The people responsible for Moon came from a background of Super Mario RPG, Romancing SaGa, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and Chrono Trigger.
They went on to split up and make Chibi-Robo, Chulip, Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, Contact, Little King's Story.
Somehow, this makes sense.
though not all of them worked on all of those previous games, the point is that collectively they came up through the industry in Square's heyday. They SAW the peak of the JRPG genre.
And then they left. And made their own games, all pointedly atypical RPGs.
so learning that Taro Kudou, one of the lead designers of Moon, has been writing/directing the Paper Mario games since Sticker Star... yeah. That explains a lot, actually.
Love-de-Lic was a studio formed by several ex-Square employees in the late 90s. They made Moon: Remix RPG Adventure in 1997, which just recently got released in English for the first time.
Let's look at some of the key personnel, and track their other works...
Kenichi Nishi did map planning for Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG before founding Love-de-Lic. Later, he would go on to direct Chibi Robo, and write Captain Rainbow.
Tarou Kudou was also involved with Super Mario RPG, but he also did Sound Design for Super Castlevania IV. After Love-de-Lic, he designed minigames in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, directed Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, and wrote/Directed the Paper Mario games since Sticker Star.
We need to talk about Yasushi Nirasawa, Sin'Ichi Hiromoto, and an obscure erotic monstergirl action figure line from the late 90s.
But first we need to talk about Return of the Jedi, Pokemon Colosseum, Kamen Rider, and a little manga called Hells Angels.
Let's dive in.
Yasushi Nirasawa was one of the most influential Japanese monster designers of the 90s. He did designs and sculptures in a Hobby Japan magazine column, "Creature Core". Besides his originals, he did sculptures based on Kamen Rider, Hellraiser, Phantom of the Paradise, etc.
quick aside - I'm pretty sure this design from 1992 inspired Yasuhiro Nightow's design for Legato Bluesummers in Trigun (1995).
Nightow was on the same wavelength, at any rate. Also a figure/sculpture enthusiast! But that's another thread.