Short answers, pulled from the story.
Square trademarked the name in 1989. The original concept titled The Emergence of Excalibur was an ambitious five-floppy disk game for the Famicom Disk System led by Kazuhiko Aoki. Management canceled the project before it advanced beyond the early planning stages.
Koichi Ishii created the Mana series as a fictional world illustrated by video games. He draws inspiration from abstract images from his memories of childhood and influences like Tove Jansson's Moomin and J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Ishii considers the series a world rather than a set of games with concrete chronological links.
The Mana Tree and the Mana Sword are recurring plot devices featured in every game of the series. The Mana Tree is a mystical source of magic that sustains the balance of the world, while the Mana Sword is used to restore that balance when it is lost. If the Mana Tree dies, a member of the Mana Family becomes the seed of a new Tree.
Final Fantasy Adventure was composed by Kenji Ito, while Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana were composed by Hiroki Kikuta. Legend of Mana's score was composed by Yoko Shimomura, and Dawn of Mana featured Ryuichi Sakamoto as the main theme composer. The music has received wide acclaim and fan enthusiasm.
Visions of Mana was released in August 2024. It was formally announced at The Game Awards 2023 and is considered the first mainline installment since Dawn of Mana. The project was headed by producer Masaru Oyamada while Koichi Ishii worked on the updated creature designs.
By 2021, the game series had sold over 8 million copies. Secret of Mana has shipped over 1.83 million copies worldwide, and Legend of Mana sold over 700,000 copies in Japan by the end of its first year. The original Seiken Densetsu sold over 700,000 units.