Happy Friday the 13th, gamers!  Borealis here.

In today's devlog, we're exploring the character of Matsumoto-sensei, Kakeru's homeroom teacher!  Enjoy!

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Matsumoto-sensei is the first character you see in Venus: Improbable Dream aside from Kakeru himself.  He's a man whose reputation precedes him, known in Kakeru's school as being a harsh taskmaster, but is that really true?

On the surface, Matsumoto-sensei is a little intimidating, almost to the point of being scary to some.  He takes his job as a teacher very seriously, and is results-driven, striving to see improvement and success out of all his students.  He's so focused, in fact, that he's never really been seen to crack a smile or make a jokey comment.  On top of that, you should see the look on his face when he's unhappy with a student's work - or actually, you shouldn't, because it means that you're about to get into big trouble!  Anyone who sees that face knows that their doom is about to arrive!

However, he's not all toil and scolding.  In actual fact, Matsumoto-sensei is quite understanding, underneath the hard exterior.  He'd never show it explicitly, but he does have a soft side when it comes to students that are having a tough time in school.  For those who choose to mess around in his class, he'll show no mercy, but for those who struggle with their studies, or have difficult circumstances, he maintains a stoic yet caring watchful eye on them.  He might not be one for dishing out compliments, even to his star students, but he'll consider the more vulnerable kids in school thoughtfully, keeping his sentiments to himself, but silently thinking about what could be done to improve their school experience.  It's this side of him that causes him to view Kakeru the way that he does.

When Kakeru first came to Matsumoto-sensei's school, he realised pretty quickly that this was a kid who would need extra support as he went through his education.  At first, he tried not to make any exceptions or excuses for him, treating him the same as his classmates, and asking him to join in with group activities and solo presentations.  However, seeing just how traumatic these situations seemed to be for Kakeru, he softened.  He'd never been responsible for such a nervous, fearful and evasive student before, but while the authoritarian in him wanted to force Kakeru into shape, the caring side of him won over.  Realising that Kakeru would never develop personally while things were being pushed onto him, Matsumoto-sensei decided to give him what he wanted - a seat at the back of the room, a free pass on doing anything that would draw too much attention to him, and an unspoken understanding that as long as his good grades stayed on track, he'd be free to maintain his invisible ways.

And so things coasted for a while.  Matsumoto-sensei kept an eye on Kakeru, looking for signs of improvement in his anxiety and social endeavours, but by the time the beginning of Venus: Improbable Dream came around, it became apparent that Kakeru was never going to make any effort to integrate himself into society.  Though Matsumoto-sensei isn't prone to getting emotional about his students, he had to concede that he felt concerned for Kakeru, on both a serious level and a personal one.  He began to feel as though not being able to help Kakeru develop himself and graduate in good shape to face the future would be a failure, and as his teacher, it would be remiss of him not to do something.  This is when Matsumoto-sensei unwittingly set into motion a sequence of events that would create the whole story of Venus: Improbable Dream.

Wanting to make some sort of change, he went to the higher-ups on the school board, explaining Kakeru's situation and asking what could be done.  After managing to arrange a phone call with Kakeru's parents about the issue, he pressed for details about his childhood - was Kakeru ever a confident kid?  Among his parents' answers was something that intrigued Matsumoto-sensei - Kakeru used to play the piano.  An idea struck him to try to use Kakeru's old hobby as a catalyst for putting him into new social situations in a way that differed from his regular classes.  If Kakeru enjoyed taking up the piano again, it might just help him start to reach out to other students, and finally come out of his shell.

This resulted in Matsumoto-sensei securing Kakeru a provisional place in the school's music club.  He knew that Kakeru would be horrified by the idea of trying it out, but the caring side of him pushed him to pressure Kakeru into attending, with a sincere hope that this would give him the opportunity he sorely needed to break out of his fear.  Little did he know just what kind of journey he had gifted Kakeru by making this one event happen.

And that's it for Ma - oh, wait, the Miley Cyrus thing!

The fact that Matsumoto-sensei likes Miley Cyrus comes from an in-joke between myself and Yui, my special guest from a few devlogs ago!  While designing the early GUI for Venus: Improbable Dream, Yui used Matsumoto-sensei's sprite against a background just to have something to put text over, and decided to have a little fun with the placeholder text...

It became a running joke between the two of us, and by the time I started going public with the game and introducing the characters, I decided to make it canon and give him an unexpected quirk!  So there you have it.  Matsumoto-sensei will stare you down like a demon if you fail a test, but when he's out of the classroom, he'll stuff his cheeks with Kit Kats and come in like a wrecking ball!!!

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There you have it!  I hope you enjoyed this magnified view of Matsumoto-sensei.  On Monday, our focus will shift to Kudo-sensei, the music club's advisor, and I have a lot of details on his character development, so you won't want to miss that one!

For now, have a great weekend!

Borealis