Sogna/Viper Staff and History

[Arizona]

Now that I don't feel like a jerk since I finally bought that Viper F40 book I said I'd get forever ago (thanks again JG!)...

This is something I've been meaning to get around to for a while - I've wanted to know more about the staff of Sogna/the Viper game series, in particular because their quality, placement in time, and staff background seem especially interesting (all of which have a fair bit of crossover with my interest in anime). And because they're great of course, but I'm preaching to the choir here.

It's difficult since many people in this industry used (multiple) pen names, so it's likely we'll never have much beyond just a name if even that for some of them. Still, there's a lot of good information, mainly from here, but it's scattered all over the place. I was hoping to perhaps gather all that together and fill in some blanks if possible, starting with compiling what I already know (or at least remember well enough to pull right now). I've done my best to search around, but there may be some errors/questions that were already answered here:

Sogna started with about half of its staff coming from anime production companies Kitty Films/Studio Deen and in particular its Ranma 1/2 projects (TV series began airing in 1989).

It was preceded by M.I.N. and Silence - I'm not really clear on how exactly things worked here though. I'm assuming both were a part of this ex-anime group, and I know Silence was around for quite a while afterwards doing their own things (namely Jewel Bem Hunter Lime) - M.I.N. was a part of Silence, who then splintered off to form Sogna, I assume?EDIT: See JG's post below, Sogna was a division of Silence.

People -

P-Warrior
Kenichirou Nakamura. ANN link, Wiki. President of Sogna throughout its history and primarily acted as a writer for the Viper series, although as seen on his website also a capable artist (also: his various animation credits years back). Writer and director for Animahjong as well. One of the ex-Kitty Films/Studio Deen staffers.

Awaji Sugawara
Takahiro Kimura. Character design on Viper V16 Rise, GTB, and F40. Has a long and healthy career working on other games and as a character designer, animator, and animation director in the mainstream anime industry.

Edage Katsura
Kenichirou Katsura. Character designer for Viper V10 (Northern Lights), CTR, and RSR. Animator on Animahjong. Link here indicates his work on anime (character design for Macross 7 being a pretty significant credit), but based on what's listed there I'm not that's what he's doing these days.

Masa
Masahide Yanagisawa. (Wiki) Character design and animator director for Viper V16 Imagine and Guynarock R, character design for Viper M5. Judging from his style and credits I'd wager he's a major bro of Katsura. I'm seeing (柳沢 正秀,マサ,ジュテームやな茶) by his name, I'm not sure if those are pen names he used or something else.

Sasayan
Masakatsu Sasaki. (Wiki) Character design and animation director for Viper V6 and Viper GTS, key animation on Viper M1 (The May Works and My Mothers). Wiki says he did 3D graphics for Guynarock R and key animation on Animahjong V3. Outside of that: Lots and lots of animation credits. This does include Ranma 1/2 Nettou Hen (also did work on the first installments of the Fatal Fury and Dirty Pair Flash OVAs, which Obari and Kimura were involved with respectively). Most recently, character designer and chief animation director on the popular Saki and an upcoming spin-off, and A Channel.

shinobu
Kenji Oshima. Staff member, programmer. Their (assumed to be anyway) name can be used as a target modification when running certain Viper games.

Other stuff -

Erogos
A division of Yui Artworks if I understand correctly, their games used a version of the Viper M3 engine, indicating a programmer went over to them, possibly other staff as well. Along with Yui though, they've disappeared, their last game coming out in late 2007.

[JG]

This is wonderful stuff.  I've been meaning to compile a staff list and an influnces/influenced list for some time.

Some clarifications:
M.I.N was a subdivision of Silence, as was Sogna.  Neither was a fully independant company.  I don't know who the "president" of M.I.N was, as we know P-Warrior to be at Sogna.  I presume the presidents of these companies were vice-presidents or otherwise important people at Silence.  Modern h-game companies still use this paradigm of specialized subdivisions, but in these days they're mostly assigned to a specific artist.  TechArts for example is the parent company of G.J., OLE, SQUEEZ, and others, with each subcompany's games drawn by a different artist/character designer.  This allows the companies to share programmers, sound crews, voice actresses, and other support staff, reducing costs by sharing them amonsgt the group.

Shinobu was the programmer for the Windows version of SGS.  I don't know if he had a hand in the PC98 version or not.  He apparently did not have anything to do with the AGS system used in M3 and the Erogos games.

Yui of Erogos is a former Sogna staff artist.  I think I found some info online saying he worked on V6 R (Double Impact I think).  I'm sure I've got it bookmarked but I don't want to go looking for it right now.  When Sogna broke up he (and the AGS programmer, too?) decided ot head out on thier own, rather than follow the remaining staff to Studio G-1 NEO to work on Angel Blade.

You can get some more staff members from the credits of the later Sogna games.  It's the earlier games that are hard to credit - as there are no in-game credits and the manuals don't give any support either.

[Arizona]

Thanks for all the info, that makes a lot of sense.

Did Silence do anything else in particular? Beyond what's here and some Jewel Hunter stuff on other systems, I don't know much about them. I'm not seeing anything else on Japanese Wikipedia though, so is that really about it?

Speaking of which, it was interesting to Google translate the Wiki entry on Kenichirou Nakamura - he worked under Masami Obari on Dancougar back in the day, apparently? (The entry on Obari cites Nakamura specifically as his pupil, although I'm not sure accurate that "translation" is). I don't suppose that relationship explains the GTS anime.

Also, are all those anime credits listed for him specifically for animation? That's a pretty interesting track record.

I'm also guessing we don't have any leads on who Sasayan is or what else he did. His style is generic enough to be tough to spot as it is...

I've been re-getting a lot of stuff lately - it sure is easy to forget what you don't actually have anymore after two hard drive crashes only a year apart - so I should have more to go off of soon.

[Arizona]

Mikan Ehime
Risa Ebata - Started being credited under this name only as of 2007. If a Google translate of her Wikipedia page is to be trusted (there is a notice on a lack of sources), she joined Silence fresh off of graduating high school (!!) in 1996. Apparently given a nickname of "小娘" due to then being the youngest staff member at the time. I'm seriously doubting the machine translation of that, so any ideas would be welcome.EDIT: As JG points out below, it means "Young Girl".

Has numerous Viper animation credits as 小娘 and later Ehime. Notably credited as animation director and character designer on Viper M3-3.2, the one with all the weird production issues that made it take 4 years.

Animation credits -
As "Young Girl": Viper BTR, Viper CTR, Viper F40
As Mikan Ehime: Viper GTB, Viper Island, Typing Viper, Viper RSR, Viper GT1 (was also Animation Director on this one)

Was that Keiji Gotoh who was set to do the original character designs on M3 or a remarkable imitation? Ehime's first anime credit outside of Viper is apparently on Cyberteam in Akihabara, in particular for key animation on episode 26 (interestingly under Risa Ebata whereas she was credited as 小娘 for an earlier episode - seeing as how she switched to Ebata full stop recently, I'd wager that may be her real name). Gotoh served as animation director and key animator on episode 26, so I wonder if there's some connection there. This would've been in 1998.

Anyway, since then she's had numerous credits in the anime industry, mainly with Studio G-1 Neo related staff like Obari (surprise surprise) and Satelight. Notables:

-Gaiking: Legend of Daiku Maryu (Animation for robot docking sequences, Character design for the awesome second opening directed by Masami Obari)
-Gravion/Gravion Zwei (An Obari directed show - assistant animation director for some episodes of the first show, Character design for Gravion Zwei)
-Dancougar Nova (Another Obari show, animation for the opening - worth mentioning that this is the show where Kenichirou Nakamura returned to the mainstream industry, doing storyboards)
-Super Robot Taisen OG: The Inspector (Obari directed show, Character designer)
-Macross Frontier (Satelight. Directed by Shoji Kawamori. This is a big one - Character designer, also credited for animation direction and key animation across the show and the two movies)
-AKB0048 (Satelight. Directed by Shoji Kawamori. Character designer. Coming in April 2012 - Based on the Japanese idol group AKB48, it has a sci-fi setting)

Those most recent credits in particular are a big deal. She's been going places alright - it'll be interesting to see what she does next.

[JG]

Mikan Ehime
Risa Ebata - Started being credited under this name only as of 2007. If a Google translate of her Wikipedia page is to be trusted (there is a notice on a lack of sources), she joined Silence fresh off of graduating high school (!!) in 1996. Apparently given a nickname of "小娘" due to then being the youngest staff member at the time. I'm seriously doubting the machine translation of that, so any ideas would be welcome.

