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one thing neat about the game is that Square partnered with manga publisher Shogakukan to have various manga artists employed by the publisher to provide the main character designs for each of the 7 chapters (if you notice, the copyright indicia shows that Shogakukan and the manga artists own part of the game's copyright). For prehistory the artist that served as the main designer was Yoshinori Kobayashi, who at the time was best known for the manga Obocchama-kun, serialized in CoroCoro Comic (the same magazine known for serializing series such as Doraemon); a gag series about the antics of a snobby rich kid  ...a few years after Live A Live came out, Obocchama-kun ended and Kobayashi would switch gears to create the series Neo Gōmanism, a manga infamous for telling a revisionist history of World War II full of denial of Japan's war crimes. thankfully AFAIK all of the other manga artists involved in the game have much cleaner records than Kobayashi's
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Mar 27, 2024 01:41
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 18:31 |
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This chapter's main character designer is the manga artist Yoshihide Fujiwara, who's most notable work (and most recent at the time of Live a Live's development) would be as the artist of the manga Kenji (written by Ryuchi Matsuda), a shonen manga serialized in Weekly Shonen Sunday from '88 to '92. The manga follows Kenji Goh, a teenager who trains himself in martial arts. Fujiwara is also one of the regular artists to work with manga writer Nanatsuki Kyoichi, on titles such as Jesus, the official Virtua Fighter manga, Yami no Aegis, and BUGS: Summer of Predators
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Apr 12, 2024 22:41
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Of the manga artists to have contributed character designs to the game, Gosho Aoyama is the one most likely familiar to those in the west. Early in the game's development, he was wrapping up his Weekly Shonen Sunday series Yaiba, about a young samurai boy.  When Yaiba finished, Aoyama would go straight ahead to start making a new series for the magazine, the one people here might recognize (or at least more likely than any other series that'll get brought up in the thread): Detective Conan (or Case Closed as it's called in America) 
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Apr 15, 2024 19:35
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This chapter's lead character designer Osamu Ishiwata's most relevant works (at least notable enough to garner english wikipedia articles and coming out close-ish to when Live a Live did) were the Weekly Shonen Sunday titles B.B. (running from '85 to '91) and its continuation LOVe (running from '93-99)  The former (short for "Burning Blood") was about a hotheaded trumpet player who gives up his music career to go into the world of underground boxing, while the later is about a girl who fakes being a boy to enroll in an all boys school so she can get into it's tennis program, to get the chance to have a showdown against a boy she knew that had moved away
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Apr 20, 2024 23:44
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Present Day character designer Ryōji Minagawa was the artist of Spriggan (written by Hiroshi Takashige), a series that started in '89 in Weekly Shonen Sunday, before being moved to Shonen Sunday Zokan (a monthly magazine) from '92 to '96 The series followed the adventures of a group of black ops operatives empowered by ancient technology, whose mission was to prevent said ancient technology from falling into the wrong hands. Later down the line he would be the artist of Project ARMS; it appears he's also been doing video game work as well, serving as the character designer on the game 10,000 Bullets. Meanwhile Near Future's character designer was Kazuhiko Shimamoto and I'm having a bit of a hard time tracking down exactly what he was working on around the time Live a Live was made. A lot of his stuff doesn't garner a proper wikipedia article (though notably around this time he did the manga adaptation of Kamen Rider ZO) but also he seems to have worked on a ton of stuff.
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Apr 22, 2024 06:42
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One thing interesting to note is that while most of the scenarios were written by Takashi Tokita (the game's director), this scenario and prehistory were written by Nobuyuki Inoue, who was the game's battle director and designer (though Tokita did serve as near future's event designer)
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Apr 28, 2024 00:02
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 18:31 |
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Wrapping up our look into the mangaka involved in the game is Distant Future's illustrator Yumi Tamura, the only woman out of the guest artists. Her main work at the time of Live a Live's development was Basara, serialized in Bessatsu Shōjo Comic from '90-'98. Basara follows the story of Sasara, whose twin brother was believed to be the hero of prophecy who would free post-apocalyptic Japan from the rule of the tyrannical Golden Emperor and his sons. When the Red King (one of the aforementioned sons) burns Sasara's village down (resulting in her brother dying), she disguises herself as her brother to keep the people hopeful and lead the rebellion. Complicating things further is that when out of disguise at one point she ends up falling for a mysterious man... who unbeknownst to her turns out to be the Red King (who himself is unaware of her being the leader of the rebellion)
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Apr 29, 2024 01:19
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