I’m going to answer some of the questions from fans that we solicited on Twitter the other day! I think we got a lot of questions from Japanese fans this time around. Sorry I couldn’t get to all of them, but I’d love to do this again if I get the chance, so send me your questions and thoughts then!
◆Q&A
Q: I love you guys so much, and my dream is to work with you someday when I’m an adult. I’d like to make games too. How old do you have to be to work? I’ve actually commissioned an illustrator before who turned out to be a high school student.
A: I value youth and enthusiasm more than experience, so if it’s something like PR or publicity, I suppose there could be opportunities once you’re over 20, depending on how motivated you are.
Basically, I don’t plan on expanding the internal team too much, and we’ll probably continue outsourcing things like illustration and music. If you want to pursue the creative side of things, I think there will always be opportunities to work together. Let’s do our best together.
Q: In your first manga work as a writer, Black, Black, and White Prunelle, there’s a younger sister character named Sahana (紗花 / 沙花). Her name is pronounced the same as Imotapa’s Sahana, though written with different characters, and she also wears a spider lily hair ornament that was apparently rejected as a design for Imotapa’s Sahana. Did Prunelle’s Sahana have any influence on you when creating Imotapa’s Sahana?
A: I’ve spent my life wanting to make a story about sisters, so when I was around 20, I wanted to take another shot at expressing the things I had wanted to depict in a failed work of mine from that time.
So even when I was 20—or really, ever since my teens—I already had an image in my mind of what an ideal way for siblings to live together would be. This time, I turned that into a work once again, driven by my own ego. Nice catch.
Q: In Baby Blue Cluster, the Utsutsu and Utsuro siblings part ways; in Sister, Other, Paranoia, there’s Dokudami’s true ending; and if we consider Karamazov in the NEEDY anime to have a kind of sister-like relationship, there’s also the separation between Karamazov and the others discussed in the final episode. Looking at these works, I get the impression that “siblings parting ways” is a recurring theme in your work. Is this something you consciously do?
A: I was completely unaware of it.
Even if I’m not consciously doing it, since I’m the same person who wrote all of these works, other people might objectively identify it as a common thread—a “writer’s quirk,” so to speak.
To begin with, I’m someone who has been completely cut off from my own family, so perhaps the idea that “you leave home” has become deeply rooted in me. Even if the people involved are siblings.
Q: Is HazeDenki pronounced “ヘイズデンキ” or “ハゼデンキ”?
A: It’s ヘイズデンキ.
Q: Regarding the similarities between Botan’s scenario and Michika’s backstory in the NEEDY anime: the idea that “she once saw a famous painting and became inspired by it” is a common element between Michica and Botan as well (Botan → Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, Michika → Fragonard’s The Swing), and I feel this has often been pointed out in reviews both in Japan and overseas.
Also, an explanatory article about Episode 6 of the NEEDY anime compared Ame-chan and Michika to “beings that branched off from a common starting point, like Digimon evolving.” Could Michika and Botan likewise be seen as beings who branched off from a common starting point, with their paths diverging over things like “whether the famous painting that moved them was by Fragonard or Vermeer” and “whether they encountered Kache and Karamazov, or ended up meeting Hasuya-kun”? How much of this was consciously considered during production?
A: I wasn’t conscious of it at alllllllllllll.
First of all, I’m basically the type of creator who keeps trying to depict my own “ideal woman” in my work. I think that ideal tends to fall into two broad directions: “girl” and “goth-lolita beauty.”
For example, Sahana was on the “girl” side. The main heroine of my next work will probably be closer to the former as well. I’m absolutely planning to draw characters from the latter category as supporting characters, though. Ame-chan sits somewhere between the two, although she leans more toward the latter.
As for the latter category, let’s say these are women who are made to carry the pursuit of beauty.
I myself am someone who is strongly influenced by paintings and films, and I’m naturally drawn to women who have a similarly strong interest in art and aesthetics. So the fact that I often ended up having characters discover something about themselves through “paintings” was simply me working backward from my own sensibilities. It’s a habitual pattern of mine.
Michika and Botan were both characters in that same general category, but depicting them differently was an experiment for me. The major difference between them isn’t Fragonard versus Vermeer; it’s whether or not they live in a fantasy world. The world of NEEDY has a slightly fantastical quality to it, in the sense that an influencer can suddenly rise to prominence on a global scale. That’s why someone like Michika can exist exactly as she does.
By contrast, the people I depicted in I’motapa are nothing more than ordinary, realistic university students.
Botan, specifically, is a “subculture girl” who gets none of the buffs that come from living in a fantasy world. I think I even wrote that she had around 2,000 followers in the story? That’s a lot for an ordinary female university student’s account, but that’s about as far as it goes. It’s certainly not enough to attract fans or turn into work opportunities. Botan herself has realized that she’s basically just “Subculture University Student A,” and that her life isn’t going to reach some great peak from here on out. She’s simply living in the present, surrounded by male university students and accounts looking for casual sex. She’s smart, and she yearns for beauty, but there’s nothing she can really do about it. That’s simply reality.
What set her apart from being just “Subculture University Student A,” as the questioner points out, was that she happened to connect with a writer. Things like that happen by chance in life. Maybe it was fate.
So, looking back at the question now, I suppose the answer is “the difference in their worlds,” but perhaps that difference ultimately manifests itself in Fragonard versus Vermeer as well. By the way, in Ame-chan’s case, you could say that the object of her admiration wasn’t a painting, but “internet culture itself.”
Q: I’d like to know what all-in-one gel Nyarla uses.
A: 👇
Q: Nyarla! Apparently there’s going to be a remake of Twin Angel 2 in December. I want to experience reaching the heights of ecstasy at the pachislot parlor too, but I know absolutely nothing about either the original or gambling. Where should I start?
A: It’s a memorable machine for me because it was around when I had just turned 18 and could legally play. Pachislot is a little more technically demanding than pachinko, but if you just want an easy way to enjoy some moe, there’s no problem with simply playing from the left reel in order. Since it’s based on a pachislot game, you’ll naturally get a rough idea of the story while you play.
Of course, if you play without paying much attention to the mechanics, you’ll probably lose a little extra here and there, but we’re talking about something like ¥300 worth of missed opportunities for every ¥10,000 you spend, so don’t worry too much about it.
Q: I really enjoyed Sister, Other, Paranoia!
That’s why I was disappointed that there aren’t any survival endings for anyone other than Sahana and Dokudami.
Even if their relationships with Hasuya fall apart, is there really no path for each of them to continue living their own lives?
Do they all inevitably have to head toward an ending where Hasuya can’t write a second work, no matter what choices you make?
I’m sorry if this question means I’ve misunderstood the intentions of the work. And, if I may add one thing, I wanted to talk with Sahana more.
I also loved O-Hisashiburi-sensei’s illustrations. I look forward to seeing more from you in the future!
A: I really should have made a route where you could talk with Sahana more. That might actually be added at some point in the future.
Q: Do you have any plans to make another work like Sister, Other, Paranoia, where you can already predict that it won’t appeal to everyone?
A: I do.
The next work I announce will involve a lot of money and staff, so I’m aiming for a package that can reach a somewhat more mainstream audience. But in between those projects, I also plan to work on completely personal projects on the scale of Imotapa—under ¥1,000, made entirely according to my own tastes. I like both kinds of projects, after all. That freedom is exactly what “my own company” and its staff are for.
◆Promotion
It’s already been about a year since I founded the company, and it’s pretty late to be doing this now, but we’ve finally created a Japanese-language HazeDenki account. You’d think a Japanese company would have done this sooner, but from now on, we’ll be posting our announcements in Japanese over there.
We might also post about some of the bishoujo games we like, so please give us a follow!
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