Platinum Games’ Bayonetta made her North American debut in 2010 and she quickly became a fan-favorite character. And what’s not to love? She’s a shapeshifting witch who’s very good at gunplay. And she almost never appears without her glasses, as insisted upon by her creator, Hideki Kamiya.
Earlier this week, a fan on X asked Kamiya about a meme-worthy quote he was alleged to have said: “Bayonetta’s glasses are just like her underwear.” Via Automaton, Kamiya attributed the quote to animation director Yuji Shimomura, who handled the game’s cinematics. Kamiya also indicated that he agreed with Shimomura that Bayonetta should never be without her glasses.
“When we were designing Bayonetta, our clients requested us to take off her glasses, and it’s true that I kept rejecting their proposals,” recalled Kamiya. “But it’s also true that, on a separate occasion, Mr. Shimomura, who produced the cinematics, said ‘Bayonetta’s glasses are just like her underwear–do not take them off at any cost.'”
Mari Shimazaki–the character designer of Bayonetta–posted a response of her own on X, and noted that Kamiya came up with Bayonetta’s glasses at the earliest stages of her creation.
“During the development of Bayonetta 1, when I was drawing up rough sketches of the character design, Kamiya appeared behind me out of nowhere and whispered: ‘Give her glasses.’ That’s how everything started. Later, whenever I was sketching rough designs for Bayonetta, he’d always come up to me saying, ‘Why don’t you give her glasses?’ So it became a habit for me to always have a glasses layer ready in my designs. While the process of finalizing designs was sometimes a bumpy ride, I always had the glasses layer on standby.”
Thus far in the games, Bayonetta has only allowed a single person to see her without her glasses. She even wears them during the 2023 prequel game, Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon.
Bayonetta 3 came out in 2022, and Kamiya subsequently hinted at Bayonetta 4. However, Kamiya left Platinum Games in 2023, and subsequently expressed his desire to make his own games. The status of Bayonetta 4 is currently unknown, with Kamiya busy on Okami 2.
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