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asuraaa · 3 years

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Question: What inspired you to make this comic/these characters?

TL;DR: MY LOVE OF OCS, HISTORY, AND BL DRAMA.

LONG VERSION: okay it really is kinda hard to pin any specific inspiration other than i just really like OCs and historical fiction and this character dynamic, but i feel like i get this question and similar ones a lot SO I'M JUST GONNA REALLY DIG INTO IT THIS TIME, give as thorough of an answer as i can.

so in 2009, i played ragnarok online. A LOT. i played with my friend jenny (who is the comic co-writer) and we would make dumb characters and then get super attached to them. she made an airship pirate sniper named cicada, and i made a posh politician wizard named gladimir. they looked like this:

my goal in designing glad was to make him the prettiest OC i had. most of my OCs are like... lanky old men and quirky ugly dudes, but glad was going to be GORGEOUS. and thus i made him to my taste, the prettiest boy i could manage. i'm just really into twinky pretty boys with bobs, so i guess you could call them my inspiration. here's some OG 2009 gladios:

they're a dime a dozen in mainstream media now, see lio fotia, yuri plisetsky, shion kiba, that fairy prince from FGO... but glad predates them all, i was just following my heart LOL. characters like xellos from slayers or garma from gundam may have played a subconscious inspo role, but i only realized this in hindsight years later. tho weirdly enough they're both purple:

anyway, jenny and i RPed a lot; having a friend to RP and be invested in OCs with you is always hugely invaluable inspiration for anything, i think! eventually our ragnarok online story kinda hit a dead end and got dropped for a while, until we picked it up again in 2015, and started exploring... ALTERNATE UNIVERSES. and the AU of "what if glad was a prince" just fucking TOOK OFF. insert old 2015 first doodle here:

inspiration for THAT came from an alanis morissette song that i've linked before, which was this one LOL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGYCyQfbFHM

it gave me the idea for the golden trial in the comic, which served as the base for a whole new world of RP and plot building. IN FACT i would say that music in general became a huge point of inspiration, specifically french music due to the nature of glad's made up country being some french/english hybrid. so on that note, let me link you some more inspiration songs:

- french drama vibes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN4VLmo1QG4

- french emotional vibes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfW5FQ5iv2E

- english plot vibes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAI5mYVWotI

the inspo for the overall aesthetic of the characters just comes purely from history and historical fiction vibes that i like. royal european clothing and the age of sail are hot. i think there's some subconscious inspiration from utena and gundam as well:

and inspo for the overall story i cant attribute to anything specific other than my friend’s interest, love for BL comics, and glad and cicada's character tropes. i love a classic brain & brawn duo, i love a short king with top energy, i love a heart of gold rowdy boy, and i love when you think two characters are completely opposite and then they turn out to be actually pretty similar. i don't know of any media that specifically fed me these vibes within the time frame we were making this story, but i will say that when promare came out it was PRETTY DAMN GREAT. here's glad dressed as lio because image breaks:

lastly, what inspired me to actually make the comic: memento mori. like many people, i just sit on my flat ass making stories with my friends that will never be shared outside of that friend group, and for the most part i am 100% perfectly okay with this! but deep down i just knew i wanted to actually make a comic... i wanted to be able to look back on my life and say HEY, YOU DID IT, YOU MADE A THING. i'm a story lover, i'm a story teller, and i just needed to finally indulge in this in a more tangible way. dead men tell no tales.

i was in my 30s when i started drawing the comic. it's never too late to start. >:9 start yours today.

o and i guess the narrative itself is just a general mishmash of ideas and tropes i think are fun, there’s no specific inspo there either. i like 90s anime, old video games, historical movies and documentaries, etc. i do pull from age of sail and pirate history for sure, that’s def a general inspiration for me! here’s some of my books on the subject, feel free to ask me for more titles/reccs if you’re into this stuff huhu:

ALSO, the comic had no name until after i started drawing it, but the name came from a song as well, pls enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R-BR9bzdMM

anyway i guess that's the deep dive into the inspo! if i think of anything else i'll just add it in later but MAN IF YOU READ THIS FAR, YOU ARE A ROCKSTAR. hope this answered everything and more, thanks for the question!!

#anonymous #tl;dr

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yeonchi · 3 years

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Kisekae Insights #24: GJ Club - how a spinon became a spinoff featuring Kyōya and Kasumi Shinomiya

(Art by 結城辰也)

The Kisekae Insights series has allowed me to bring the spotlight back on Waifu Network animes that I haven’t posted much about in the past due to lack of fanart or lack of interest. Like Hidamari Sketch in the last instalment, GJ Club will be no exception until I continue posting the usual content in my anime posts. Honestly, it was good while it lasted.

While Hidamari Sketch is a fairly popular and notable anime, GJ Club, sadly, isn’t. The anime was adapted from the light novel series written by Shin Araki and it only received one 12-episode season in 2013 and an OVA in 2014. Since it is a slice-of-life series, not much is known about the characters’ histories, which made it very easy to adapt into my personal project. All these factors coinciding with it being the 50th anniversary year of Doctor Who made GJ Club the perfect anime to adapt and expand on.

Background information

For some reason, the light novel has been a bit hard to find. In short, while you are able to read it online, the sources are unfortunately scarce.

From 2013 to 2015, NanoDesu Translations posted translations of the light novel. They published a PDF and EPUB of the first volume (which is available on archive.org) and translated up to Chapter 17 of the second volume. It was then abandoned for two years before Haraguro Scanlations picked it up. As of September 2018, they only finished up to Chapter 3 of the third volume (with the first chapter being translated by Shadowys on Baka-Tsuki) and there are no further updates after that, with the exception of a one-off chapter released in November 2020.

As of August 2021, however, all the original translations by NanoDesu seem to have been deleted from their site. All the translations are available on AsiaNovel, but there are no illustrations because the reader doesn’t seem to support images. If the images weren’t discarded in the code of the novels, then all they would need to do is add support for them and then they would appear.

There are 9 volumes and two special volumes for GJ Club along with 8 volumes and a special volume for its middle school spinoff. It’s honestly telling how popular the series was when the translators have all but abandoned it.

Shin Araki also wrote an additional spinoff to GJ Club, namely GE: Good Eater, and a sequel, namely KB Club. GE is set in a fantasy world with the characters being based off the characters of GJ Club, while KB Club turns everything meta by having both series be the creations of a high school light novel club, with the characters of GJ Club being based off the members of said club, right down to their names. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of that approach given how I’ve adapted GJ Club into my personal project. In the end, I guess we’ll never really know what happens in the novels, but at least we have this.

Watching the anime and listening to the character music was how I first realised that anime was sexist to males because of the female-centric focus in most animes. Kyōya only gets one character song in the series, and even then it’s a duet with Megumi. If that isn’t sexist to you, then I don’t know how I can convince you that a lot of animes are sexist.

In January 2015, I published two posts outlining my idea for an English dub of the series that also fits with GJ Club’s depiction in my personal project. The setting would be changed to London, England, specifically the areas of Chiswick, Ealing and Acton (where their school is located) and the characters would speak with British accents. The images in the original post are dead because I idiotically copied the images from the site instead of saving and reuploading them to the post, but since I’m grubbing for content anyway, I’m going to repost my character details as follows:

Kyōya: The protagonist of the series. When he started Year 10, he was kidnapped by the girls when he walked into an old school building, hoping to find the Culture Club. He moved to London from Manchester just before he started Year 7. His best friend outside the club is someone named Tesshin Yokomizo (横溝徹心) who is a local and not seen in the anime. In the GJ Club, he is nicknamed “Kyoro” and despite his spinelessness, he seems to have talent in dealing with the girls around him. His birthday is December 18. Due to a crisis involving his family during his childhood, he and his sister Kasumi were left in the care of a family guardian just before they moved to London, but she left when Kyōya started Year 10. It might have been that childhood incident that emotionally scarred him and left him spineless…

Mao: The Year 11 president of the GJ Club. Her family is rich and they live in a mansion in Ealing. She has a habit of biting and picking on Kyōya when she is bored or angry. She always reads books and watches shows without kissing scenes.

Shion: The only daughter in her family, Shion is an expert chess player with many brothers, all experts in some kind of activity. She speaks in a Birmingham (Brummie) accent because her mother and a few of her brothers were born in Birmingham. It is unknown if Shion was born in Birmingham herself.

