There’s a rather lovely interview at The Guardian today with Hidetaka Miyazaki, director of Elden Ring and The Duskbloods and president of FromSoftware. In it, he talks about the themes of his work: ruin and rebirth, yearning, hope and hopelessness, and so forth.
He also talks about hands. And, seemingly unprompted, feet.
In the interview, Miyazaki is asked specifically about the imagery of hands in The Duskbloods and Elden Ring, such as the giant hand-shaped enemies in the latter and the close-up of one hand reaching for another in the introductory cinematic for the former. Miyazaki says he’s not really consistently aware that he employs such imagery in his work, but he then takes an interesting angle as he ponders this thought further:
“Take a look online and there’s a rumor that I have a bit of a thing for feet, but I’m not honestly sure where this comes from. I feel like I’m trying to depict some side of human nature or the human existence that is difficult to describe.”
Okay! You know! I had never really thought about this before, but sure, let’s go. This is how I learned that my editor wrote about this topic four whole years ago, and it’s been a meme since well before then. It’s true that there are just a lot of barefooted characters in Miyazaki’s games, and we often get cutscenes or close-ups of those bare feet, or at least get to see them very well-rendered and artfully done. So I guess fans have theorized repeatedly over the years that this is a thing for Miyazaki.
I think I mostly buy Miyazaki’s answer, though I’m amused that he seems to be overly preoccupied with what people are saying about him online. I do like the notion that the giant, horrifying enemy hands in Elden Ring are him “trying to depict some side of human nature or the human existence that is difficult to describe.” If I think about it for a bit I can probably understand what he means, but it’s rather difficult to concentrate on the symbolism when one of these fuckers has burst out of the ground and grabbed me.