Of course there are a lot of royal characters in the Studio, but I know this Subscriber has wanted to see Griffith and Canute together in the past, so that’s the direction I went. It’s a pairing that makes sense in the vein of the characters having some parallels, mostly due to them being pretty/effeminate friends/rivals of the protagonist who go on to become antagonists. I don’t know enough about Canute’s story to know how far he goes into that territory, so I assume he’s not as bad as Griffith, but the connection makes sense even if they might not actually get along. And, of course, Griffith has a rocky history with romancing royalty, so I figured I’d play into that a little in the response.
I don’t know if there was a historical figure analogous to Thorfinn in the Dragon Ball world. Guessing at the history of Earth in that world is kind of a crapshoot. However, I feel like there probably were, at the very least, Vikings of some sort, since many other historical cultures are referenced at different points in the series. At any rate, I thought it’d be cute if Gohan thought Vikings sounded cool in his history books, and that lead to this situation here.
The winner of this First Shoot poll was Thorfinn, the protagonist of Vinland Saga. I’ve only seen a little bit of this show, but I know Thorfinn sports a number of different looks throughout the series. This one is the one I’ve seen the most, though, and is also the most attractive look of his in my opinion. His partner here is Suzu from Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, who’s actually one of the longest-standing members of the Studio. She was in one of three pics I drew in 2007 when I was first experimenting with sharing smut online, and she’s been in the 1 Club ever since. Now, sixteen years later I’ve drawn her for a second time to be paired with this Viking lad.
Also, for anyone interested, here is the Q&A video I did for Subscribers in June: