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Archipel are making the best videogame documentaries on YouTubeNoclipped right off the couch

Noclipped right off the couch

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You don’t hear the documentary makers at any point, just Kamikokuryo as he reflects on his career, his life, his work on Final Fantasy, his choice to go freelance in 2017, and his relationship to the striking and beautiful places he takes you.

You should watch it for the chill landscape photography alone.

A still frame showing Isamu Kamikokuryo driving a car.

A photo of a sea of parked cars.

A hilly landscape covered in bushes and grass, with a path in the foreground on which Isamu Kamikokuryo walks from right to left.

Isamu Kamikokuryo crouched on a windy hill, preparing to draw.

Isamu Kamikokuryo on the side of a mountain cast in shadow, contrasted against a bright blue sky.

Isamu Kamikokuryo walking across a rugged landscape, filmed directly from above.

Isamu Kamikokuryo walking up a mountain, as filmed from a drone.

It would have been much easier to put Kamikokuryo in a chair and simply ask him questions with the camera pointed at him, and many other Archipel videos do work this way. But through these travels with Kamikokuryo, we get a more intimate portrait of him as a person, and of the real inspirations underpinning his work.

There are several other episodes in the Caravan series, including those featuring Shinji Mikami, the director ofResident Evil1 and 4, and many more. If the tone of it all sounds a little portentous for your tastes though, they have an older series that more regularly got creatives away from their work stations. Called Toco Toco, it often had game designers lead a merry tour of some of their favourite places at a much more lighthearted pace, such as in this video in which Swery65 rushes you from one bar to another in Tokyo:

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Archipel’s videos are all ad free andfunded via Patreon, with rewards for supporting including Discord access, interview transcripts, and your name in the credits.