Megumi: The calm and nice middle sister of the Amatsuka family. She likes knitting and she is always seen making tea and cakes in the club room. In the same year level as Kyōya.

Kirara: Born in Swansea, Wales, Kirara is the tallest and strongest member of the club. She speaks English in simple, monotone sentences. Welsh is her first language. Kirara can be seen eating meat, sometimes sharing it with Kyōya, but not with anyone else. She is afraid of spiders and has little tolerance to alcohol.

Tamaki: (voiced by Karen Gillan!) The newest member of the GJ Club when Kyōya becomes a Year 11 student. Like Kyōya, she is kidnapped and forced to join the club. Her nickname is “Tama”. Her family is from Glasgow and they run a Shinto shrine in Acton. She has several younger siblings.

Kasumi: Kyōya’s younger sister, who was born in Manchester. After a visit to the GJ Club, she becomes inspired to start a middle school division when she starts Year 7. She has a brother complex and she mistook Mao for being a primary school student when she met her. Her proficiency in Welsh is better than her brother’s, who can probably speak at a beginner level.

Geraldine: Shortened to “Jill”. She moved to Chiswick from Swansea to be with her sister, Kirara. She first met Kyōya at Ealing Broadway Station when she had difficulty buying a Tube ticket. She didn’t really understand how to use the ticket machine, so Kyōya went to help her. After this, Jill considered Kyōya her “samurai master”. Jill doesn’t speak English fluently, so she relies on her whiteboard to communicate with the others. She is as strong as her sister and she joins Kasumi’s GJ Club when she starts Year 7 in Chiswick.

Seira: The youngest sister of the Amatsuka family. Though she speaks in a typical London accent, she sometimes talks through her cat clip in Received Pronunciation (the Queen’s English/RP) using ventriloquism to state her true feelings to Kyōya, who she has a grudge against.

Mori: The maid of the Amatsuka family. She likes to ride a motorcycle. A running gag is her twirling before Kyōya much to his pleasure and annoyance to the rest of the club members. Sometimes, her mother takes her place without the family even noticing due to their identical appearance.

Kyōya, Kasumi and Momoka: The Brother, the Child and the Yandere

Normally in previous instalments, I would have described each character separately, but because their backstories are heavily intertwined, I will introduce them all at once in this section. Most of the backstory takes place around the Battle of Koshi Castle in December 2013 and during the Manchester Campaign of 2005-2013, which I have already covered in #15.

When Hiroki Ichigo’s twelfth incarnation was killed at Koshi Castle, he managed to escape in his TARDIS, where he regenerated into his new prototype, namely a four-year-old Kyōya. The TARDIS crashes outside North Manchester General Hospital on 11 December 2005.

Earlier, Hiroki and Akari’s gametes (along with those of Hiroki’s brothers and their families) were taken by Reona Yukawa and placed in the Progenitor so that they could breed super-soldiers out of them. When Takumi Kamijō and Kyōko Sakura manage to escape from their cells (saving Nodoka Manabe and Azusa Nakano in the process), he changes the destination of the baby about to be released into the Progenitor’s time portal. That baby was Kasumi, one of the super-soldiers grown from Hiroki and Akari’s DNA. She ended up at the same hospital as well and was about to be taken home by a couple when Girl Power killed them, resulting in Kasumi being taken by Akari and Shaun.

What remained of Hiroki was contacted by the spirit of Walpurgisnacht. Making a deal with her, Hiroki regenerated into his thirteenth incarnation, the female Momoka Mizutani. No, Momoka is not an OC for GJ Club, but she is based on the character of Apple Lam Chung-yan from the TVB drama A Great Way to Care II, played by Tavia Yeung. Momoka takes Hiroki’s TARDIS and heads to Salford, where with the help of Walpurgisnacht, she establishes a cha chaan teng café in the middle of a trading estate and hires a group of red drone Daleks as her workers, hiding their identities by having them disguise themselves as humans.

Over the next eight years, Momoka gets close to the new Shinomiya family by influencing them through Kyōya’s dreams to come to her café. Eight years later, on 11 December 2013, the Fourth and Fifth Doctors come in with their companions. When the Shinomiya family come in, a confrontation with Ayaka Kikuchi and her army ensues before Momoka transmats the Shinomiya family to a Dalek spaceship, where she prepares to execute them using the Yashio’ori. However, the Yashio’ori is sabotaged by the enemy army so that the laser beam would not charge.

