http://tinycartridge.com/post/59870380/suda-not-directing-nmh-2
Game designer and Grasshopper Manufacture president Goichi Suda (Suda 51) says that the assistant director for the first No More Heroes game, Toshihiro Fujikawa, will direct No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle. Speaking with Nintendo Power, Suda revealed that he’ll once again write the sequel’s script, but will “watch over the game as an executive director” this time around. Fujikawa has previously served as the assistant director for several other Grasshopper titles, such as Samurai Champloo and Killer7. Suda explained the Desperate Struggle subtitle: “There’s a word in Japanese — shito. Shi means ‘death,’ and to means ‘fight.’ When I tried to find an English translation on the Internet, it came up with Desperate Struggle.” He also shared some hints on NMH 2’s story: “This time, Travis [Touchdown] is looking for revenge. It’s a serious fight this time, and the word shito reflects that. There’s a series of Japanese movies called Jingi Naki Tatakai that are about the yakuza. They’re really famous in Japan — sort of the equivalent of The Godfather. They focus on the relationships between members of the Yakuza. The subtitle for the second one is Hiroshima Shito Hen. That roughly translates to The Desperate Struggle of Hiroshima. Inspired by that, I wanted No More Heroes 2 to be The Desperate Struggle of Santa Destroy. There’s a really intense fight in Hiroshima Shito Hen, and I wanted to sort of recreate that in No More Heroes 2.” XSEED Games and Marvelous Interactive are slated to co-publish No More Heroes 2 stateside in January 2010.
