Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE's Hatanaka's Lost Potential

It wasn’t exactly a surprise to discover that Hatanaka’s a pretty crappy, empty villain.  Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE doesn’t reach for the stars in terms of putting time, effort, and creativity into the creation and development of its major characters, so to expect it to do so for its antagonist would be naive.  That it’s obvious from the moment he’s introduced that Hatanaka is going to be the “twist” antagonist, that he’s only ever seen a couple times before he makes his big villain move and Exits Stage Death with all his motivation and character reduced to a hamfisted exposition dump in those last few moments, that he’s so flat and careless as an entity that said motivation which he clumsily announces is literally the only thing we ever know about him...it’s all completely unsurprising in as slipshod a product as TMS#FE.  If it ain’t a cookie-cutter archetype following its set path as generically as possible, it’s got no place in this game’s cast.

Hatanaka’s motivation is also unsurprisingly vapid and silly--although the game tries to play it like his cause is some kind of high-minded venture, or at least that he believes it to be.  Hatanaka’s basically some self-important entertainment specialist who enables Gharnef’s apocalyptic endeavors because he caught a bad case of Lazy Man’s Nihilism and thus believes that the end of days will somehow be the ultimate form of entertainment.  The man wants to destroy the world out of artistic vision.  It’s the kind of laughably ridiculous, pretentious idiocy that you can only find in an RPG villain, comfortably at home with other pompous nonsensical morons like Final Fantasy 7’s Sephiroth, Wild Arms 5’s Volsung, Tales of Vesperia’s Duke, and so, so many goddamn more.  Standard fare for RPGs that have no interest in putting effort into their storytelling and cast.

But the shame of it is that Hatanaka’s concept as a villain, silly and dumb though it at first appears, could have actually been refreshingly relevant, novel, and even thematically elegant...and it would have been so easy to make happen, had Atlus been bothered to put even just a little effort into getting this form of villainy right.

Because think about it.  We’re talking about a villain whose schtick is doing evil, harming others, for content.  Even if it’s perhaps not quite as epic and compelling on its surface as villainy born out of a thirst for revenge, or a desire to shape the world to better suit his own preferences, a villain like this is actually quite relevant in the current age.  I mean, each day, how many people get harassed by prank douchetubers looking to turn the annoyance and uncertainty of innocent fast food workers, retail employees, and unassuming pedestrians just trying to go about their day into views and subscribers?  How frequently do we read about a trend on Tiktok that involves showing off something you’ve stolen, or hear about a Youtuber getting arrested because he recorded himself trying to derail a train?  We live in the age of Jack Doherty and Johnny Somali; in the midst of a social epidemic of online assholes recording themselves making other people’s lives worse in the pursuit of clout, a villain who helps initiate the world’s end just for the sake of content has suddenly become a very suitable, relevant kind of antagonist.

But Atlus manages to completely drop the ball with Hatanaka!  Because they had to go and slap some high-falutin notion of his doing it for the love of the art on him.  Hatanaka isn’t an evolution of the shithead with a phone recording himself as he harasses a Chipotle worker, he’s some silly, theoretical snuff filmmaker who wants to bring his form of media to the next level.  The scum-sucking worm who records himself challenging random passersby to a fight and then either running away or letting his bodyguards intimidate his victim into backing down isn’t making other people’s lives worse out of cinematic passion.  That loathsome cockroach who ran over a dog because she was streaming herself checking her phone while driving wasn’t up all the night before as she carefully reviewed every angle, meticulously prepared each inch of her car, and crafted all details of what was sure to be her magnum opus of expression.  The loser recording himself breaking into someone else’s home for a Tiktok prank isn’t doing it because he has a vision.

These people recording and posting themselves behaving badly and harming others are just doing it because they want attention and they want the money that comes with audience engagement on social media platforms.  There’s nothing more to it; it’s that simple and that pathetic.  So unfortunately, even though the idea of Hatanaka as an escalation of this comparatively recently emerged real life villain would have been an easy narrative feather to stick in its cap, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE completely fails to manage it.  His potential to become a commentary on an actual new-age villain of our world lost, Hatanaka just winds up in the Lazy Self-Important Poser villain category in a genre already absolutely filled to the brim with his forgettable peers.

And I’ll grant you, most of the real-world individuals and trends I’ve mentioned thus far have occurred in the last few years, while Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE was published in 2015, a whole decade ago and a year before Tiktok was even a thing.  But the 2013 - 2015 era of the internet was nonetheless more than rife with prank Youtubers bothering people for views and lulz (or even just pretending to do so--but staged or real, the concept ultimately boils down to the same thing for the audience’s engagement), so it was absolutely an established, disliked type of entertainer at the time that has only continued to progress since.  Not to mention, TMS#FE was rereleased in 2020 and had some stuff added and changed for it, meaning that they could have, had they the sense to do so, adjusted Hatanaka at the time to reflect the even-better-established-by-that-point clout-chaser kind of content-at-any-cost person.

And not for nothing, it’s doubly unfortunate that Atlus failed to see through Hatanaka’s potential as a clout-chaser villain because it would have elegantly fit into the overall dynamic of the game’s story and theme.  If Hatanaka had just been looking to create content through evil means for selfish intent rather than some crazy notion of art, then he could, with a little more narrative attention and involvement, have served as a good counterpoint to the heroes of the game.  Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE occasionally puts forth the idea that its heroes’ climb through the entertainment industry is a noble endeavor, that they’re doing it all for the sake of the fans and overall populace whom they entertain.  Well, wouldn’t it be a great thing, then, to have Hatanaka exist as a mirror to that idea, an example of a person who entertains only for his own benefit, to sell the desirable, noble heroism of the main characters all the better as they advance themselves in their craft specifically for the benefit of their fans?  It’d require a few more interactions with Hatanaka to set him up as such a foil, of course, but it wouldn’t be hard to accomplish, and he’d be so much more memorable as such, not to mention it would add a new dimension to the game’s overall story and theme that...well, TMS#FE would still be a long way away from being a well-written endeavor altogether, but it’d certainly be a step closer, at least.

It’s frustrating.  Atlus creates a villain who ends the world for the sake of content, right as the age of clout-chasing content villains has become established in the real world, and completely fails to give him relevance through a connection to that phenomenon when all it would have taken was the slightest rewrite of his motivations, one that would have made more sense in its own right anyway.  And in dropping this ball, they in turn miss an opportunity to make him a better villainous foil to the heroes that desperately could have used some basic storytelling artistry.  A Hatanaka with some relevance and narrative weight was right there, and Atlus just completely missed it.