A short post-Kemonomichi interview with Tokido

The Chigesoku blog (Japanese) took some notes from an interview with Tokido from 3 days after the Kemonomicni FT10. The video is from the Living The Game people - Living the Game is a documentary (in Japanese) that primarily follows Momochi, Chocoblanka, Daigo, Luffy, and GamerBee with brief appearances by many others in the FGC. I actually watched it in the theater last night, and really enjoyed it. The majority of the interview is about Tokido's thoughts on the movie, but there is a bit about Daigo as well. Here is an English version of the notes from the Chigesoku blog.

Check out the Living the Game trailer if, for nothing else, the Mike Ross Capcom Cup intro.

On Saturday, Mar. 10th, Daigo and Tokido took part in a First to Ten in Street Fighter V Arcade Edition as part of the "Kemonomichi" event. Daigo won 10-5.

Tokido suffered a crushing 5-10 defeat. This interview from three days later was release on YouTube. Tokido talks about how he views Daigo, and how much Daigo is respected in the FGC.

Here are the main points from the interview:

1 About Kemonomichi and Daigo This is how I think myself, even if I win the biggest tournament, I don't think I'm the best player. No matter how far I go, I always end up feeling that Daigo is the best. Of course, I have my own internal image of Daigo, and this was a chance for me to have a real battle with him and verify that again. Things like my history with him, how has he wrestled with his approach to fighting games and how has that changed, and what he thinks about games. There was such a large gap between us and I couldn't match him, but I would still like to challenge him again. As for what it means for my confidence, I need to work to get the results such that people will think "You are strong enough to challenge Daigo".

2 About the movie "Living the Game" [Tokido thinks that] The movie really brings out a lot of the foreign players personal history and their circumstances.

GamerBee has a very practical style of play. It was very interesting to that because of the experiences that he's had, and because of his character, that results in the kind of play that he has.

The whole story of how Momochi wants to beat Daigo, how he wants to face him directly in battle, and he needs to beat him in a tournament. If it was just a hobby or something, you could take five years to prepare and face him, that would be fine. But he can't do that, [being a pro gamer] is his life and how he makes his living, so he needs to beat him in a tournament. You are forced to approach things in a different way in order to get the resources you would need to beat Daigo, and so it is very hard to surpass him. [TL: E.g., you need to devote a lot of effort, you need to devote a lot of resources to defeat Daigo.]

The movie expresses that, even though it is a game, there are people that are taking this very seriously.

If fighting games become popular as a sport, I don't think it would be this unbearable. When you play, sometimes you just get crushed, but it is fun so you can't stop… I hope the movie portrays that feeling. I don't want people to come out of the movie thinking that we do this for the money. Because there was no money in it, we had no choice but to be serious. [TL: There is no money in it, so all we have on the line is our pride, our passion.] I want people to see that passion from the film.