I knew how I wanted to answer this one pretty quickly. A big part of Aqua’s character in KonoSuba is how, despite being a goddess, nobody sees her as one or treats her like one. Even in a city devoted to worshiping her, nobody recognizes her divinity. I don’t see any reason why that would change in the Near Hentai Studio, and I think it’d be a little weird to see her running a church to herself or something with a bunch of followers. However, I thought it’d be a good chance to illustrate a water-themed character still being innately drawn to her, the only question was who to use. I ended up settling on Nessa, someone who got to debut around the start of the year but hasn’t appeared in anything since then. Funnily enough, her one other appearance in my work also has her working alongside a KonoSuba character, though a different one.
This is an Epic Tier commission from one of my supporters. The birthday referenced in the title is the client’s, as this commission was his birthday present to himself. He had a pretty sizable list of potential girls to fill into these spots, but he settled on Olive and Maps from Gotham Academy (since it’d been a while since he last commissioned them from me), plus Aqua of KonoSuba and Ochaco of My Hero Academia after discussing his options with other fans on Discord. Hope you all enjoy! ^_^
Also, here’s the Q & A video I did last month, for anyone who’s interested: