Tag Archives: Seiko Ayase

2025 Top Studio Performers

For a few years now, I’ve had a tradition of doing little pics pairing up my top male and female performers with their “rookie” counterparts. These are the characters who appeared the most in my work in 2025, and we had a lot of ties this year.
Seiko came away in the clear as the top rookie woman, thanks in part to the start of her own comic on top of appearing in a lot of other things. Our top non-rookie was a three-way tie, all of whom also had some comic pages come out during the year. Kanamori and Butt Witch were the stars of this pic last year for Kanamori’s debut, and I mentioned at the time that she actually beat Butt Witch in appearances. This year they both tied with Bulma, who funnily enough has worked with each of them in the past. Now all three of them are kinda ganging up on Seiko, ’cause lucky for her they’re all three known for topping other women. I think this is a fun pic, and as a fan of Seiko’s I’m happy to see her in such good company.

Like with the female performers, we had some ties with our top male performers, but at least here there was more symmetry. Yuji and Goku both tied for our top returning males, while Al and Sero tied for our male rookies. It honestly didn’t feel to me like I drew Sero as much as I did Al, but that’s probably in part because he served a mostly-anon role in one of his appearances. Regardless, I decided to pair Al up with Goku, since last year’s version of this pic had Goku with Ed. That left Sero with Yuji, naturally.

Kissing Granny

So I believe I’ve mentioned before that Seiko’s Special Training was originally a batch of sketches I didn’t know what I was going to do with. This was one of them, but one that didn’t fit into the plot I ended up using for that comic. I liked the pic, though, and thought it’d be fun to see finalized, so here it is as a standalone piece. I retooled it a bit, giving Momo a different hairstyle to differentiate the pic a bit more from the comic. Unlike the Busy Weekend comic, the chatters here aren’t really meant to be anyone specific so don’t bother reading into them or anything.

December ’25 One-Shot

The winning One-Shot comic that’ll close out 2025 featured Dandadan, which I think is quite appropriate. Dandadan was a newer anime that I really took to, but I’ve only done a handful of pics with it so far (aside from one side project comic). This comic brings in most of the main cast that I hadn’t drawn yet, with a focus on Okarun and Jiji. The script made no mention of Turbo Granny, but I threw her in purely of my own volition.

Studio Christmas Party Highlights 2025

Continuing our annual tradition, here’s another Studio Christmas party! I had a couple people I thought would look really good in Santa outfits, and a few others I just wanted to draw. I’m really happy with how this year’s party turned out, and I hope y’all will enjoy seeing a handful of Studio residents living it up!

Subscriber Scenarios #13 – Alien Investigations

For those who don’t know, the world of Dandadan is populated by both ghosts and aliens, and a lot of its plot derives from those worlds colliding. Seiko is a psychic who readily believes in ghosts and spirits and yokai and such, but scoffs at the idea of aliens no matter what evidence is shown her. I saw no reason for that to change in the Studio, and thought it could be a fun chance to bring back a few characters I’m fond of.
I don’t know if this Subscriber had any specific aliens in mind when submitting this premise, but Queen Tyr’ahnee is one I immediately thought of. I thought this exchange would be fun between the three, and I could’ve left it there but I always have to make these Scenarios bigger projects just to spite myself. It occurred to me that picking a hot alien might not be the way to convince her, so I squeezed in a cameo for Booey Bubblehead and Gilda Gossip, two characters I have a soft spot for but don’t get to use terribly often.

Seiko’s Special Training Cover

Back when I watched the first season of Dandadan I sketched out a bunch of stuff focused on Seiko and her granddaughter Momo. At the time I toyed with a few different ways of using what I had, but ended up just sitting on most of it as I worked on other projects. Due to a few different factors I’d rather not get into, I’ve decided to go ahead and make an ongoing comic out of it. This here was one of the earlier things I drew, and was always gonna be a cover if I ever had an excuse to do one. Usually I’d probably wait and double this up with the first page, but I decided to go ahead and release it solo just to get Seiko into the Studio and set the stage for the comic later. It’ll be a bit until the first page comes out, but I hope y’all will enjoy it when it does.