Sakurai Saiyan
Image: Nintendo Life

Legendary developer Masahiro Sakurai has more than proven his worth in the industry, having helmed all-timers like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Kirby Air Riders, and Kid Icarus: Uprising, while also providing one of the most comprehensive series of videos on game development with his YouTube channel.

It’s no surprise, then, that his peers in the industry look up to him quite a lot. To demonstrate, former Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada provided one of the most amusing yet definitely-accurate descriptions of Sakurai that we’ve ever seen.

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In a lengthy X post detailing his views on both FromSoftware developer Hidetaka Miyazaki and Masahiro Sakurai, he described the latter as ‘a Saiyan’, the race of powerful warriors from the Dragon Ball franchise. He likened him specifically to protagonist Goku, who is often known for his light-hearted demeanour and keen ability to solve problems with simple solutions.

Here’s what Harada-san said:

By the way, the other game developer in that photo is Masahiro Sakurai. If you ask me, he’s basically: “A Saiyan who genuinely believes he’s just another ordinary human.”

Every now and then, when the rest of us are struggling with some problem, he’ll say something that sounds exactly like Goku saying, “Well… why don’t you just fly?”

And I’ll reply, “Because we humans can’t use Flight Technique.”

Then he just stares at me with a completely puzzled look.

To put it in terms of Demon Slayer, I’d describe him as:

“Like Muzan Kibutsuji casually showing up at a drinking party where all the Hashira have gathered, genuinely believing he’s just another ordinary guest”.

That’s the kind of person he is.

So there you have it: Sakurai is basically a Saiyan. It’s honestly lovely to see developers big each other up like this, and everything we’ve heard about Sakurai seems to indicate that the man has not a bad bone in his body.

After the launch of Kirby Air Riders, it’s not clear what he might be working on now (if anything), but hopefully we won’t have to wait too long to find out more.