Akihiro Hino
The "Professor Layton" series was envisioned as a trilogy, to be completed with the release of the third game, "Professor Layton and the Unwound Future". In spite of this, Hino said that, during the development of "Unwound Future", Level-5 had received a lot of questions from gamers asking if it was "really the end [of the series]", which was all of the inspiration he needed to create a "second season" of the "Professor Layton" series. In March 2009, Akihiro Hino officially unveiled "Professor Layton and the Last Specter" in "Famitsu", stating that, with the second season, each game would take longer to develop than before, to dispel beliefs that "Professor Layton" had not significantly changed with each passing game. The second season of the series was also scheduled to have animated movies that take place between the games, starting with "Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva", which was announced alongside "Last Specter".