Last year today, Mutsumi Inomata passed away at 63. I wished she could have stayed longer. I love her character designs, as a loser who got extremely extremely into Tales games (particularly Destiny remake, Rebirth, Graces, Berseria, and I'll throw Zesty in too for good measure). I was such a fan of her character designs and her watercolor art I watched all kinds of random things like Acrobunch and I even went through the pain of watching Brain Powerd. Truly. I saw that before I got into Gundam, so Toshiyuki Tomino meant little to me. All I cared about was Yoko Kanno and the person I want to celebrate today with this translation: Mutsumi Inomata.

This interview is centered on Genmu Senki Leda, a nice, contained, memorable movie/OVA that she served as animation director and character designer for. It was 10 pages long in the book (though there were also a lot of her sketches of Leda characters on the pages), and took me some time to translate. I also transcribe books by typing everything up first and search for unknown kanji by radical instead of using automated tools so screw you it took a long time to do all the things. The interview is not ultra in-depth about process type things, but Inomata's personality shows through really clearly in it, and it's actually really entertaining because of that. I also just am so happy to hear about some of her tastes. Like, she watched Gamba no Bouken and she likes hardboiled noir type stories. Anyway, I'm rambling now. Let's do this. Bold is interviewer, the rest is Inomata.

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