Hiroyuki Kanno

Overview

Hiroyuki Kanno (菅野 ひろゆき) was an influential Japanese game designer and scenario writer from Tokyo. He was famous for his eroge adventure games released in the 1990s and for founding the developer Abel Inc. Kanno's games often dealt with stories about multiple perspectives and sci-fi concepts like parallel dimensions which were uncommon for the eroge market at the time. His works are held in high regard by Japanese fans to this day and many creators have sighted Kanno as an inspiration for their own work. However, in 2011, Kanno passed away at the age of 43.

Biography

When Kanno was young he enjoyed reading books like the Dr. Dolittle series and the mystery novels starring Arsene Lupin. As he got older he also read the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen and Isaac Asimov who would influence his future games greatly [14]. When Kanno entered high school, he also began playing foreign PC games such as Ultima, Wizardry, and domestic titles like Nobunaga's Ambition. His experience playing these early PC titles is what inspired him to become a game designer [14].

Shortly after graduating from Hosei University, Kanno was employed by Himeya Soft where he worked for C's Ware, the company's eroge subsidiary, under the pen-name "Yukihiro Kenno" [3][5]. At the time, Kanno was a self-taught programmer that learned what he could from computer magazines like Micom Basic [14]. After working at C's Ware for a few months, he asked his boss if he could create a game. Not having a lot of confidence in Kanno's skills, his boss only granted him three months to make something. If he couldn't develop a game in that time, he would be fired [14]. Under that strict deadline, Kanno programmed 1993's Fatal Relations. After proving his abilities, Kanno was allowed to write his first game scenario the following year for Love Potion and would go on to produced several other works in 1994. Within months of Love Potion's February release, Kanno would debut as a director with Desire in July and direct his second title, Xenon: Mugen no Shitai, in December. Apparently Love Potion's story wasn't received well by players so Kanno made Desire with the intention of creating a better scenario [15]. Desire would end up being Kanno's first breakout hit and introduced his signature "multi-sight system" where the player could see the story unfold through the perspective of several people.

However, Kanno was beginning to butt heads with management at C's Ware. One of Desire's protagonists, Makoto, had her scenario changed by the company to be more erotic and, after making Xenon, Kanno was assigned to work on a more traditional eroge title that followed the company's guidelines called Amy's Fantasies in May 1995 [12][14]. After working on Amy's Fantasies in an uncredited capacity, Kanno quietly left C's Ware but still ended up creating his next title with the company [12]. As a freelancer, Kanno was able to obtain more creative control over his project which lead to the creation of EVE burst error in November 1995. The game further developed Desire's multi-sight concept, allowing the player to switch between two protagonists with the choices made by each character influencing the story of the other. The game was a huge success for its time, eventually selling more than 300,000 copies in Japan across different platforms [7]. The game would also spawn an entire franchise of sequels and remakes, although Hiroyuki Kanno would not be involved in their creation. The creator of Zero Escape, Kotaro Uchikoshi, even wrote the fifth entry in the series, EVE: New Generation, and later listed EVE as one of the titles that inspiration AI: The Somnium Files [8].

After EVE's release, Kanno was invited to join Elf Corporation by Masato Hiruta, one of the studio's founders. Elf Corporation was the biggest name in Japan's adult video game industry during the 1990s so Kanno accepted the offer. He was hired as one of the company's board members and would create one of his most famous titles while at the company in 1996, a multi-dimensional time-traveling adventure game called YU-NO. The game introduced an innovative system called ADMS which allowed the player to travel to parallel timelines within the story, basically an early example of an interactive flowchart. The way Kanno incorporated the game's branching narrative into the game's story and gameplay mechanics was very unique for its time and was an evolution of concepts popularized by Chunsoft's Sound Novel franchise. The title was critically acclaimed and was a commercial success as well with the game selling 100,000 copies within the first year of its release on the PC-98 and later becoming the 63rd best selling title on the Sega Saturn [10][13].

However, Kanno felt isolated at Elf while he worked there. The staff at Elf were used to working with Masato Hiruta and had a hard time adjusting to an outsider like Kanno who had suddenly become a board member [12]. So, after his short stay at Elf, Kanno left to form his own independent company named Abel in late 1997. Kanno created the company in order to ensure creative control over his projects and released the company's first game, Exodus Guilty, in 1998. The game was similar in premise to YU-NO and followed the stories of three protagonists across three different time periods. Over the next 13 years Kanno would create several games at Abel including The Gentleman Detective series, Card of Destiny and many others. However on December 19, 2011, only a few months after the death of his close friend and colleague Ryu Umemoto, Kanno passed away at the age of 43 due to a hemorrhagic stroke [11].

References

1. RIP Hiroyuki Kanno (1974-2011) by Audun Sorlie (HG101, 2012).
2. Hiroyuki Kanno at MobyGames.
3. Hiroyuki Kanno at Japanese Wikipedia.
4. Hiroyuki Kanno Interview featured in Vol. 87 of Da Vinci (July 2001) Source.
5. Otaku: Japan's Database Animals by Hiroki Azuma (Pages: 106-107).
6. Interview with Hiroyuki Kanno (ZDNet, 12/6/1998).
7. EVE burst error Official English Product Page (2000).
8. Interview with Mr. Kotaro Uchikoshi and Mr. Akira Okada by Gabby Snyder (Medium, 2019).
9. Famitsu Interview (2007).
10. Issue 165 of "Comptiq" (March 1997).
11. Abel's Official Announcement of Hiroyuki Kanno's Passing.
12. Interview with Ryuu Takami by Koji Fukuyama (Automaton, 01/24/2017).
13. Famitsu's Japanese Sega Saturn Sales Data (10/22/1994 - 04/04/1999).
14. Hiroyuki Kanna at Nico Nico Pedia.

15. DESIRE 背徳の螺旋 (Game Catalog Wiki).