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Tales Of series character designer Mutsumi Inomata passed away on March 10, aged 63

by Kite Stenbuck on 18 March, 2024

Mutsumi Inomata, the Japanese illustrator best known for designing characters in numerous Tales Of entries, passed away on March 10, 2024. She was born on December 23, 1960, and she was 63 years old at the time of her passing.

Inomata's younger sister broke the news on the illustrator's X account eight days after the actual death. This is done after her family and close relatives have done the funeral rites. The sister did not provide the details behind Inomata's passing, but she did find an unfinished draft sketch at the moment.

Although Mutsumi Inomata was best known for designing characters for video games and anime shows, she began her career as an animator. She made her debut in the 14th episode of the 1979 anime show Josephina the Whale. Inomata began taking more jobs as an illustrator in 1984 when she drew covers for Keisuke Fujikawa's light novel series Utsu no Miko and designed the characters for its anime adaptation.

Inomata was also involved in a number of other famous franchises. She had worked with Enix (now Square Enix) since 1989 to draw covers for Dragon Quest novels and drama CDs. Sunrise also employed her help in designing characters for Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and its sequel Gundam SEED Destiny. She was also the one who produced character drafts for Future GPX Cyber Formula and Brain Powerd; the latter was a 1998 mecha anime show made by Sunrise and Yoshiyuki Tomino that had also appeared in 2nd Super Robot Wars Alpha, Super Robot Wars J, and the Another Century's Episode series.

And that brings us to the franchise that defined Mutsumi Inomata the most: Bandai Namco's Tales Of series. Her first involvement with the franchise was as the character designer for Tales of Destiny, and the last mainline console title she worked on was Tales of Berseria. She was also involved in the later mobile games Tales of the Rays and Tales of Crestoria.

Here is the complete list of Tales Of entries Mutsumi Inomata was directly involved in, sorted by the Japanese release years of the first platform version(s) for each title: