Falcom's president is hosting a spoiler-heavy talk show in Tokyo

Nihon Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo and former Falcom jdk Band drummer Shuji Okajima are hosting an unscripted, spoiler-filled talk show in Tokyo on September 25. The event promises a completely unscripted three-hour conversation with zero off-limits topics.

The event takes place at Akihabara Entasu. The promotional text leans heavily into the company's deep catalog. It jokes that the unfiltered conversation will be enough to silence Darm Tower, the massive demonic structure from the original 1987 action role-playing game Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished.

From fan site to president

Kondo has an unusual history for a game company executive. He originally ran a popular unofficial fan site dedicated to Falcom games before joining the company as a web designer. He eventually became president in 2007, succeeding founder Masayuki Kato. Under his leadership, the studio has maintained a steady output of massive role-playing games. The company heavily focuses on the long-running Trails (The Legend of Heroes) series and modern Ys titles like Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana.

Okajima provided drums for the Falcom jdk Band, the official music group that performs live arrangements of the company's soundtracks. Falcom's music has a dedicated following of its own. The developer is famous for its in-house sound team, and the jdk Band plays a major role in the developer's live events and cultural footprint.

Putting the two of them on stage without a script usually guarantees a deep dive into the studio's production history. The organizers explicitly warn that the discussion will contain spoilers. The Trails franchise is famous for its massive, interconnected narrative spanning multiple arcs and dozens of games over the last two decades. Discussing the series in any meaningful depth without spoiling plot points is nearly impossible, which explains the explicit warning. Attendees can expect frank talk about story decisions, character arcs, and development realities from the past four decades of Falcom history.

Three hours on stage

The venue is located on the fifth floor of the Akihabara Onoden Building, a fitting spot for a deep-dive gaming talk in Tokyo's electric town. The doors open at 18:00, and the actual talk runs from 19:00 to 22:00.

Three hours is a long time for two people to talk without an outline. Falcom has been operating since 1981. It is one of the oldest surviving video game developers in Japan. The studio helped lay the groundwork for the action RPG genre on early Japanese personal computers like the NEC PC-8801. Between Kondo's encyclopedic knowledge of the lore and Okajima's perspective from the musical side, the audience is going to hear stories that rarely make it into official interviews.