It struck me as kind of odd, seeing this after I finished Kawase's quests. The Sayonara ++ collector's edition artbook has a few messages and comments from Toshinobu Kondo; one of the messages states that "Sakai-san and I are working really hard on a new game, so please look forward to play it!" That made it sound like Kiyoshi Sakai would be more centrally involved with Fresh than he actually was, unless it was referring to some other, unannounced game (though, if that was the case, it would seem unlikely to be an Umihara Kawase game at this point).
Quote from: KawaseFan on May 04, 2019, 01:44:38 AM
It struck me as kind of odd, seeing this after I finished Kawase's quests. The Sayonara ++ collector's edition artbook has a few messages and comments from Toshinobu Kondo; one of the messages states that "Sakai-san and I are working really hard on a new game, so please look forward to play it!" That made it sound like Kiyoshi Sakai would be more centrally involved with Fresh than he actually was, unless it was referring to some other, unannounced game (though, if that was the case, it would seem unlikely to be an Umihara Kawase game at this point).
I've seen the quote you mentioned from this link: https://www.strictlylimitedgames.com/releases/sayonara-umihara-kawase-plusplus/
I'd like to think Sakai is working on a new IP but I think Kondo was talking about Fresh! in that quote since it wouldn't make sense talking about getting back the rights to Umihara Kawase and then in the same sentence mention a new IP as opposed to a new Umihara Kawase game.