What I'm Busy!

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

The year's coming to an end and we're gonna wind down the year with some art. I've only posted this one to a small group on the Webcomic Underdog discord, but here's Natsumi, not busy at all.

Oh, sorry...

Maybe she's really busy keeping up with baseball scores and playing games on her Switch, or maybe it needs a slightly modified name to avoid any copyright issues... her Nintenbo Twitch, Mintendo Swatch, Tinnendo Bi...

Anyway, you get the idea, I don't know what it should be called, but it's called something like her favorite snack Pokki.

What's in a Name?

I've been incorporating Kamiko's human name more and more into the text about her. Her real name is Takahashi Natsumi.

Natsumi written as 夏生...

夏 means "summer" 生 means "life"

So she's all about that summer life.

Her last name Takahashi is a common Japanese last name as I understand it, so I'm thinking it's like a "Smith" or a "Jones." I'm sure there's more meaning in Japanese that I'm omitting for my purposes. I wanted a common sounding name for her. Like if I were to translate her Japanese name into English for a dub, it might be fair to call her something like Summer Jones, LOL.

As I created Natsumi as a character, one of my inspirations for her was The Doctor from Doctor Who. Keep in mind I created her back in 2010, and believe it or not, even in 2010 they were talking about the next Doctor being a woman. As we all know the next Doctor wasn't a woman, and that wouldn't happen for quite some time, but I liked the idea and rolled with it in the form of Takahashi Natsumi. I stripped away a lot of the artifice that surrounds the Doctor, such as needing a time machine and a magic wand. He's practically a space wizard, maybe even a space god, so why not just make Natsumi that and skip all of the nonsense.

The tenth Doctor also goes by a generic English at one point, he's known as John Smith. He uses it as an alias and later when he hides his true identity he takes on the moniker of John Smith.

So, then why's she also called Kamiko? Well, that's Natsumi's new name. Kami meaning "god" and "ko" as a suffix for "child." Some characters in the story literally call her a God Child and leave it at that. So yeah, that's her name in a literal sense.

Who is Natsumi?

She's the older sister to Takahashi Hana, about six years older. We last saw Takahashi Hana in The Rabbit and the Moon which finished serializing back in 2016. We also met the sisters when they were about 12 (Natsumi) and 6 (Hana) years old. Natsumi might be older, but she's reckless and daring whereas Hana is more mature and down to earth.

Things Natsumi likes... baseball for one. I drop hints here and there. They're not like deep hints or anything. In Rabbit and the Moon she literally has a t-shirt on that's a baseball. In Magical Girl Kamiko when we see her apartment, she's got some baseball bats. When she's checking her phone, she's looking at a baseball app. Even on her Ninbendo Quitche she's got a baseball game (and in the image you can see her phone with a baseball app).

Her favorite mangaka... Mitsuru Adachi, obviously.

Personality-wise I always think of her as arrogant and smart -- at least, she thinks so.

I don't want to say too much more about her. I'll leave that up to the story.

So that's all I got for this week. I hope you're having a great weekend and gearing up for the holidays. Have a good one!