Back closer to Anzu’s debut, I planned to do an Ask for her appearing with Tomo. I sketched out this for it, but for a few different reasons it ended up not happening and the question wasn’t re-submitted in later months. So, when looking at this question, I thought I could repurpose the sketch for Tomo’s answer. The bubble placement ended up a little weird, since I’d originally intended for Anzu to be the main speaker, but I’m still happy to finally get to put these two together. Tomo and Anzu are two of my favorite modern anime girls, and while they have pretty different interests they’re both pretty aggressive defenders of their friends in a way that makes me think they’d get along.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’d discussed an idea like this with this Subscriber in the past, so I had a pretty good idea of what characters he wanted to see. It just so happens that I’m fond of these characters, too, and it’s a bit of a changeup for each of them as well. Nobara was quite proud of her Smash skills in a flashback, and I’m pretty sure Najimi’s not really on her level. However, one thing Najimi’s good at is annoying other players to throw them off their game, which allowed them to best Nobara and Anzu here. Anzu’s more of a single-player gamer, but I’m sure she could also normally best Najimi. For those interested, they were playing the Switch version of Smash here. Najimi was playing as Mario, Nobara was playing Snake and Anzu was playing Link.
Yoruichi’s a character who’s struggled to get in appearances since debuting in that pin-up a while back, but I figured I could use this Ask to not only bring her back into the spotlight, but also set up a little Studio lore for how she’s been spending her time. I’ve mentioned the Studio’s cat cafe, Catflix & Chill, before in a previous Ask (one featuring Yoruichi’s costars here, Power and Anzu). While the cats who appear there are mostly regular cats, I thought the idea of Yoruichi going there in cat form to get pampered and relax sounded like a cute idea that could tie this Ask together.
I’d been thinking about doing something with Anzu and Power since Anzu’s debut, due to them both having their cats as a big part of their motivations in their respective series. I had a bit of fun exploring what their dynamic might be like here, and I hope it comes across well. I also like the idea of pet owners in the Studio having places they can go to socialize with their pets, including this cat café Anzu mentions here.
Anzu got quite a few Asks submitted after her debut, which I was happy to see. I would’ve liked to do more of them this month, but the timing didn’t work out well for it. I did want to do at least one, though, and picked this one out of a few that I liked because I thought the “gamer girl” dynamic could be played in a cute way. I liked this idea of Rebecca taking the Studio approach to a question like this, while Anzu’s just focusing on her gaming. If I can, I want to do a lot more with Anzu in the coming months, so hopefully we’ll be seeing more of her down the road.
Romantic Killer is a little Netflix anime I checked out recently and was completely enamored with. I wanted to draw a cute little scene of the protagonist, Anzu, enjoying some down time. I know this one’s a little tame compared to what I usually do, but it was just something I felt like getting out. I hope to draw more of Anzu in the future, as she’s easily one of my favorite rom-com protagonists in a while, up there with Tomo-chan.