S O U L M A T E S (SasuNaruSasu Magazine) Soulmates Magazine Nº2 | Page 22

Naru-related. I did google some pictures of
people who resembled how I saw all of the
characters. I knew that there would be
four designs of the main guys, but it kind
of bothered me the two main females
wouldn’t be featured, so I asked if we
could please add them, as well, so it wasn’t
a sausage fest.
So, for those six characters, I sent Wanda
the photos. Rin looks like the photo, so
does Hiromi. Kaito we knew had white
hair (and this was because I was watching
World Trigger and my initial vision of
Kaito somewhat resembled the character
Yuma Kuga). Nobu is probably the only
one who doesn’t look exactly like how I
envisioned, and I kind of wanted Takao to
have longer hair, but I think to avoid him
looking like Itachi, that got nixed. But I was
happy with the character designs even if
they couldn’t look like their Naruto coun-
terparts. But, at the same time, I also consi-
dered them original characters even if, ba-
sically, Nobu and Kaito and Takao are
exactly how I characterize Sasuke, Naruto,
and Itachi. I really had “ISOC: Dream” in
mind for how I portrayed them to be per-
fectly honest. Even Nobu’s interactions
with his parents are a lot like in Dream, but
I digress. So, they couldn’t look like Naruto
characters, Wanda and I had a hand in the
design, and then the artist she chose did the
rest!
YOU MENTIONED THAT YOU ASKED IF
10 RANKAI COULD BE THE ARTIST AT
ONE
POINT.
WHAT
HAPPENED
THERE?
When I was asked to come onto the pro-
ject, there was no artist picked yet. Since
YFAH had an SNS artist, I assumed BF
would, too. But, again, they wanted to get
away from being all SNS all the time. Befo-
re I realized that though, I did ask (jokingly)
if 10 Rankai was a possibility. What’s
funny is Wanda apparently knew her and
had met her and maybe brought it up to
whoever else is part of Leaves and Bonds,
but they decided against it. I was told it
was because there was a possibility 10
Rankai might receive some blowback since
she was an SNS artist. The artist they went
with is a professional artist in Japan who