Yes, that's accurate.  I've seen that story myself.  She was just 17 or 18 when she started working on VIPER games.  Not only did she animate them, she possibly provided some of the voice talent.

Was that Keiji Gotoh who was set to do the original character designs on M3 or a remarkable imitation?

Yes, he was the original designer.  There's even a comment about it in the bio section of her Wikipedia page, with a link to his.  At the very bottom of his is an explanation of his work on VIPER-M3, which didn't go so well so he left the project and she took over.  I probably need to explain this on the M3 product page sometime.

She's been going places alright - it'll be interesting to see what she does next.

She's only 33 or 34 now, so alot can happen.  If Sogna was still possibly still be making the occasional game with them.  For all we know, Hitodzuma Kasumi-san may have ended up being a Sogna game!

[Arizona]

Iiiinteresting. Thanks again.

Oh, by the way, the thing I was doubting most in the machine translation was what it was outputting for 小娘 - anyone know what that means?

Also, working off of Wikipedia or whatever has been good enough so far, but is there anywhere that the full credits for Viper games are listed in text format? It'd be easier to copy/paste names in Japanese from that to figure out who's who. There are Japanese sites that list the full credits for games, although the ones I had on hand were mainly for more mainstream stuff so no luck so far.

edit: There's some names bandied about here - not exactly a full credit listing from what's available, but it's something to go on. I'll be looking around in the mean time either way.

[JG]

Oh, by the way, the thing I was doubting most in the machine translation was what it was outputting for 小娘 - anyone know what that means?

Young girl.



Let me know if you find a site with credits listing.  I have a partial listing based on translating kanji and kana from the credits ANM files, but so few games actually had credits that it only works for the newer games.  And alot of VIPER folks used psuedonyms like 小娘 or Awaji Sugawara, so its difficult to properly attribute those.  I expect we'll have to do Japanese Wikipedia searches for all the VIPER game titles to fill in alot of missing data.

[Arizona]

Ahh, yes, that does make considerably more sense than "Puss". :B

MONTAN
Yuji Moriyama. (Wiki) Character design and animation director for Viper V12 and Viper BTR. Quite the industry vet with a wide range of credits, probably most famous for Project A-Ko, one of the highlights of the highlight-filled 80's. He's used a number of different pseudonyms over the years.

Hideki Tamura
ANN, Wiki. Robo translator credits him as Director of Game Design for Viper Paradice. Started out as an animator, then moved to the game industry (apparently as a freelancer). Did the original character design and story (and later actual game design/planning) of Cotton, the 90's shooter series from Success starring a cute witch (retroactively considered an origin point of modern moe shooters). Looks to mainly be a game director and designer now, lots of mobile phone game credits. He's mentioned to have been a part of Studio MIN, but this is a group of animators that disbanded in 1991, apparently nothing to do with M.I.N. Yuji Moriyama was a part of that group.

Also, going to go back and update some credits on the first post (Sasayan = Masakatsu Sasaki, credits for Yanagisawa)

[Arizona]

Tokuyuki Matsutake
ANN link, Wiki. Character designer and animation on Viper V8 (Friday the 18th). Had an apprenticeship under Atsuko Nakajima, character designer and animation director of Ranma 1/2, during the show's run. Since then, he's been an animator's animator with a huge variety of credits to his name with some very occasional character design (notables in that respect: Medabots, Tales of Phantasia, Tales of Vesperia, You're Under Arrest! TV).

Updates to previous posts: Risa Ebata's specific animation credits under her pen names, ANN and Wiki links to Kenichiro Nakamura.

[Arizona]

Shinya
Shinya Takahashi. Another page with credits. Character design for Viper V12 and Viper F50. Not to be confused with voice actor Shinya Takahashi. Speaking of confusing, there seems to be more than one animator named Shinya Takahashi, the other being much older, and I think the ANN page has credits for both of them. I can't find a Wikipedia page either. The second link provided seems to be aware of the distinction, and so should be more accurate. Either way, he's yet another experienced animator with a few character design credits - namely on Photon, Kurogane Communication, Shadow, and Sci-Fi Harry.

Azusa Shiratori
Atsuko Nakajima. (Wiki, En Wiki) Character designer and animation director on Animahjong V3, character designer on Animahjong X. For Silence, she was the character designer and chief animation director of Houma Hunter Lime (Jewel BEM Hunter Lime). And yes, she was the character designer and an animation director on Ranma 1/2, mentioned here time and again as where a chunk of the Silence/Sogna staff came from - she was a primary force in cementing the look of the show, and subsequently on much of M.I.N./Sogna's work.

The pen name used here comes from a character in Ranma 1/2, although it wasn't used for her Silence work on Lime. Strangely enough, she may have even used the name for two episodes of Ranma.

Mariko Ijuin
Atsuko Ishida. (Wiki) Guest character designer on Animahjong X. An animator with credits on Ranma 1/2 and some character design work (Might Gaine, J-Decker, Magic Knight Rayearth, Shamanic Princess, Shin Hakkenden). Ex-wife of Masami Obari. If I'm reading this correctly, she's since retired from animation and is now primarily a manga artist/illustrator (I can't really pin down anything she's done in particular during this time).

Updates to previous posts: Going back to add Animahjong credits for Kenichirou Nakamura and Kenichirou Katsura.

[Arizona]

OK, so of that list, I've exhausted everything save for one item which I'll need some help on:

神坂公平/P・ウオリアー/すいかメロン(数井浩子)
VIPER -M1-

Listed between Sasayan and Shinya on the artist's list. These all seem to be names as usual, but it's not clear what they're being credited for. It may be trying to say they each worked on one of the three different stories in M1, I guess?

-The first one is Kouhei Kamisaka. I can't find any animator credits, so he either never worked in the mainstream industry or used another name. There is this though - he seems to have been in the same doujinshi circle as Takahiro Kimura (I see his Awaji name being used in this circle as well).

He did art (and I assume animation) for Sisters, an animated eroge that came out just last year. The interesting thing here is, that Wiki link specifically mentions Viper M1 - The May Works in its comments on development, which I assume indicates that's what he had worked on.

Sisters was made by Jellyfish, and as far as I can tell is their only game to date(EDIT: Nope, been around since 1995. May have more on them later). If I'm reading the Wiki right, it seems this one game took a number of years to finish, having first been announced in some form in 2006.

-The second is P-Warrior.

-The last seems to be a pen name I can't make out and a common name - Hiroko Kazui. Yet another active animator with Ranma 1/2 credits. Another link (citing more Ranma - it seems for a lot of these people, ANN may have only listed a Ranma movie credit, but then there'd be a bunch of Ranma TV credits on Japanese resources - it happens with these things, but it's worth pointing out in this case where the common link between everyone is Ranma).

If I understand this correctly so far, Kamisaka was an animator on The May Works, P-Warrior was errrr being P-Warrior (maybe he lent a hand to the animation? Hard to tell from this), and Hiroko Kazui was an animator of some kind on some part(s) of M1.

[JG]

-The first one is Kouhei Kamisaka. I can't find any animator credits, so he either never worked in the mainstream industry or used another name. There is this though - he seems to have been in the same doujinshi circle as Takahiro Kimura (I see his Awaji name being used in this circle as well).

If it is the same guy (and I think it is), I'd say he probably worked with TK on Harlem Blade.  Maybe a few others here and there related to Studio Koron, like Panic-chan, but I can't be sure without more research.  (I'm just shooting from the hip based on what I've seen of the HB16 doujinshi. His art is the perfect mix of TK and Ranma style)

-The last seems to be a pen name I can't make out

すいかメロン = suika meron = watermelon
Could also be listed under 西瓜メロン or just 西瓜

[Arizona]

Seems Google translate wasn't as far off as I thought - it gave me "melon watermelon". :B

I'm starting to cull things from the Silence/Sogna Wiki entry (which I probably should've used more often, but whateverrrr).

I'm also taking a look at Jellyfish again, who have in fact been around since 1995. There's something in the middle of the Silence Wiki that seems to describe some kind of issue(s) involving the "Ethics Organization of Computer Software", Megastore, Hobibox, and Jellyfish's first game, Power Slave - the opening of Jellyfish's Wiki mentions something to do with Viper. I'm not sure if it's just trying to say the animation in the game received praise for being as good as Viper's or something more scandalous.

Koichi Ohata
ANN link, Wiki. Mechanical and monster design on Guynarock R. That's basically what he did in the anime industry for quite some time as well, his most famous design probably being Gunbuster. He's done some scripting and storyboarding here and there, and these days is mainly a director, namely on the recent Ikki-Tousen shows and Burst Angel. Did some OVAs back in the day, the type synonymous with the Blockbuster Video anime selections of the 90's, including American fan cult favorite M.D. Geist.

Updates: Masahide Yanagisawa's pseudonym (Masa), shinobu's apparent actual name (Kenji Oshima).

Haven't added it yet, but apparently Tokuyuki Matsutake's pseudonym was 松ちゃん ("Pine-chan"?)

[Moge]

Didn't knew Jellyfish had been around for that long.

How did they acquire the Love Escalator/Lovers franchise when it wasn't their's to begin with?

* Woops. Didn't realize the company was running under the moniker Umitsuki Production.

[Arizona]

Mikan Ehime
Risa Ebata

Back when I made this post, there was a bare minimum of info in her ANN entry. After, it became much more fleshed out. Don't that just figure.

Anyway, here is something of interest: A series of posts on Masami Obari, by Kraker2k. I never did type up anything about him since I sort of took him for granted, having no apparent work in any completed games, but it's just as well as these entries are way better than what I would've done.

Masami Obari Part 1: An Introduction
Part 2: Influences and Style
Part 3a: Obari Style Animators and Legacy
Part 3b: Obari Style Animators and Legacy
Part 3c: Obari Style Animators and Legacy

This was all done a few months after my series of posts above, later in 2012. Much to my relief, it confirms a large chunk of the information I had dug up - see 3b, Kenichirou Nakamura's entry is right at the top, and has a big ol' list of the folks he got to do work for Sogna (although Sogna is never mentioned by name...).

Since part of the author's aim was to inform folks of Obari's vast body of work beyond fanservice oriented work and hentai, which tends to be what he's most known for round these parts, there's nothing on Viper GTS, Angel Blade, etc. Makes sense, nothing wrong with that. As some time has passed, I've considered perhaps asking him if he happened to run into any info of particular interest on those things along the way, although...really, I'm not sure there'd be much out there beyond "so-and-so worked on this" anyway. I may try sometime regardless, though.

One thing worth noting in particular is how his original Studio G-1 apparently went under sometime in 2000, 2001 - it was restructured into Studio G-1 Neo, which is still running to this day. Neo was where the hentai work started with Marine a Go Go and Angel Blade (which it appears both started in December 2001, although I'm not sure how accurate that is). The last one I'm aware of is Angel Blade Punish, which ran from December 2004 through 2005, although it seems they also did some key animation work on The Hills Have Size (who cares what the original title is??), which started December 2005 and ended in 2006. Notably, a certain Mikan Ehime also did the character design work. Also, what is it with December and cartoon porn?

Also, it was interesting to learn more about Hideki Tamura, who did the game design for Viper Paradice. As mentioned before, he used to be an animator, but went into video games, and it seems apparent he went from doing only art related tasks to game design. What I didn't know was how he was one HELL of an animator, as seen in their choice of example, the intro to Prefectural Earth Defense Force.

In any case, regardless of his change in careers and particular role in Viper, the connections make sense all the same. Might as well also note, it seems he was a key animator on Koichi Ohata's MD Geist.

It seems Tamura only just recently reappeared in the world of animation, associated with, go figure, a game - a pachinko machine, that is, based on the classic 70's robot anime Combattler V. Here's one example from it, and there's plenty more if you search for "Combattler 2012". I was aware of the game, but not Tamura's involvement, which once again I have Kraker2k to thank for. (On a side note, Anipages is the blog when it comes to animation in anime)

[Krak_2k]

Hello there, thanks for linking my writing. I found out about your post via the track-backs haha!

Now I have a little confession to make; the details regarding Nakamura, I wrote about him due to the information here eventually leading me to the Japanese wikipedia article on Silence. I figured it was accurate enough to include it in my post.

I'm also sorry to say I never did unearth much on the 18+ works done by Obari. Still don't know much other than the Studio went bust and they had to restart. Rumors say towards the end of the 90s they began getting too cocky, announcing and working on several high budget shows in succession and mis-managing it all to cause them to eventually crash and burn. Some internal strife also seemed to have caused most of the former members of the Studio to go their own ways.

