We mentioned in a Photobucket Grab Bag a bit ago that Claire wasn’t originally a game character, so why not expand on that a little bit? We had the honor of hosting a brief Q&A with Igusa Matsuyama, the series character designer, and at one point they said this:
Claire was a character I originally created for the manga series, but after [her debut], they asked for her appearance in the games. It made me happy.
– Igusa Matsuyama
Yeah! Taking this little nugget of info and investigating further, we can find that Claire was not only originally a character Matsuyama made themselves for use outside the games, but she was the star in some manga created by Matsuyama based on the Story of Seasons series published by Shogakukan. Specifically the year after Pete’s manga in the 4th Grade Learning magazines between April ‘98 to March ’99, far before “Harvest Moon for Girl” would even be conceptualized and eventually released in 2000. The magazine would probably look a little something like this:
Huh, I guess this would be the earliest point Doraemon and Story of Seasons were hanging out together. Then there’s Tamagotchi, Mario, Kirby, Puyo Puyo, Pikachu, Detective Conan… everyone is here! Anyway, Claire would go on to be a bit of a regular for Matsuyama and appear in other later comics such as the ones included with guidebooks.
She’s not the only Matsuyama-original character that would appear in the manga either! There was also Sakuramaru, Pete’s horse who is a bit anthropomorphized to walk on his hind legs and even has his own story in Pete’s manga. He would appear in a few future guidebook manga alongside Claire and also occasionally feature in artwork on Igusa Matsuyama’s personal site. One interesting example of Claire’s appearances on that site is a play journal of Harvest Moon for Girls that featured a Star Trek fanfic twist where Claire was a member of Starfleet! Matsuyama goes out of their way to make sure the reader knows that it’s just a fun scenario for their site and not actually related to the canon of Story of Seasons though.
So now you know the rest of the story. Well, mostly. Hopefully we can actually get the original manga translated and released some day to share. If you happen to know (or are) someone with time and expertise who wants to give it a shot, feel free to stop by our Discord! Now, with all these revelations out of the way, please enjoy what I believe is Claire’s first ever appearance in Bokumono media:
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