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Itou Makoto (伊藤 誠) is a main character from 2005 0verflow's eroge School Days
that later (2007) got an anime adaptation. However, the protagonist name
appears as an actual staff member in the credits of the anime [as of Anime
News
Network](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=97202),
credited in other more recent works too.

Who really is Itou Makoto? Was the character named after a real person or the
name of the character used as a pen/collective name?


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2013-05-27T19:44:14.623
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2013-05-28T15:16:43.897
2013-05-27T19:49:55.667
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question
anime-production school-days
Who is Itou Makoto (producer) and how is he related to the character with the same name?


As far as I can tell, this is just a coincidence. This producer wasn't part of
the original School Days visual novel production team, and he worked on anime
before the School Days anime or VN (the earliest apparently being Meine Liebe
(2004)). The School Days VN came out in 2005, which seems to rule out it being
a pen name chosen because of the character. He made a brief joke on the [39th
episode of the radio show "Radio School
Days"](http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm2816191) regarding their names which
seems to confirm that they aren't related.

According to [School Days
Wiki](http://schooldays.wikia.com/wiki/Makoto_It%C5%8D), the basis for (the
fictional character) Makoto's name is actually from [Itou
Hirobumi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%C5%8D_Hirobumi), who was prime
minister of the Japanese empire for four terms.

As a note, Itou Makoto (written as 伊藤 誠) isn't an uncommon name. Itou is the
6th most common surname, and Makoto is the [18th most common given
name](http://www.japanorama.com/zip/100%20given%20names.pdf) (these figures
may change somewhat depending on the source, time period, etc. but are just
meant as demonstrations of commonality). [This Wikipedia disambiguation
page](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BC%8A%E8%97%A4%E8%AA%A0) lists 6 real
people with that name. While it's still a pretty big coincidence that a
producer would end up having the same name as a character, it's not
unbelievable.

Source (for everything unsourced above): [jp.wikipedia
article](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BC%8A%E8%97%A4%E8%AA%A0_%28%E3%82%A2%E3%83%8B%E3%83%A1%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A7%E3%83%B3%E5%88%B6%E4%BD%9C%E3%83%97%E3%83%AD%E3%83%87%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B5%E3%83%BC%29)


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answer