Career
Born in Kanagawa, Japan, Kodama began her education undecided between art and archaeology. She opted for art and enrolled in a trade school for advertising design. In 1984, a fellow student brought her to work at Sega.
As one of the few designers at the company, she found herself working on multiple titles at once, being credited on as many as five or six games a year.
Kodama built up a reputation as an artist and was soon given a chance to work on larger projects, such as Phantasy Star. As the main designer, Kodama was responsible for creating all the character designs, the 2D maps, battle-scene backgrounds, and townspeople, among other things.
In 1993, she took on directional and production roles with Phantasy Star IV, Magic Knight Rayearth, Deep Fear, Skies of Arcadia, and the 2005 Altered Beast reboot. After working on a variety of edutainment games on Nintendo Doctor of Science and PSP, it was announced in 2008 it that Kodama would be producing a new RPG entitled 7th Dragon.
lieutenant received positive reviews and sold 80,000 copies on its Japanese launch.
She has produced games in the series since.