History Creator / ShigesatoItoi

Shigesato Itoi (糸井 重里, born November 10, 1948) is a Japanese essayist and copywriter whose works are widely considered to have had a defining influence on modern Japanese culture. He's dabbled in pretty much everything at some point or another over the past thirty years or so -- he's done books, he's done songwriting, he's done websites, he's done voice acting, he's done film, he's done television, [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers he's done day planners]]... The man is an endless font of variety, really, and Japan loves him for it. He is perhaps most famous as an advertisement copywriter and designer, and had a hand in a number of Japan's most famous ad campaigns in the modern era.

Of course, that's [[HeAlsoDid not what he's known for]] in the western world. No, the west knows him better for something that to him and to Japan was little more than a little experiment in storytelling he did on the side. Around here, he's best known as the brilliant mind behind the ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER}}'' trilogy of Creator/{{Nintendo}} video games, namely ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'', ''VideoGame/{{EarthBound|1994}}'', and ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER 3}}''. He's a good friend of Creator/ShigeruMiyamoto, Creator/HirokazuTanaka and the late, great Creator/SatoruIwata (who [[SugarWiki/GeniusProgramming singlehandedly reprogrammed]] ''[=EarthBound=]'' from scratch midway through development, rescuing the entire project when all seemed lost), he served on the board of Nintendo subsidiary [[Franchise/{{Kirby}} HAL]] [[VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Laboratory]] for a while, and he is an occasional participant in the ''Iwata Asks'' interview series. Other video game endeavours of his include bass fishing video games for the UsefulNotes/SuperFamicom and UsefulNotes/Nintendo64 (he was ''really'' into bass fishing in the late 90s) and a health diary for UsefulNotes/NintendoDSi.

* HarmfulToMinors: Meta example. As a child, Itoi accidentally walked in to [[Film/TheMilitaryPolicemanAndTheDismemberedBeauty a horror film]] while at a movie theater and saw what he thought was a rape scene (it was actually a consensual sex scene that segued into murder). The scene traumatized him and ultimately inspired him to create Giygas.

* {{Bishonen}}: [[http://earthboundcentral.com/2011/02/shigesato-itois-copywriting/ This magazine cover from 1983]] shows how pretty he was, at least at one point.

[[quoteright:299:[[VideoGame/EarthBound https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Itoi_Saturn_4295.jpg]]]]

Of course, that's [[HeAlsoDid not what he's known for]] in the western world. No, the west knows him better for something that to him and to Japan was little more than a little experiment in storytelling he did on the side. Around here, he's best known as the brilliant mind behind the ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER}}'' trilogy of Creator/{{Nintendo}} video games, namely ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'', ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' and ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER 3}}''. He's a good friend of Creator/ShigeruMiyamoto, Creator/HirokazuTanaka and the late, great Creator/SatoruIwata (who [[SugarWiki/GeniusProgramming singlehandedly reprogrammed]] ''[=EarthBound=]'' from scratch midway through development, rescuing the entire project when all seemed lost), he served on the board of Nintendo subsidiary [[Franchise/{{Kirby}} HAL]] [[VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Laboratory]] for a while, and he is an occasional participant in the ''Iwata Asks'' interview series. Other video game endeavours of his include bass fishing video games for the UsefulNotes/SuperFamicom and UsefulNotes/Nintendo64 (he was ''really'' into bass fishing in the late 90s) and a health diary for UsefulNotes/NintendoDSi.

** ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' (''MOTHER 2'')

* AdamWesting: Itoi parodied his failed attempt at gold mining in both ''VideoGame/ForTheFrogTheBellTolls'' and ''VideoGame/EarthBound''.

* GoldFever: He tried his hand at gold mining in the early 90s; this later inspired the Dusty Dunes Desert mining site in ''VideoGame/EarthBound'', which was in development around that time.

* WidgetSeries: Quite a bit of his work.

* NiceHat: They're quite common in photos of him since 2009.

* ''Left-Handed Dream'' by Music/RyuichiSakamoto - co-wrote "Saru to Yuko to Gomi no Kodomo" and "Boku no Kakera".

* CelebrityEndorsement: Sort of, because he obviously created it -- in Japan, the big selling point of the ''MOTHER'' series was always the fact that he, a rather popular celebrity, made it; the ads for ''MOTHER'' made a point of pointing that out. Also, he likes to endorse food he enjoys (several of these crop up in the ''MOTHER'' trilogy), with a curry restaurant actually using a page full of his praise (and scribbles) as its packaging.

->''"A game isn’t something that can be made by one person alone. Well, it’s possible that a really hard-working game creator could finish a game all alone, but even then he would still need a player. Games grow and mature when they’re created, played, and conveyed over and over."''
-->--'''Itoi''', in [[http://earthboundcentral.com/2009/01/one-year-after-mother-3/ a 2007 issue of Nintendo Dream magazine]]

!! A small samble of things Itoi has worked on

Shigesato Itoi (糸井 重里, born November 10, 1948) is a Japanese essayist and copywriter whose works are widely considered to have had a defining influence on modern Japanese culture. He's dabbled in pretty much everything at some point or another over the past thirty years or so - he's done books, he's done songwriting, he's done websites, he's done voice acting, he's done film, he's done television, [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers he's done day planners]]... The man is an endless font of variety, really, and Japan loves him for it. He is perhaps most famous as an advertisement copywriter and designer, and had a hand in a number of Japan's most famous ad campaigns in the modern era.

In 1998, he established the [[http://www.1101.com/ Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun]] (Pretty-Much-Daily Itoi News, commonly called ''Hobonichi''), a strange news site-hybrid themed around the idea of brightening peoples' days. It's partially a news site, but its biggest draw is its status as the home of his essays and thoughts on life, living, philosophy and his dog, and interviews with interesting people. On that note, he ''really'' loves interviewing people - his interviews never fail to be long and interesting and he's filled multiple books with them. This is pretty much why Iwata sometimes got him to do important ''Iwata Asks'' interviews when Iwata still lived - because he's really, ''really'' good at it.

* ''Left Handed Dream'' by Music/RyuichiSakamoto - co-wrote "Saru to Yuko to Gomi no Kodomo" and "Boku no Kakera".

* CelebrityEndorsement: Sort of, because he obviously created it - in Japan, the big selling point of the ''MOTHER'' series was always the fact that he, a rather popular celebrity, made it; the ads for ''MOTHER'' made a point of pointing that out. Also, he likes to endorse food he enjoys (several of these crop up in the ''MOTHER trilogy''), with a curry restaurant actually using a page full of his praise (and scribbles) as its packaging.

* HarmfulToMinors: Meta example. As a child, Itoi accidentally walked in to [[Film/TheMilitaryPolicemanAndTheDismemberedBeauty a horror film]] while at a movie theater and saw what he thought was a rape scene. The scene traumatized him and ultimately inspired him to create Giygas.

* NightmareFuel: Again, the story about Giygas's creation.