went ahead with establishing Monolith Soft. We did negotiate with other video game companies when going solo, but I was a big fan of Namco – so much so that I even applied to their new hires after graduation. Anyway, after meeting with Nakamura, it was Namco’s outstanding sensibilities that was the deciding factor for us.

So that’s how Monolith Soft came to be.

Sugiura: The number one motivation for me was because I loved the world that Takahashi created. And that fact still holds true to this day.

The interview focuses on the 20th anniversary of the founding of the company, and since the founding of MonolithSoft occured during the height of the company's interest in the Xenogears and Xenosaga series, basically creating the company for the main purpose of making a sequel to Xenogears in some way, it is a valuable source for future updates to the history articles. Since Sugiura is a huge fan of Xenogears, and the main patron of Takahashi, interviews with him have usually proven to be very interesting. He was the first person to publically express an interest in returning to the Xenosaga series one day, before both Soraya and Takahashi later did as well.

Part 1 of the Xenogears Story Analysis is now up

Apologies for the long wait, but I have now added a story analysis section with the first part of the Xenogears Story Analysis completed.

Most of this article has actually been finished for a few years now, but I did not realize how long the section examining the narrative structure would turn out, so I decided to split the story analysis into two parts. It was originally intended to be just one long article. In hindsight I should have realized just having one article would make it too big since the original story analysis was divided into six parts, and most of the writing that has been restored from the original analysis will be included in part 2. There is also a possibility that it will be divided into more parts, but for now the plan is two parts.

So this is not merely a restoration of the old material, but a new article that I am much more satisfied with, since the one on the old website was very messy and also included references to debates I had with other fans and detractors at the time that are no longer relevant with the passage of time. Having been mostly away from the Xeno fandom for over 10 years now I feel I can approach this endeavor with more detached objectivity and better focus. A much more positive feedback loop has also taken place with new analysis of Xenogears by other people (such as Resonant Arc on YouTube) having improved due to being more competently informed by better resources (such as this study guide) than was available in the past, which in turn actually helps even me discover new and valuable insights every now and then.

Speaking of old debates becoming irrelevant over time, I have also been thinking of writing an entirely new article examining how fan perception of Xenogears, Xenosaga, and Takahashi's original vision has changed since the early days of Xenogears up till now. This from the perspective of Western fans only having access to limited information, and how much of the views younger audience currently have of the series is also transient and will change over time for similar reasons, since, although more information can be found today, there still exists laziness and some information is hard to dig up. I think such an article might be useful since the purpose of this study guide is to make people more informed, and the worst ideas and theories about the Xeno series (or about anything) always comes from the less informed. And unfortunately, a bad idea easily becomes a bad idea in the heads of many.

However, if I write such an article it would be better to wait until after more material has been restored. For now the focus will be on the Story Analysis Section.

Interview with Tetsuya Takahashi from KOS-MOSFIX has been added

An interesting new interview with creator Tetsuya Takahashi from CHOCO's new book KOS-MOSFIX has been translated properly by Lugalbanda. What is particularly interesting about this interview is that it answers a lot about Takahashi's thought process behind the design of KOS-MOS, why he went with something "fan-servy" rather than something more serious and appropriate to the more mature and dark setting of the original Xenosaga vision. It makes so much more sense that he originally wanted something more niche, inspired by artist Hans Bellmer, which would have given KOS-MOS a creepier vibe reminiscent of Deus in its initial form (something comparably creepy never ended up appearing in Xenosaga, though the Archetype version of KOS-MOS and certain aspects of Gnosis came close). Xenosaga: Episode I still had the creepiest, most moody atmosphere out of all the Xeno games thus far. Takahashi's various niche interests was always what made him interesting as a creator, and I think that it would be so much more interesting if Takahashi attempted some way of re-making Xenogears or Xenosaga in a medium that would be less expensive and can embrace a more niche audience and result in less compromises like this.

Here are some images of Bellmer's dolls.

The information revealed in this interview has, as usual, compelled me to yet again update the History of Xenosaga article, adding some of the new information and quotes. (Update 2025.04.09: At first what Takahashi said seemed to contradict something he said in the Xenosaga -Official Design Materials- where he seemingly attributed the sexual design of KOS-MOS' to Mugitani, but it turns out this was just a poor translation of what Takahashi said which has since been corrected.)

