Tales of series, Dragon Quest illustrator Mutsumi Inomata passes away

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Tales of Xillia Mutsumi Inomata illustration

On March 18, it was announced that character designer and illustrator Mutsumi Inomata has died. According to a post by her sister on the illustrator’s official X account, Inomata passed away on March 10, aged 63. Although she worked on a broad range of titles across various mediums, she is probably best known overseas for being the main character designer on Bandai Namco’s prolific “Tales of” RPG series. 

Her work on the Tales of series began with 1997’s Tales of Destiny and ended with 2016’s Tales of Berseria. During this time, she did character designs for around a dozen games in the series including Tales of Eternia and Tales of Xillia (pictured above). Inomata’s other video game-related credits included her costume designs for characters in Tekken 5, Tekken 6 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2. She also did the cover artwork for Japanese novels based on the popular RPG Dragon Quest. Square Enix’s official game guide X account gave their condolences. 

Post translation: In response to the news of Mutsumi Inomata’s passing, all of us at the editorial department would like to express our deepest condolences. Thank you very much for bringing color to this world with your many wonderful illustrations, such as the one for the novel version of Dragon Quest that was released in 1989. The last thing you drew for us was the box art illustration for the novels when they were reissued for Dragon Quest’s 30th anniversary. Once again, we would like to express our respect and gratitude for your many accomplishments over the years. Please rest peacefully. 

Inomata made diverse contributions to anime, including as animation director for City Hunter, design coordinator on Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and original character designer on Brain Powerd. 

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Verity Townsend
Verity Townsend

Automaton West Editor and translator. She has a soft spot for old-school Sierra adventure games and Final Fantasy VIII (yes, 8!). Can often be found hunting down weird forgotten games and finding out everything about them. Frequently muses about characters and lines from Metal Gear Solid and Disco Elysium. Aims to keep Automaton fresh and interesting with a wide variety of articles.

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  1. I remember her work from Tales Of Symphonia when i played it on Gamecube back in the day, and also i did not know she was the Animation Director for City Hunter and a Key Animation Artist for Urusei Yatsura. Very rarely do you hear about people going into multiple industries, and just being successful but she really did it all. Very prolific person.