As for Ebata's ANN article I ended up filling in the blanks and asking the moderators to add the aliases and what not.

I'm still always on the lookout for more information, dinging through ancient 2ch posts and finding lost websites via the wayback machine. So maybe I'll find out some more things one day. Though Obari has subtley mentioned on twitter that a 3rd series of "Angel Blade" was in the works, though that was almost 2 years ago.

[Arizona]

Aaaahaha, I figured this might get your attention. :D

And hey, I'm glad to know it checks out to you to some degree either way - I'd been a bit worried since I was just slapping stuff together using Google Translate.

I was tempted to say something about Platinumhugen Ordian, since it's from 2000 and it's absolutely dreadful, but it's not like I'd know if that actually had anything to do with anything. I just have it in for that show for giving me a killer headache when I trying to relax leading up to math finals way back in high school. >:|

[JG]

...although it seems they also did some key animation work on The Hills Have Size (who cares what the original title is??), which started December 2005 and ended in 2006. Notably, a certain Mikan Ehime also did the character design work.

The Japanese title is Hitodzuma Kasumi-san. It was an h-game series by Tinkerbell (a subsidiery of Cyberworks) before being turned into an OVA.

I'm not terribly familiar with the Tinkerbell works except this series, becuase of its relationship to VIPER.  I'm unsure if they are still doing work there or not (I think it was just the first two games in the series and the OVAs.)

[Krak_2k]

Aaaahaha, I figured this might get your attention.

And hey, I'm glad to know it checks out to you to some degree either way - I'd been a bit worried since I was just slapping stuff together using Google Translate.

I was tempted to say something about Platinumhugen Ordian, since it's from 2000 and it's absolutely dreadful, but it's not like I'd know if that actually had anything to do with anything. I just have it in for that show for giving me a killer headache when I trying to relax leading up to math finals way back in high school. >:|

By chance did you watch the [Anime-Keep] Fansub? It probably was, they were the only guys who subbed the show. I've seen a couple of episodes of that and it is a mindbogglingly awful fansub. Wrong translation, some lines are omitted, some lines have the complete opposite meaning and sometimes they just guess. To top it off, for the final episode they did not include the epilogue so the episode ends as soon as the final battle stops!

It's honestly not that bad of a show the AK fansub makes it out to be. Some people in Japan say its one of Obari's best shows, but given the only English "translation" we had was so bad it's always seen as crap lol. Over the last couple of months I've been working trying to resub this show, I've done 6 episodes so far. Feel free to check it out http://pastebin.com/q0ZZAxmJ

[Arizona]

No kidding? Well, now I'm glad I brought it up!

...does the main character still constantly complain about his cool Dragonar robot being a piece of crap though? :(

Also, here's a quick credit spotted in the Silence wiki article, which looks like it may have some more info for me to comb over by now:

Kenichi Arakawa
VGMdb, Wiki. Music composer, also goes by the names Tomas Brown/Thomas Brown, TOMAZO, and T.KOMORO. Seems he did the music for quite a few Viper games (all of them??) under the name TOMAZO, and Jewel BEM Hunter Lime under his own. It looks as if he's primarily functioned otherwise as a freelancer, although it seems he did some consistent work on Game Tengoku installments for Jaleco. Appears he's believed to have settled down at Success, although his last credit I'm seeing was Dark Spire which was a few years ago by now. Seems neither linked entry is anywhere near comprehensive though, of course. Another of his credits at Success is as one of the composers on the Xbox 360 exclusive Operation Darkness, a rather thrilling discovery for me since I dig that game's soundtrack.

I'm starting to cull things from the Silence/Sogna Wiki entry (which I probably should've used more often, but whateverrrr).

I'm also taking a look at Jellyfish again, who have in fact been around since 1995. There's something in the middle of the Silence Wiki that seems to describe some kind of issue(s) involving the "Ethics Organization of Computer Software", Megastore, Hobibox, and Jellyfish's first game, Power Slave - the opening of Jellyfish's Wiki mentions something to do with Viper. I'm not sure if it's just trying to say the animation in the game received praise for being as good as Viper's or something more scandalous.

Taking a look at the Silence article again, I can't help but wonder what that whole passage is about. I don't suppose you've ever heard anything about that stuff, JG?