Here is the first One-Shot comic of 2024. The premise of this one is to bring in friends of former NHML winners. Obviously there’ve been a lot of NHML winners, but the Subscriber who submitted this script picked four they liked. Our first panel has Ryō Kurokiba and Alice Nakiri from Food Wars, the only one of these I’ve seen, representing Ikumi Mito from the May 2019 NHML. The second panel has Monaca Towa and Kotoko Utsugi from Danganronpa, representing Toko Fukawa from the June 2022 NHML. The third panel has Ren Amamiya, Makoto Niijima and Haru Okumura from Persona 5, representing Sae Niijima from the November 2018 NHML. The final panel features Balalaika, Roberta and Eda from Black Lagoon, all three women who had caught my eye but I never did anything with, representing Revy from the November 2016 NHML.
It’s been a couple years since the first and only other time I’ve drawn Takumi, and I thought we could revisit him with this Ask. A fair number of Asks I see for less-used characters talk about them like they’re completely gone from the Studio or something when I haven’t drawn them for a while, and I thought this Ask might help clear up that confusion a little bit. Since the Studio is more than a Studio, but a full little community, everyone who’s in it is still around, hangin’ and bangin’, even if it’s been years since the last time they’ve shown up in my work.
So I’ve been revisiting Food Wars, and in the process remembering all the pairings I wanted to draw back when I watched it the first time. I’m sure I won’t get around to even half of them, but I decided to go ahead and do this Yukihira/Aldini pic. These two have a cute rivalry-friendship and I think they make for good partners. This isn’t my preferred ship for either guy, really, but I think Takumi’s really cute and I like seeing him fucked like this. I’d kinda like to draw Takumi again with his brother, probably in a similar way to how I drew Shigeo and Ritsuo from Mob Psycho 100 a while back.
So the concept behind this Ask is kinda an old one, and one I’ve discussed on Discord a bit, but I know some folks have been anxiously awaiting for the talking points of those talks to be brought to life. In the Near Hentai Studios I do imagine cliques/clubs of various character types forming, and the cooking characters getting together to prepare food for the Studio is a very old concept I haven’t really gotten the chance to explore. It makes sense to me Hiro would gravitate towards those characters, and Yukihira especially seems to me like someone he’s get along with. Like he says in the Ask, he’s got a lot in common with Aiden, so it’s easy for me to picture him idolizing him in a similar way (even if, due to screwy anime ages, Yukihira is actually younger than Hiro despite looking much older).
So this Ask was one I had an answer for pretty quickly. It had been asked the month before, but I just ran out of days in the month before getting to it. I did get it this time, though, and I hope you all like it. This Ask is in reference to the Near Hentai Studio, of course, the kitchen of which is staffed by many of our cooking enthusiasts like Mito. As for who’s meat she ingests to keep away from the food supply, I decided on Luffy, though obviously there were a few options given the cliches of anime protagonists. I enjoyed getting to draw Mito again, and I hope I can find the time to do more with her at some point down the road.
So I watched Food Wars a while ago, and found myself liking it a lot more than I’d expected to. Similarly, I thought Nikumi here would be just eye candy without much character, but she ended up being one of my favorite characters in the whole series (but also eye candy, Food Wars isn’t shy about fanservice).I thought I’d do a lot of Food Wars stuff while I was watching it, but that ended up not happening for one reason or another. I get a second chance now that Nikumi (Soma’s nickname for Ikumi Mito) won the NHML raffle this month. I actually did a handful of sketches of these two together, since I had some old interest in them kicked up again. No promises, but there’s a chance one or two of those might end up fleshed out a bit for future pics (or I might forget about Food Wars altogether again, who knows). Anyway, I picked this one to use for the NHML since it showed off the most of Nimumi’s body, I think, and I hope you all like it.
With this post, NHML nominations for the month of June are now open. For those who don’t know, I’ll run down the rules real quick. Nominations are limited to one per person. You can nominate any female character you want, provided I have not drawn her within the past calendar year (though I prefer characters I’ve never drawn, period). Previous NHML winners are not eligible for a second time. Nominees must also not be from the same franchise as this month’s winner, Food Wars. If you violate any of those rules, I’ll let you know, and you can nominate someone else. I know it can be hard to keep track of these things. You may nominate by either commenting in the cBox, commenting on this post, or emailing me (Nearphotison2010@yahoo.com). I’ll compile a list of the nominees in the sidebar of this site, and then on June 1st I will use a randomizer to select the winning character who I will proceed to draw sometime that month. I look forward to seeing who you all nominate this time around!