Special Update: Himawari Nasu's New Japanese Serial Has Launched!

SODAART's been up to something a little unusual lately — it's got nothing to do with Live2D, but I wanted to talk about it anyway~

A while back, I had four-panel comics made for our VTuber team — something like seven or eight strips in total. Does anyone remember those?

They eventually stopped, and there's actually a reason why:

The artist behind them, Himawari Nasu, is a manga-artist friend I've known for years.

For a long time now, she'd been telling me she wanted to break into the Japanese market. She even entered a new-artist competition and won an award, but between the language barrier and some bad timing, nothing ever came of it.

Since I used to be a manga artist myself, I know the ins and outs of how the industry works, and after years in Japan I've built up a decent network of Japanese industry friends. So I reached out to some of them for help and started pitching Himawari Nasu's work to Japanese publishers.

Of course, plenty of those pitches fell through — landing a serialization out of nowhere is never easy.

But almost a year ago, we finally connected with Take Shobo, and after what felt like an endless back-and-forth of emails, we sealed the deal.

(Yeah, negotiating a serialization in Japan really is that much of a process. Takes forever.)

That's how work began on a fantasy series adapted from a light novel —

【追放された錬金術師は無自覚に伝説となる ヤンデレ妹（王国の守護竜）と一緒に辺境で幸せに暮らします！】

(...that title is a mouthful, I know.)

The original novel is already pretty popular in Japan, and Himawari Nasu has worked incredibly hard on it — character design, storyboards, finished linework, even full color pages. With us acting as the go-between with the publisher, revisions got made wherever they were needed, and the publisher has been very happy with the results.

And finally — as of yesterday, 1/19, the first chapter is officially live online! (Round of applause!)

If you've got a moment, go give it a read and show some support! (It's in Japanese, but still!)

Also, since the serialization has officially kicked off, Himawari Nasu is now completely swamped and won't have time to keep drawing four-panel comics for our VTubers — hope you'll understand (finally got around to explaining that!).

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PS:

Just to be clear, I'm not doing this for free — I've signed an agency agreement with Nasu that includes a commission, which also gives us proper standing when negotiating with the publisher.

I'll keep helping manage things for her going forward too.

You can read the comic online right here! >> 追放された錬金術師は無自覚に伝説となる ヤンデレ妹（王国の守護竜）と一緒に辺境で幸せに暮らします！