with sexualizing a 17-year-old character, Itagaki answered, "In Japan, that's okay. Maybe it's 20 in America." He said, "I was 27 when I created Kasumi. I'm older now, but 17-year-old girls are still gorgeous." Itagaki said the Dead or Alive series contributed its character Ayane, rather than the "very soft" Kasumi, for a cameo appearance in 2004's Ninja Gaiden because Kasumi did not fit with the game's "very hard-edged" basis as "DOA is based on a 'softer' concept, and she is rather symbolic of the game as a whole". He said that if Ninja Gaiden had featured Kasumi, it would have become less a "story of [Ryu] Hayabusa and ninjas" and more a story of Kasumi ("Kasumi-den") and a "DOA action game". Itagaki has described himself as personally "a fan of Kasumi" as his favorite DOA character. He also said he felt "responsible for her" and was "very close to her". When hackers found a way to remove her clothing in DOA2, Itagaki felt this "was an attack on her". Tecmo's lawyers sued software company West Side, the authors of the hack, for violating copyright, and won the case and damages of two million yen (over ). Kasumi's nude model can be also accessed using a GameShark cheat device in the Dreamcast version of DOA2, and one fan-made mod for DOA5 modified her training suit to remove most of the clothing. In 2012, 16 years after her debut appearance, Kasumi was redesigned to look less cartoon-like and more realistic with a "grown up" appearance in DOA5. The game's art director Yuta Saito said, "From DOA4 we wanted to evolve the characters in a slightly realistic direction. The most difficult, and you don't have to ask, is Kasumi. Kasumi is the face of DOA and the eternal heroine. And for such a popular character like Kasumi, to change her form we really needed a lot of courage and it really was a big challenge. But if we didn't do that, we couldn't make DOA5 and we wouldn't be able to show you anything." Producer Yasuke Hayashi said the process of remodeling Kasumi has sparked most disputes in the development team, especially since she is "a character that is not so much out on the table, with hidden feelings, and it's been difficult to express such a 'hidden look'." GamesRadar noted that "the manga influences on her facial featureswhile still apparenthave been