Sakurai gave a hint to Pyra's Reveal?

[HenryZusa]

Hi Smashboards,

I'm really happy that Pyra and Mythra have joined Smash!
Xenoblade 2 was my most played game in 2020 (I'm a bit delayed on releases, huge backlog).

So I just noticed something about the Direct's reveal and Sakurai Twitter.
It's a silly theory and I may be grasping at straws, but let me explain.


So on February 16th Nintendo announced the Nintendo Direct.
Later, Sakurai shared the following on Twitter:

Now, the silly theory comes here.

As we know, Pyra has fire powers, and to a certain degree that can be known from her name herself.
However, that's her english name.
In japanese, her name is Homura and Mythra's is Hikari.

Hikari means Light in Japanese, and Homura means something along Blaze/Fire.

Now, Kanjis in japanese have multiple ways to be pronounced.

The Kanji for fire is: 火
One of its ways to be pronounced is 'Hi'
But another one is 'Ho' (like in the word 'Hokage' from Naruto)

'Ho' in japanese is written with this japanese Hiragana: ほ

Now let's go back to Sakurai's tweet:

As we can see, the laughing onomatopoeia that Sakurai used is 'Ho Ho', kinda sarcastically.
And included it not only once but at the end of the sentence too.


What I mean, is that maybe Sakurai did this as a foresight for us that the next character was 'HOmura'

This is kinda stupid and I may be looking too much into it, but I just found it curious.
I haven't seen it mentioned and I'm sorry if this is considered spam.

Anyway, I'm glad Pyra is on the game

 

[kirbsmash]

What I mean, is that maybe Sakurai did this as a foresight for us that the next character was 'HOmura'

no, sadly. he said his posts meant nothing for hints.

 

[AnEasterEgg]

Sakurai has been known to troll exactly in the "ridiculously roundabout hint" way before, remember the hint for Byleth? I wouldn't put something like this past him.

 

[GolisoPower]

A lot of us from the Reimu thread thought this was a hint at Touhou because of "houhou", and "情報" (jouhou), which both rhyme with those. Reading this, this seems to fall more in line with hints he's done in the past, like the red eyes for K. Rool, the binary 17 for Byleth, etc.

Also, "houhou" could be used in the context of saying "I see". Reference the Japanese words of the famous "You're Approaching Me?" meme.