She was designed by Collateral Damage Studios,[5] who wanted to create their own character after artist and producer Danny Choo posted an image featuring human equivalents of the Safari, Firefox, and Chrome web browsers.

[8] The character is voiced by former Sea*A idol and anime song artist Valerie, who also made a cosplay appearance as Inori at Microsoft's marketing launch at AFA2013.

[3] Despite being featured on the official Internet Explorer YouTube channel, Microsoft has clarified that Inori Aizawa will not be used in marketing campaigns outside Asia, which includes the United States.

[9] According to Collateral Damage Studios, the artists who created the character, "The concept that we wanted to go for with our IE-tan was ‘redemption", referencing the earlier, poorer versions of Internet Explorer.

She is klutzy, nerdy ... someone that everyone would love to bully", and thus design elements were incorporated to reflect upon IE's transformation from an “ugly duckling” to a "slick and confident" browser.

Introduced to the world in a commercial titled "Internet Explorer: The Anime," Inori is made to entice the masses, rather than developers or enthusiasts, to try out Microsoft's steadily improving browser.

"[19] Karliah Eun of Kicker Daily News wrote "Microsoft has gone a long way from bad anthropomorphic characters to so-so bland personas.

"[20] Carly Smith of The Escapist wrote that "Inori hits the anime checklist with [a] magical girl transformation scene and cutesy personality.

[23] The video and character of Inori were both met with widespread approval from viewers, some professing that they had switched back to IE, while others called it a "stylish campaign" but were still reluctant to use Internet Explorer.

[24] Nick Summers of The Next Web thought that Inori's promo video was "all rather confusing", "unexpected" and "certainly different to old Clippy",[25] while Peter Bright of Ars Technica found it to be "really rather weird", though he did claim "I like the music.