To celebrate the release of “Our House Love Trouble” and the accompanying “drama CD”, Marine Entertainment has shared a special follow-up interview with Owal-Sensei.

 

In it, Owal-Sensei discusses character names, her favorite type of characters to draw, and how they came up with some of the more shockingly sexy and fun moments in the bedroom scenes for “Our House Love Trouble” Available now in English at Renta! Manga Store ❤

 

I took a moment this weekend to give it a quickie translation from Japanese to English. I hope you find it as interesting as I did! 

 

 

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■Do you find it difficult to decide on character names?
  What is your thought process when coming up with names?

 

Deciding on character names is one of my favorite things! The only problem is, it’s really hard for me to come up with them lol.

 

With Our House, Nonohiko was the first character to receive a name.

 

I think names that have two repeating syllables are cute, and was considering a 4-syllable name for the main uke, and so that’s how 『のの彦』 Nonohiko got his name.

 

I wanted to give all the seme characters 1-kanji names across the board, and so that’s how I decided on 『響・要・馨』 Hibiki, Kaname, and Kaoru. Only later when I was writing notes on the manuscript did I realize that the kanji for Hibiki and Kaoru’s names look really similar, so when I had to write really small it caused a lot of confusion later on lol.

 

―――Were there any characters you had difficulty naming?

 

I think it’s difficult to decide on names for all my characters, but Hibiki was the most challenging this time.

 

I had already decided to make Nonohiko’s full name “Nonohiko Nojima”, so I thought I’d make Hibiki’s last name “Minami” so that when you put them together it’d read “Minami no Shima” (which means Southern Islands – Sarah).

 

But then I wanted Hibiki to have a name that fit better with his “Super Darling” character type (a dashing, handsome, confident, warm, manly man who openly loves and accepts his uke, usually tall, educated, and rich), so I ended up giving him the name “Hibiki Kaidou”. (Ocean Way)

 

Sometimes I also decide on a theme and give characters names accordingly.

 

In Hangout Crisis, I decided to give everyone “flower” last names, which is how I came up with 『椿』Tsubaki (camellia) and 『桜井』Sakurai (cherry-blossom well)!

 

It makes me really happy when people remember my characters’ names out of all the many characters out there.

 

 

 

■What kind of character personalities do you like the most?

 

I love characters who are a pleasure to tease!

 

When I’m drawing ukes, in my mind I’m usually biting my lip thinking “Ah, I want to tease him so bad!” I’m not saying I don’t genuinely like the uke characters, but I think I have a tendency to fall into the seme’s emotional point of view lol.

 

Actually, this time I packed a ton of my favorite character personality traits into Nonohiko!

 

A big chest (lit. oppai, lol), an almost unconditionally accepting and gentle heart, and the type that’ll wrap you up in warm comfort when you need it.

 

It’s the type of guy you just wanna trick/bully/fool/tease. Naturally, the Super Darling will want to spoil and take care of him, try to make him jealous, etc… I tried to stuff it full of that flavor of romance lol.

 

That’s another thing that blows me away in the audio-drama adaptation for this manga. No matter how many times I listen to it, my heart is purified every single time by how accurately they portrayed this lol.

 

In all the comments and reviews, I was also really moved by everyone who wrote in saying how much they adored Nonohiko.

 

I think I have my editor to thank for making him such a beloved character, since they’re the one who gave me the suggestion “Make him dumber.” If I’d written him a little smarter, I don’t think it would have turned out quite the same lol. The story depends on his slightly ditsy, warm fuzzy kind of “wait, what?” clueless personality lol.

 

■When you’re creating manga, what matters to you the most?

 

It’s gotta be “sexy, easy on the eyes, and engaging/interesting/funny”!

 

―――In all the feedback from questionnaires, the fans have spoken, and they all agree that Owal-Sensei’s fetish and action in the bedroom scenes deserve only the highest of praise!!

 

I’m so happy to hear that. Thank you so much!!

 

My editor gives me incredibly great ideas and suggestions. When we discuss concepts and stories together, they’ll just casually drop the best ideas like a bomb, no hesitation at all lol.

 

That’s how we ended up with Nonohiko squatting over Hibiki’s face on the hotel bed.

 

Not to mention the “How about a shoulder-blade-job?” suggestion… that idea was so good, we got a little over-excited lol.

 

We went from starting with Hibiki making a sudden move to rub himself between Nonohiko’s shoulder blades, all the way to Nonohiko fwipping his face around to get an eye-full (so to speak lol).

 

During that conversation it was like the whole scene was crystal clear in my mind. Then when actually drawing that scene, it was so much fun. I was also really happy when I saw that they included that scene on the back of the book’s “obi”, too.

 

I also try to be really careful about dividing up the content in each panel. I say that but then I have a bad habit of cramming as much as I can into one page, too lol.

 

I try to fill each and every panel with at least one thing that will catch the reader’s eye. It would make me happy if when someone flips through and sees something interesting, they then flip back to page one to enjoy the story from the beginning.

 

―――Thank you very much!

 

-Special Thanks to Marine Entertainment and Owal-Sensei. Please visit their website at the link above and check out the English translation of Our House Love Trouble, available now. ❤

 

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