■ Mamiya's Backstory
Equipped with bladed yo-yos and a couple of small but deadly daggers, Mamiya is a female warrior who swears to protect her family's village. On her 20th birthday, Juda killed her parents and kidnapped her. From that day on, she threw away her womanhood and hopes for love and decided to walk the path of a warrior.
(CV: Hitomi Nabatame)
First let's talk about the process of designing her.
When looking for materials to fuel our inspiration, we took a look at illustrations of Mamiya from the original manga as well as from other sources. We based our design mainly on the original manga, however, we that found that recent illustrations were more refined and therefore more useful. Although Mamiya is a main character, she appears in fewer places in the manga in comparison to Kenshiro and Raoh.
We had to do our best to recreate Mamiya in a way approved by Tetsuo Hara based on these limited illustrations.
Rough sketch > Rough color design ① > Rough color design ② > Final draft.
We also had to bear in mind that Kenshiro had mistaken her for Yuria at first glance, so we made sure that she subtly resembles Yuria. For that reason, her facial expressions give the impression of a sweet and loving woman.
However, we also had to make sure to portray her as an iron-willed woman who fought through the hardships of her past and stepped up to fight to survive in a harsh post-apocalyptic world. When working on her battle pose, a sweet and loving expression didn't seem to fit, so we gave her a more determined expression.
Before edit After edit
As one of the few female Fighters in the game, we put a lot of effort into her. Her polygon count is also quite high in comparison to other Fighters. Mamiya's design has been gradually changing over time. For that reason, we created a new character model for her.
Many have seen Mamiya as an admirable character every since the serialization of the original manga, and we hope that people continue to think of her in this way.
Now, let's talk about Mamiya's outfits.
Mamiya's Valentine's-themed Outfit was released in February 2020. If you don't have it, you can still view it by tapping the Outfits icon under Fighter Details.
Staying true to her original design, the outfit's features consist of studs and black rope. The idea to show her mini daggers strapped to her thigh came during the feedback phase. The finished design turned out to give off very post-apocalyptic vibes. The heart motif was the finishing touch to its Valentine's theme.
Let's take a quick look at other ideas that were on the table before we settled on the black rope design.
Outfit Idea ① Outfit Idea ②
As you can see, there were some pretty far-fetched ideas thrown around.
Idea ① shown above stems from the Valentine's concept and fuses a pâtissier-style and gothic lolita look. The idea was eventually dropped because it strays too far from Mamiya's strong-willed personality and the post-apocalyptic theme.
Idea ② is based on Idea ① and is a lot closer to Mamiya's design in her original outfit. We concluded that a gothic style didn't fit with the post-apocalyptic theme and so all gothic-style ideas were scrapped. Instead, we centered our designs around the post-apocalyptic theme to recreate a Valentine's outfit.
Whether it be her design or her costume or even her expression, we want to get her story across to our users. It was when we were designing Mamiya that Tetsuo Hara's keen attention to detail really hit home.
UR Desert Wildflower Mamiya was released later, and during the character and costume design phases, we made sure to keep in mind what we had discovered and learned when designing Mamiya.
All that said, we hope that this has helped you to gain more of an insight into the concepts behind the game.
