Sunday, December 25, 2011

RIP Hiroyuki Kanno (1974-2011)

Despite the holiday season bringing joy, laughter and harmony to many of us, it doesn't shelter life from its fragile nature. Today, Abel announced that Hiroyuki Kanno has passed away. On December 19th, Kanno left us due to a cerebral hemorrhage. Kanno was only 37 years old.

Throughout his life, Kanno was an avid reader and studied the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Stephen King, as well as philosophical studies in order to learn about the human psyche and emotional patterns. He would make use of this when he began to design video games in his early 20s for C's Ware, a visual novel software house that became an influential in the progression of the visual novel genre with his games Eve burst error and Desire. His greatest achievement in video games would later be YU-NO, the multi dimensional thriller which not only brought innovation to visual novels, but video gaming as a whole.

Kanno was a close friend of late Ryu Umemoto, a friendship which saw them collaborate on the games which made them two of the most well respected individuals and deeply regarded in the independent video game scene in Japan in their respective fields. Now, the legendary duo has both passed away, all within 6 months.

Hardcore Gaming 101 would like to offer our thoughts and condolences to Kanno's family.

5 comments:

  1. Very sad to hear this news. I played Desire around 10 years ago, and while the sex scenes were quite perverse, (although not as bad as some non-plot oriented VNs) the main story was surprisingly very compelling, (or at least was well written and imaginative) has and the characters were very well developed, although the sex scenes made it hard to take the story and characters seriously. I think he just had those scenes to sell more copies...

    I've yet to play much of Eve Burst Error, which I've heard has a no-Ero version.

    But anyway, I was wondering why he wasn't involved in any recent visual novels, and Mr. Kanno has my respect.

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    1. The official English translation of Eve Burst Error is pretty abominable--lots of blue-color jokes about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, toilet humor, etc. MangaGamer have confirmed the new print-run they're selling now uses the same translation, unfortunately.

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  2. And my condolences go to Mr. Umemoto as well, I'm very sad to lose these two talented writers.

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  3. Mr. Kanno was involved with numerous recent visual novels.

    He founded his own company 'Abel Software' and wrote many of the titles.

    In recent years the company obviously had budget problems as Mystereet 2 still is unreleased. http://www.abelsoftware-jp.com/

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  4. What a loss to the world. He could have made so many more games. Yu-No and Eve Burst error are my favorites.

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