[060508]

So. Back here I mentioned that I should write about Aerith and Chikara. Just yesterday I remembered that I made the above comment in “episode” 77. Apparently it’s only now that I’m getting around to it. This one is going to be picture intensive, I think.

Compared to many characters in the Directorate story, Aerith and Chikara have been around for a long time. They are the only two characters not based upon people I actually know (Mad Scientist J-san MIGHT be in this category, but it is up for debate). In fact, Aerith, though unnamed, and a far cry from the current character, was first sketched as the THIRD NWars character, after D-san and J-san. Our good friend Mad Scientist J-san, aka J-sama, was fourth.

I believe I’m repeating some material from various earlier rants here, but I will repeat them nonetheless. Aerith was intended to be a stereotypical “Magical Girl” character as this early sketch suggests.

Chikara’s character design, drawn up maybe a week or two later, was intended to reflect the stereotypical mecha-girl, and with that, we’d have a set. Just as with Aerith, the original sketches of Chikara reflect the design idea. Unfortunately, I don’t have an early sketch, so this will have to do.

With regards to NWars and the NWars storyline, Aerith and Chikara were largely ignored for almost three month. Despite that, the two are, in my opinion, the best representation of style changes from then to now in my drawing, as they appear consistently in my sketching and/or comics for a good part of the last year and a half, unlike D-san and J-san and the rest of the NWars cast. I have a lot of interim pictures such as the NW 2004 Christmas “Special”.

With the advent of the Directorate storyline, Chikara appears, though nameless, in the comic series starting with CHOBIT. Getting a bit further ahead of ourselves, Chikara shows up consistently up through CLAMP Season (Arguable one of my favorite drawings to date), before I temporarily stopped drawing NWars strips. At the same time, Aerith never made a comic appearance. However, both appear several times in a non-comic oriented “Relative Max” of my drawing “career” (You know, when the rate of change of drawing quality goes from positive to negative; this is another rant topic I have had in mine for a while), as shown in these drawings: NW46 and Pwned. The latter, again, is one of my all time favorites.

Sheesh, this is long. I’ll quote myself for the next part, concerning the appearance of Aerith and Chikara in TIAIIS: I’ve “stolen” characters from all over the place; the first sketch has cleaned up versions of Aerith and Chikara – originally supposed to be the mechs in the NWars Directorate storyline, which is, sadly, incomplete. Aerith (Who was going to be “Sakura” [Sakura and Chikara sounds like a pretty good set, huh?] [And "Chikara" is derived from CLAMP's "Chi"]) is probably the most minor character in TIAIIS. Their character designs (Both almost a year and a half old, now) are both based off the stereotypical magical girl/school girl characters in stereotypical manga. You’ll notice the change in style. I’ve been apt to call this a step down from the previous generation of drawing.

The current versions of the two bear the characteristics they were given in the brief life of TIAIIS. They are both mechs, though Chikara, the earlier ‘model’ is of conventional build, whereas Aerith, the later ‘model’ employs the all-famous, all-hated nanomachines, in order to give her magical girl capabilities: transformations, wings, etc. Their current character designs most closely resemble the redo of that second picture I mentioned.

Here’s a picture for y’all. Inspired by that second sketch I showed up there 036.