P4 Official Design Works Records: Chie Satonaka [UPDATED!]

“The concept for Chie’s design was ‘a cute girl who could actually exist in real life.’. Trying to design a game character who seems like someone you could meet in real life meant i needed to pay close attention to her appearance. The hardest part was probably getting the right balance between her features like her creased double eyelids set over appealingly large eyes, and her slightly duck-like mouth. Another tricky balancing act was the shape of her head, as it couldn’t be too long or too round. Once I had the shape of her head the way I wanted it, I still had to figure out how to put her hair on it. I was so picky that I convinced myself that I needed to rework her design quite a few times.

One of the things that defines Chie as a character is her love of cheap, retro things like pins and other accessories. In some ways, Chie was the turning point that defined the overall design flavor of the entire game. I wanted to exaggerate the fact that the story takes place in a rural town, and one of the best ways to do that is to have someone running around in a jersey jacket. Unfortunately, the colors of a school jersey just didn’t look very nice within the context of the game, so I had to think of something else. That’s when I decided to try taking a retro-style approach to Chie’s jersey.

That was a real light bulb moment for me, when I realized that anytime I needed to put something ‘utterly lame’ in to bring out the rural vibe, I could add a retro flavor to it to make it cool and in sync with the game’s atmosphere. This is how Chie single-handedly set the design foundation for the rest of the game. For this reason, I think it’s quite fair to say that Chie Satonaka truly embodies the identity of ‘Persona 4’, which may be why the game’s theme color (yellow) looks so darn good on her.”

-Soejima

“Chie pays an average amount of attention to her fashion, and she dyes her hair. In order to preserve a certain level of believability, all of the characters in 'Persona 4’ were given relatively natural hair colors that you would expect to see regularly in real life.”

-Soejima