As Ayaka and her army attack the Dalek ship, Momoka uses the Dalek-enhanced machine guns to fend them off. While two Doctors confront the Master, Momoka is killed by Girl Power officers, resulting in Walpurgisnacht taking over her body as she regenerates, maintaining her current appearance. Read #15 to find out what happens after this.

Once the Battle of Koshi Castle and the Manchester Campaign conclude, the Fourth Doctor helps Kyōya and Kasumi move to Chiswick in 2008. Five years later, the events of the GJ Club anime take place. During his time in Chiswick, Kyōya gets a job at the post office there and later, studies a double degree in Japanese Studies and Politics at SOAS in the University of London while also learning Cantonese, Mandarin and Welsh in weekend and evening courses (apparently he also wanted to learn Taiwanese but they weren’t running any courses, but that’s alright, he can always learn it somewhere else, which he presumably did).

On a side note, I volunteered myself to be Kyōya’s English voice actor, so I’ve practiced my Mancunian accent by watching actors like Christopher Eccleston, Stephen Tompkinson, Karl Pilkington and maybe a bit of Peter Kay as well. The only problem was that I’m not even sure that my accent is even Manc because I can’t tell if I’m getting it wrong and sounding like someone from Liverpool, Yorkshire, Newcastle or even Scotland. Oh well, that’s what happens when you really get into things.

I don’t buy expansion packs, I make my own (budget allowing)

So as I said, GJ Club only got one season and an OVA to go with it. Do Kyōya and the GJ Club make further appearances in the series? You bet your ass they do.

After being absent for much of the Next Gen Series in 2014, Kyōya and Kasumi receive a letter from their aunt, Narutaki, asking to meet in Hong Kong after their mother, Akari, went missing following the Siege of Ōsaka, only to be followed by Mao and the rest of the GJ Club, who learnt where he was going and managed to get on the same flight as them.

Narutaki, who had taken her Girl Power friends and established a rogue faction separate from the main group, takes the GJ Club to Nijō Castle, where she explains the background behind the Manchester Campaign and the events of Series 8 and 9. Soon after, Girl Power’s commander, Daniel, sends his brother, Nathan, out to find Narutaki. Kyōya tries to contact Hiroki, but he is unable to get through to him. Luckily, the TARDIS arrives and the Doctor and Hiroki help Angela and the others repel the attacking Girl Power forces. Some more things happen and by the end of the story, we learn that Kyōya and Mao are dating.

That Christmas, Kyōya and Kasumi head up to Manchester, but the Doctor briefly takes them and their friends back to Hong Kong for a picnic with Hiroki and the rest of the Zhuge family.

A few years later in 2018, the GJ Club and Momoka get a cameo at the start and end of the Gokaiger TV movie special. By this point in time, Momoka’s café in Manchester has expanded to many other branches around the UK and in Hong Kong.

The next year in 2019, Kyōya, Kasumi, Mao and Megumi are featured in a four-part adventure in Soulbound Series 3, helping the cast solve the mystery of Parker’s past and Shinbu’s origins. Two years after in 2021, Kyōya and Kasumi move to Hong Kong (along with the GJ Club) and join the Superhero Project as the new ShinkenRed and ZyuohTiger. You’d think Kyōya would be against violence given his harmless tendencies, but I suppose his character has developed over the years despite having abandonment issues.

So this has been the involvement of GJ Club in my personal project. It’s a shame the series wasn’t more popular or it could have gotten a second season, a manga, more (and frequent) translations of the light novel or hell, even a licenced release. This series is just like Sea Princesses in how popular it was, but despite the number of episodes the anime got, at least Shin Araki hasn’t abandoned the series (by putting it in a spinoff no less) unlike Fabio Yabu, who hasn’t made anything new for Sea Princesses since 2010 after getting more animated episodes than GJ Club did. On the other hand though, neglected series with little material has been good development fodder for my personal project as it allowed me to bring awareness to the existence of those series while also developing backstories and afterstories for them.

