Hironobu Sakaguchi
While still working on "Vagabond", Inoue began drawing "Real" in 1999, his third basketball manga, which focuses on wheelchair basketball. It received an Excellence Prize at the 2001 Japan Media Arts Festival. Inoue also created character designs for the Xbox 360 RPG, "Lost Odyssey", based on initial material provided by Hironobu Sakaguchi. Sakaguchi sought out Inoue for his talent of depicting "people" and his ability to "illustrate the internal emotions of a character" since the goal of the video game was to explain people.