In this episode of re:Play, Greg Off sits down with Kyoko Yamashita — founder of Cassis Communications, XSEED co-founder, former SVP of Marketing Communications at Enhance, and the credited cultural consultant on Forza Horizon 6. For 30 years, Kyoko has been the person Japanese studios call when they need someone who can hold both sides of a creative conversation at once, usually without ever putting her own name on the box.

From a bilingual LA-to-Tokyo-to-LA upbringing to a paralegal job at Honda to a 1997 leap of faith into a tiny Squaresoft US office, Kyoko traces the whole arc. Along the way she led PR through Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, and Kingdom Hearts, produced the first US Final Fantasy orchestral concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall, co-founded XSEED, spent a decade helping Tetsuya Mizug ...