I don’t know if Thorfinn has much interaction with any strong women in Vinland Saga. From my limited time with the series, the only strong woman I’m aware of is his sister. So I don’t know if there’s much canonical basis to work off of here, but there was at least one strong woman in the Studio I thought might remind Thorfinn a bit of home.
I wasn’t planning to do a Valentine’s Day pic for February’s Subscriber Scenario, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to do this one. Not only does this bring in two minor JJK characters I’d like to have in the Studio but had no real plans for, but it also marks the first time I’ve drawn Nanami’s younger design. I kinda pictured this as a bit of a laid-back hangout, with Gojo, Geto and Shoko not needing as much ice-breaking as Nanami and Haibara.
This is a yuri anime about a girl who used to be a quiet nobody, but reinvented herself for high school to try and turn her life around and become popular. She got in with the popular girls at school, including the leader who’s an international model, and through circumstances ended up with them all crushing on her in one way or another. It hits a lot of the same contrivances as your average harem anime, but it has a strong cast and humor and won me over. Ajisai, the NHML winner, is the quiet member of the group, and she’s just the sweetest thing. The last arc of the anime’s first season focuses on her, and my heart broke for her at a couple points. She’s arguably the best ship with the MC, Renako, but she has a good relationship with the main LI (Mai) as well. They have that kinda love triangle/throuple energy that made me want to put all three of them together for this pic.
The text here is “muri muri,” which is what’s translated in the title as “there’s no freaking way.” Renako says it a lot, especially in the opening credits, but basically any time yuri stuff is happening to her.
We’ll be well into it by the time this post goes public, but for Subscribers this Ask is coming out right at the start of the Year of the Horse. It’s a bit of a meme in Attack on Titan that Jean has a horse face or even is a horse, but in the Studio there are much horseier folks around. Thirty-Thrity is a BraveStarr character I included in a pic many years ago, but this is his first time appearing fully on camera (it was mostly just his cock before). He’s giving Jean a horsey ride to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
Here we go with the third page of our straight ongoing! There were a lot of scripts this time, some of them going in pretty different directions. I identified a few common themes, though, and tried to synthesize something that used those while progressing the scene sensibly. Also twisted one panel that had Ochaco smothering Deku with her tits for a different body part, just ’cause I like what it sets up.
It’s really refreshing to have a One-Shot that feels more like a coherent scene like this. I took a few liberties with how I interpreted the panel direction here, but I hope the final result is okay. For the first panel I wanted to try and call back the posing from an Ask I did with these three, but that made it hard for her to blow them both at once. This script also left open the option for dialogue, so I tried to work in something fun and accurate enough to the characters.
I’m actually not sure why it took so long for me to get to Riley and her mom Jill for this series. I wanted to do the Sleepover Raid girls who had moms early on, but I think I just got caught up in other pairing ideas. So she ended up pushed back, but we’re here now. One benefit of the wait is that I got to use her slightly older design from the second film, with this being the first time I’ve drawn this version of Riley. As for Jill, she’s one of my favorite Pixar moms, maybe second only to Helen? I’m not sure I’m prepared for a tier list but she’s definitely up there.
I feel like I’ve seen Yuji paired in one way or another with almost every pink-haired anime character out there, but I feel like Bocchi ranks high among them. Partly just due to their series getting popular around the same time, I think, I’ve seen many JJK/Bocchi memes, edits, whatever. I wanted to do something with them here, and hopefully this dynamic between them will be fun for people.
I kinda had an itch to do something with one of the monkey-like Pokémon, and Aipom just seemed like kind of a fun option. I like the idea of him using his tail to set the pace of his trainer’s thrusts.
I mentioned wanting to pair Jiji and Yuji up back when I did that Ask with the two of them, but one other character I felt would pair well with him was Kirishima. Kirishuma doesn’t have quite as many obvious parallels to Jiji as Yuji does, but I just kinda feel like they make a good crossover pairing. This Ask seemed like as good an opportunity as any to test my theory.
Also, for those of you who’re interested, here’s the Q&A video I did for Subscribers last month:
