W ho would have thought running a mascot agency involved so much driving? Yes, someone has to take the mascots to gigs, but you have an employee for that. It doesn’t explain why, as manager Michizane ‘Michi’ Sugawara, you spend next to no time behind your desk. Instead, it’s because there are people to talk to and hundreds of things to be found, gathered or smashed. Actually managing your business takes a back seat in Promise Mascot Agency. Given Michi’s gangland background, there are obvious comparisons to the Yakuza games here (also, Michi shares a voice actor with Kazuma Kiryu), and – minus the violence – there is a similar vibe. The town of Kaso-Machi, where Michi is exiled to run the eponymous agency after failing his clan, is a compact open world to bounce around (in this case in a small truck), touching base with quirky NPCs and distractions. Equally, there’s an overlap with Persona 4, in the game’s diorama-like rural enclave and personal stories that unfold as you build bonds.
As these references imply, Kaizen has created a game that feels very Japanese. Promise Mascot Agency is stacked with cultural markers, reinforcing a lot of things westerners have learned about the country from videogames over decades, from food to customs and myths, and steeped in associated imagery and aural cues (the dirty shading style and anarchic scene transitions invoke No More Heroes, for example). It’s a concoction that gels with Kaizen’s own strange mythologies, previously demonstrated in Paradise Killer, now present in lore about a local yakuza curse and the bizarre mascots themselves – not people in costumes but a species in their own right.
Kaso-Machi, a neglected town, is a haven for losers, and the mascots you recruit are as down on their luck as Michi. The first you meet is To-fu, a confidence-free soy block who can’t stop crying. Others include a salaryman cat who’s lost his gig as a bank mascot, a bat with a permanently illuminated light on his head, and an offal mascot with BO issues. It’s difficult to warm to the latter, but all are drawn and written so sharply that it’s easy to sympathise with their plights. And seeing them find new resolve as they complete jobs adds a pleasing altruism to our profitmaking.