If the announcement of Capcom and CyberConnect 2′s partnership on Asura’s Wrath at the Tokyo Game Show surprised you, then wait until you hear this.

Capcom and White Knight Chronicles developer Level-5 are currently working in collaboration with each other. Capcom’s Keiji Inafune initially contacted Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino with the idea.

“This rumor is true,” Inafune told Diamond Online (via Andriasang), “Right now, the two of us, with our staff, are working together on some truly interesting things. Even though Mr. Hino is younger, he’s someone I respect. I wanted to try working with him, so I contacted him.”

Inafune went on to say exactly why he respects Hino as much as he does.

“The thing I most respect about Hino is his work ethic.” He joked, “Before I met Hino, I had confidence in the amount of work I was doing, and even thought that maybe I was the hardest working person in the game industry. But after meeting him, I thought, ‘I’m probably not number one.’”

What Inafune admires the most about Hino is that he works hard and in the long run it produces results.

“The Professor Layton series has shipped 9.5 million units worldwide. The Inazuma Eleven series has shipped 2.7 million units domestically. Who wouldn’t want to work with someone like Hino, who works hard and also produces results?”

Unfortunately, neither Inafune or Hino provided specifics about what they’re working on.

Elsewhere in the interview and separate from talk on the two companies uniting, Hino spoke a bit about overseas expansion.

“Next year or maybe the year after that, we’d like to have Level-5 exhibit at E3. While it’s recently become normal for us to exhibit at the Tokyo Game Show, to exhibit at E3 we feel that we have one more mountain to cross.”

Level-5 recently opened an office in Los Angeles. However, Hino explains that he has no intentions on taking his company public and is more concerned about developing Level-5 as a brand.