New article: the Future of the series

I have added a new article that deals with rumors of a possible continuation or a remake of the Xenogears and/or Xenosaga series. The idea is that once something is said or appears in an interview by the creators, fans can add this in the comment field and in this way have new information pile up there in case I'm on a break from the fandom. I'm not really keeping track of things anymore and also have some skepticism that anything will truly come out of these rumors or talk among the developers, but I get that people would want a section on the study guide that deals with a possible future of the series. So here it is.

Most of the article is currently only the last part of the History of Xenosaga article that's been moved and then slightly expanded upon.

Article: the "Merits of these works" added

Some more text has been restored and added to the study guide in the form of a new and updated article called "the Merits of these works." This is an article that incorporates various bits and pieces of texts from previous sections of the old study guide - including "A Brief Overview", "Why This Study Guide?", the intro of the "Plot Analysis", the last part of the old History article that dealt with Xenoblade Chronicles, and some bits from other places - into a more fully fleshed out and complete text that deals with the merits of Xenogears and Xenosaga in general. It can be regarded as an introduction or the first page of this study guide readers are encouraged to read, but for various reasons it got postponed.

One of the reasons it got postponed was that I wasn't happy with the writing, and because of that I feel the need to share something. I honestly don't think my writing is all that good, but since nobody has complained yet I guess it's passable. You could say that my ambition was to learn how to write better about the series or things in general, by examining how actual academics and the "cultural elites" tend to write about famous and classical works. Thus part of my writings on the previous study guide was to emulate a bit of their style. However, I'm not sure I'm suited to write in that style and these days I find the academic jargon to be less interesting than I used to think. The most important thing is simply to be able to get things across in an understandable way. Of course, reading stuff you don't normally read is good for expanding your mind and ways of looking at things.

I'm also not that knowledgeable or talented in writing about stuff like music, game design, and so forth beyond the plot or story. And since it has been a while since I thought about the series I have also started to forget things about the works in general. And when it comes to the themes and influences on these works, there's just too much to keep track of. For example, I never researched Gnosticism all that in-depth and I don't know if Takahashi knows that much about it either or just got the concepts through Jung (he said something similar in regards to Norse mythology in an interview, that he got it through his interest in Nietzsche). Then there's the issue I have with not being able to fully figure out what Takahashi's ultimate message with the works really is.

My wish was always to read texts like this written by an actual academic or similar who is more knowledgeable about literature and cultural history. The material on the study guide was sort of put together for that purpose, to provide other authors, academics, fans and journalists to have access to proper material so as not to get certain facts or ideas wrong in their essays. It's funny, but I never actually wanted to be the one to write some of the articles that I did. I always wanted someone else to write this kind of stuff, someone more suitable. But since it appeared that wasn't going to happen, I decided to just go ahead and give it a shot myself. I figured it'd be good for learning practice if nothing else, and for sure it has been useful and ended up being a sort of fun thing to do. But these days I find it hard to return to the series and fix up some of the work that needs fixing in my articles. Which is why restoration work on the study guide is going so slow and often put on hold.

The article may need to be cleaned up some more in the future, because I don't know how well it actually manages to get to the point. But I think it provides some food for thought and should at least be a useful resource for people discussing the merits of the series or works in general.

Xenogears 20th Anniversary Concert interviews and more

Thanks to the work of Lugalbanda the study guide can now archive translations from the recent Xenogears 20th Anniversary Concert pamphlet. Lugalbanda has also dug up some ancient Xenogears stuff, such as another interview from Hakoere and the rest of the pages from the interview with Xenogears staff, both from 1998. He also helped to clean up some other translations that Gwendal struggled with. Enjoy!

These translations and more are also available at Lugalbanda's website Mira found at https://xenomira.wordpress.com/

Denfaminicogamer interview with Tetsuya Takahashi has been added

An interesting interview with creator Tetsuya Takahashi from February this year by the Japanese denfaminicogamer site has been translated by Lugalbanda, and while it is not specifically a Xenogears or Xenosaga interview, it is a general Tetsuya Takahashi interview that goes into some interesting stuff about Xenogears and his time at Square and so I've decided it belongs on the study guide.

The information revealed in this interview has also compelled me to update the History of Xenogears article, adding some of the new information and quotes.

There may also be more interviews coming up from the Xenogears 20th Anniversary Concert pamphlet from the same translator, so stay tuned for that. Accordingly, I will re-arrange the interview order slightly and divide them up into more specific Xenogears and Xenosaga related interviews, and I will place the Xenogears interviews at the top since the latest interviews mostly concern Xenogears as well as Xenogears being the more popular work.