#kisekae insights #gj club #doctor who

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ot-hoe-me · 2 years

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OC: Saya Newman

For IF: @lemonade-if

Name: Saya Newman

Gender: F (she/her)

Age: 16-18

Ethnicity: Half Japanese, Half Caucasian (Australian)

Appearance: Fair skinned with long curly blonde hair with side-part bangs and blue eyes. Standing at 5′7″ she’s also lithe with slight curves, and has a scar through her left eyebrow.

Club: Cheer

Best Friend: Ren Sugiyama

Love Interest(s): Yosuke Takanashi and Shion Kisaragi (different playthroughs)

General Info: I modelled Saya’s personality based on her namesake’s - Saya Minatsuki from the manga Black Cat. So in short she’s upbeat, independent, and caring - especially towards children and animals. She’s also much more observant than her cheerful demeanour would suggest, and she can absolutely hold her own in a fight. She can also shrug off insults made at her easily, but is always ready to throw down if someone thinks that they can dish out the same treatment to her friends or cheermates.

Saya is also rather prone to joking and lives life in the moment rather than thinking too hard about the future. Better to appreciate what she has right now, right? On a related note, deep down underneath the ‘it’s better not to think about it’ response, she’s relieved about her parents’ divorce. She would never admit that though (at least early on) because she thinks others would harshly judge her for that reaction. But really, she's glad that she and her parents don’t have to go through the emotional stress of the fighting and the constant upheaval of their lives from never staying in one place for too long. Perhaps that’s why she doesn’t like to make definite long term plans, and only has superficial friendships and ‘romances’?...Until she comes to Mori High that is!

Another interesting tidbit about Saya is that, like a dragon, she enjoys Collecting Things. Especially cute things, like plushies. They make her feel less lonely. Also she still gives them names and elaborate backstories like she did when she was a child.

Student Interviews and More Outfits Under the Cut~

Bonus:

“That Newman girl is CRAZY I tell you!! I was talking to my buddy right? Saying that cheer isn’t a real sport and that they’re only there to look good- and then she comes right at me and nearly rips my earlobe off while yelling about how wrong I supposedly am and how cheerleaders are ‘much more useful and talented than a good-for-nothing like you will ever be!’ ...Oi!? Don’t tell me you agree with her!!”

“I heard that she once suplexed a middle-aged man who was hitting on a middle schooler while waiting at a bus stop...badass.” “Nah man, that doesn’t sound right. I heard she broke his hand.” “Well I heard that she stole the old creep’s phone and called his mother on him!” “Whoa...” “Whoa...!”

“Saya-chan? She’s great! Really dedicated to the squad, and she even made individual cheers for each of us on the team that she uses during practice when we feel tired or discouraged. They’re really effective, and she also has plenty of ideas for routines. At first, I thought she and Ren-chan would butt heads or even become rivals, but they get on like a house on fire and between the two of them, we might become the best cheer squad Japan has ever seen!”

“This past weekend I was out running errands for my mom, and I saw her ahead of me in line at the grocery store. By the time I had left she hadn’t gone very far. In fact, she was right across the street in front of a park and she was comforting a crying child. In fact, it was a kid I recognized. A little boy who lived with his parents two houses down from mine, so I decided to go over and see what was wrong, though I had a feeling. Turns out the little guy lost his dad while they were out. I think seeing a familiar face helped him to relax a little, but she got him smiling and giggling in no time. Then she had the idea to stop at an ice cream parlour nearby to get a treat to occupy him for a little while and asked me to check his jacket or backpack for a phone number we could call so we could tell his parents where we were and that he was safe. Anyway, it turns out she was right about there being a phone number on him, and by the time I ended the call she came back with ice cream for all three of us - vanilla soft serve with chocolate sauce and rainbow sprinkles for the little guy; chocolate and peanut butter ice cream with bananas and caramel sauce for herself; and she even remembered my order without asking that I had mentioned when we did ice breaker games at the beginning of the year - strawberry ice cream with strawberry sauce and chocolate pearls. It didn’t take long after that for the kid’s parents to come pick him up, and we were all relieved that there was a happy ending. But yeah, Newman-chan’s great with kids, and thoughtful. She’d be a good mom one day. I-it’s just an observation!!”

Casual: