Cooking Well-done Steak — a giant meat on a bone — might sound like an everyday cartoon trope. The kind you’d see in Flintstones parodies or other old Saturday morning shows. But for Monster Hunter creators, that visual gag was born from something much more specific. That easygoing sizzling steak on a pit moment, complete with the catchy jingle, is an homage to a retro caveman anime.
In a Nintendo’s Iwata Asks interview, series art director Kaname Fujioka revealed that the iconic Well-done Steak meat was directly inspired by a 1970 classic anime. It’s called First Human Giatrus or also known as Gon, The Stone-Age Boy.
The prehistoric-themed slice-of-life comedy comic strip by Shunji Sonoyama debuted in 1965, and was made into full-blown manga and anime series in 1974. In Japan the series was quite popular for its giant meat. If you type in ギャートルズ (Giatrus) on Google Search, the first autocomplete suggestion is ‘ギャートルズ 肉’ — the kanji for ‘meat.’
“When I first started making Monster Hunter, I had a certain world in mind that I was inspired from,” Fujioka reminisced. “Remember that old manga called First Human Giatrus? It’s got bones with meat on them.”
(Click to expand)
(Click to expand)
For Fujioka and team, it wasn’t simply a nostalgic nod to a beloved classic. He also thought the ridiculous image of a giant grilled meat captured something he needed to convey in Monster Hunter: a sense of ‘fun.’
“Mammoths are stomping around all over. You slice off their meat and eat it, but you wouldn’t really call it brutal,” he said, referring to the Giatrus comic. “You chop off some meat and gobble it up like it’s delicious. That easygoingness is very human.”
“It’s actually sort of warm and laid back,” replied Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata.
“I like that feeling of just eating what you want to eat. I wanted to convey a sense of how fun that type of thing can be,” said Fujioka on how he ended up making the whole Well-done Steak cooking process into the Monster Hunter series.
“So everyone gets together and casually enjoys hunting,” added Iwata.
You can definitely see the resemblance to the Well-done Steak item icon. And just like Giatrus, Monster Hunter slipped in cozy moments of feast amid all the hunting chaos. Complete with ‘So Tasty!’ callout as a reminder — that even in a world of dragons and danger, a perfectly grilled meat never goes out of style.
