S O U L M A T E S (SasuNaruSasu Magazine) Soulmates Magazine Nº2 | Page 23

was known for her Gintama fanart!
WAS THERE A TIME WHEN YOU
THOUGHT IT WAS A BAD IDEA TO
GET INVOLVED IN ALL THAT
WORK?
Never.
WAS IT DIFFICULT TO THINK
ABOUT THE PLOT OF BREAK FREE?
No. It just took time to flesh it out. I figu-
red that since the drama CD was essen-
tially more for the Japanese audience, I
kept it in Tokyo. Since it was in Japan, I
was able to kind of go with the arranged
marriage concept (kind of like in KSL’s SNS
doujin “Family Game” if you’ve read that).
If I was going to give Nobu an older brot-
her, there needed to be a reason Takao
wasn’t the one being forced to get married
and carry on the family’s (samurai) surname.
So, I wanted Takao to be gay. He’s able to
also follow his own path in his career,
going from working in government to pu-
blishing. In so doing, that put the pressure
on Nobu, and how I saw it was that Nobu
wasn’t resentful of taking this on. He wan-
ted to make his parents happy, he also figu-
red he could take the pressure off of Ta-
kao, but that was sort of Nobu’s thing. He
was always following the status quo,
which is why I put in there that, as a kid, he
did have that same fantasy a lot of kids do,
he wanted to be a pro baseball player, but
he kind of gave that up and did what his
father wanted him to, because that’s what
was culturally expected.
Then Kaito (Naruto) comes along, and he’s
grown up in the States and in the story, he
was very “Westernized”, so he sort of blew
that apart when he met Nobu. Kaito was
very “What do you want to do? Follow
your dreams!” And Kaito was really meant
to challenge and push Nobu in that direc-
tion instead of always pleasing everyone
else, but just like in the manga (with Sasu-
ke), I wanted Nobu to be able to decide on
his own what he wanted. That’s why I like
that moment when Nobu’s so frustrated
with everyone telling him what to do. His
parents, his brother, even Kaito, that he ta-
kes time to figure it out on his own.
So, really, this story was about Nobu’s
growth. It was about the friendship that
grows between Kaito and Nobu, how they
push and challenge and change each other.
Kaito also was denying his own issues.
When he had all those signs that he might
be getting sick again, he refused to “believe
it” and was in denial and kept lashing out
about it, but Nobu really put it in his face.
You know, it’s just how I imagine Naruto
and Sasuke interacting, calling each other
on the shit no one else will call them on but
still really, truly caring about the other. I
love so much of their dialogue, just the two
of them, especially that phone call. But, I’m
sure a lot of folks know how much I like
writing dialogue… truly.
I love nearly every scene with Nobu/
Noriaki and then as characters, I love the
convos between Kaito/Nobu and Nobu/