When reading this question, I had the thought that Mars might prefer to compete unilaterally with the premise. Rather than get into a numbers game, I figured Rei would more likely just claim she has better taste than Usagi. For her partner, I tried to go with someone who both pairs well with Sailor Mars and also wouldn’t raise too many complaints about her “quality”.
While I’ve resolved to cut back on adding too many new Fusions to the Studio, I do still want to do them occasionally. I had the idea a while ago to run a Fusion poll for Subscribers made up of only First Shoot rookies, so once we hit ten I decided we could celebrate that way. So, of the first ten FS rookies, Yor and Power ended up winning the poll. I can’t say this result is terribly surprising, and I decided to go with the funniest name option I had on my list. I hope you all like Powyor, and maybe we’ll see her again down the road.
When I read this question, I immediately thought about how Yor seems to have trouble socializing with the other women at her day job in Spy x Family. So it seemed obvious to me that I should pair her with someone in the Studio and have her answer along these lines. The only part I needed to think about was who to pair her with, and I settled on Mito. Besides being a character I haven’t drawn in a minute, it’s easy for me to picture her and Yor getting along well, maybe Yor even looking up to her as a maternal figure (since Yor has insecurities about being a housewife, and Mito’s a pro at it). Also, it’s a little funny to me to crossover the to “Something x Something” shows.
So, this is a new series idea I’m trying out called “First Shoot”. The premise here is that I run a poll for my higher-end Subscribers (except for this first one, which was open to all subs) with a list of characters who are not in the Studio yet, but would make good fits. The winner of the poll then gets to appear in a two-panel introductory comic, like you see here, with the second panel featuring them performing with a random existing member of the Studio. The partner is truly random, too, selected from the full list of characters I’ve drawn before. Toi Kuji was the lucky partner for Yor, which I think is interesting. Aesthetically I think he makes a good match for her, but obviously the Sarazanmai boys are usually just used for yaoi content. I figured Toi would want to give her some advice, since he’s appeared a number of times in my work, and I thought maybe it’d play well into Yor’s concerns over her performance.