Naoshi Mizuta - Biography

Biography

Born in Kōchi, Japan in 1972, Mizuta's interest in music began to grow when he "was in the second or third grade". One of his biggest musical influences was Ryuichi Sakamoto. Although still interested in music, Mizuta studied law and economics at Chiba University. He composed his first song while in his last year there, and after graduating went to work for Capcom in 1995 as a composer. He began his career scoring the Street Fighter series where he was involved in scoring Street Fighter Alpha in 1996 with Isao Abe, Syun Nishigaki, Setsuo Yamamoto, and Yuko Kadota.

In 1998, while still working for Capcom, Mizuta applied to Square as a composer in response to an advertisement and was hired. His first assignment for Square was to score Parasite Eve II, for which he was the sole composer and spent a year and a half working on. The original Parasite Eve game was scored by Yoko Shimomura, and Mizuta incorporated some of the original game's tracks into the sequel. Mizuta's next role was as the main composer for the Final Fantasy XI soundtrack, which he was assisted on by Nobuo Uematsu and Kumi Tanioka. Mizuta remained with the Final Fantasy XI project for the next few years, serving as the sole composer for the game's four expansions and multiple special events. During this period, Mizuta became involved in The Star Onions, a band composed of Square Enix composers for which he plays bass guitar. Other members of the band, which plays arrangements of songs from Final Fantasy XI, include Tanioka, Hidenori Iwasaki, and Tsuyoshi Sekito. The band has released two albums as of 2011, Music from the Other Side of Vana'diel and Sanctuary. Mizuta has also worked on several other projects for Square Enix, including Blood of Bahamut and Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, both released in 2009. He would like to make another arranged album of music from Final Fantasy XI.