How Arataki Itto Represents Japanese Tradition and Youth Culture (Genshin Impact Design Origins)



In this video I showcase the research I found regarding the many cultural influences that went into Arataki Itto’s design including visual design, personality, translations, and more!

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Intro: 0:00
Overall Visual Design: 0:46
The Arataki Gang: 2:17
Itto’s Hairstyle: 3:16
Hobbies + Beetle Fighting: 3:41
Beans (Setsubun): 5:47
Kanabo War Club: 6:54
The Red Oni Who Cried: 7:17
Translations: 8:37
#Genshin #GenshinImpact #AratakiItto

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28 thoughts on “How Arataki Itto Represents Japanese Tradition and Youth Culture (Genshin Impact Design Origins)”

  1. I really like that mention to visual kei. He felt very punk rock to me with all those spikes and leather straps, but this makes much more sense! Especially the heavy makeup/tattoos. Those bands often had pretty men with big hair as leads, and Itto fits that.
    I read on a tweet somewhere that the bull thing might be a reference to ushi-oni, a type of youkai that's part bull, part another creature (spiders, men, cats, oni, etc). There are different kinds of ushi-oni and stories depending on the region. They're not oni lore per se but it could be a shoutout to this kind of monster together with Ushi. They also live near water bodies so that might explain where the surname Arataki comes from. Maybe.
    Also, his long black coat feels to me like the sort of uniforms that teen delinquent gangs wear in Japan, except he's wearing it as a cape in a shounen protagonist sort of way. His gang friends wear black conic with the red symbol on his coat so it's likely their gang symbol.

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  2. Dude, as usual, awesome job with this video!! Finding your channel this year was a wonderful surprise; the thought, research and work you put into your videos really shines through. Thanks for sharing, this was very cool and I learned a lot 🙂 Take care and happy new year!

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  3. The reason why beans are beloved to be effective on demons by the Japanese is because of its pronunciation : Mame

    It sounds exactly the same as 魔滅, or Devil Destruction

    So throwing beans at Itto means you wish death or destruction upon him

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  4. This is just something I noticed but the fact that he's associated with a bull might be because of his element. Among the 5 Chinese zodiac elements, the Earth element consists of Dragon (Zhongli) , Dog (Gorou), Goat and Ox(Itto).

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  5. 荒瀧一斗's 斗 in chinese is a big Capacity unit.so the character has the image like "big" or "srong".

    for example:才高八斗 means very talented,斗膽 means

    Bold or audacious.

    The name うし(ushi) and cow in Japanese has two different Chinese characters:丑 牛,they are a little bit different

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  6. I hope there's a vid like this for Kokomi in the works. A why character vid makes sense for her, given how contentious she is as a character, but even then I hope that her taking inspiration both from zhuge lang and urashima taro/otohime folk tale is noted.

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  7. 4:23 /i am not japanese, but catching bugs and pitting them with each other is a thing around here. Anddd its the bugs actually die in heated battles. I had a cricket once and pitted them against the other kids
    wasnt the strongest but i made sure it never loses a limb
    —-still died of old age tho–

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  8. I think the comb animation is a reference to an old trope of “delinquent” gangs in America- movies involving these characters would often show them nervously or proudly fixing their gelled hair with a foldable comb; scenes from the movie Grease come to mind.

    The hair gel is also my personal headcannon for why Itto uses slime condensate as a talent level-up material.

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