Kyo Kusanagi - Conception and Creation

Conception and Creation

When designing characters for the first King of Fighters game, developers wanted a new, "snazzy" hero who would easily fight against Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting characters. Through most of his development, Kyo was meant to be called Syo Kirishima (霧島 翔, Kirishima Shō?), and was dressed in martial arts clothing common with fighting games at the time. But late in production, his name was changed to Kyo Kusanagi in order to relate him with the Yamata no Orochi legend, which was used as the idea to the first arc. His fighting style was changed as a part of the series' overhaul in The King of Fighters '96. To appease all fans, they also included an older version of Kyo from KOF '94 into The King of Fighters '97 and placed The King of Fighters '95 version of Kyo in The King of Fighters '98, which made both versions of Kyo popular during location tests. Developers from the game decided to make Kyo's main skill would be fire along with the other movesets from the other members of the original Japan Team being inspired by the anime Getter Robo. In addition, the three members of the Japan Team had similar personalities to the main characters from such anime. Kyo was based on the main character who had a "fiery" persona. The elements and the personalities are also a homage to a Japanese phrase of giving birth to fire (it is roughly translated: "lighting strikes the earth which sparks the flame").

The idea of having two Kyos at once lead to the concept of his clones. During the early development stages of The King of Fighters '99, SNK planned to avoid adding Kyo and Iori Yagami to the game, as the story's focus was meant to center on the new protagonist, K'. However, they retracted this decision as "they couldn't leave these popular characters in limbo". Kyo was redesigned for the game, but some designers wanted to return to his iconic school uniform. When they were nearing the end of their production schedule, staff members were indecisive upon which uniform the Kyo clone should wear. The project head decided to make two clones instead. To save time, the project head drew designs for Kyo-1 and Kyo-2 on the character roster. The same event was repeated in The King of Fighters 2002; the designers created another clone from Kyo called Kusanagi to include his school uniform design.

Although Kyo retains his third outfit in The King of Fighters XII, his moves were modified to his original ones from the first two games from the series. This was made in order to make the character to fight at short distances rather than using projectiles tactics and thus improve the balance from the roster and make fights more entertaining. His signature move, the Orochinagi (大蛇薙?), was given a mid-air variation for The King of Fighters XIII with designers keeping in mind the concept of coolnesss as well as its small difficulty in performing it. Kyo's "Neo Max" technique, the "Ura 121 Shiki: Ama-no-Murakumo (裏百弐拾壱式・天叢雲?)", was the first move of its category to be made for the game. As a result, all the other characters' Neo Max techniques were made according Kyo's one in order to keep a balance of flashy moves.

Kyo's repeated appearances in the series is due to the marketers and the main planners' insistence to add him, Iori, and other SNK regulars in every game, making it a challenge to decide the story for each title. Along with his rival, Iori, Kyo has been noted by several of the series' designers as being one of the most difficult characters to illustrate because of his popularity amongst fans. Originally, Kyo's girlfriend, Yuki, was not meant to be conceptualized, since her first mention ever in the story was in Kyo's profile as one of his most cherished possessions. Her addition to his profile was added by one of the programmers mostly as a joke since Kyo was more popular with female gamers.