Character Profile - Kujiranami Hyougo


- The motif was a "arm strong", and it was the handsome swordsman Iba Hachiroh from the 
Bakumatsu. But the Iba Hachiroh -> Kujiranami wasn't meant to be in the beginning, but rather
this "arm strong" should be Enishi. So, it should be Iba Hachiroh -> Yukishiro Enishi. But
I thought, "Against a Kenshin who's got the ougi (ultimate technique, the Amakakeru Ryuu no
Hirameki), just a strong man isn't enough" and "the battle with the boss should be simpler,
a katana against a katana." So in the end, it became Iba Hachiroh -> Enishi -> Kujiranami.
  I have thought about employing that Terminator idea with Kujiranami, since I failed with
such an idea when I created Usui, but the story turned and twisted so much, so it became like
that. I could have done such idea in the battle with Yahiko, but, to tell the truth, I was
competely exhausted and my assistants were exhausted also, saying that "if we do that, somebody
is surely gonna die!" (did you know that explosion scenes and chaos scenes are very hard to
draw?), so I had to give it up, not without tears. But the next time I WILL draw a Terminator
like character!!

- About the design motif, I heard about Yagyuu Hanma from "Samurai Spirits" or Barrett from 
Final Fantasy VII (I said that I haven't played FFVII yet!), but I guess you can see it clearly.
It's Apocalypse, that fearsome enemy that appears in the X-Men series. This guy is wonderful,
with such attractive lips, but nobody understands him, so I decided to give it a try. After the
archrival Magneto, Apocalypse is my favorite villain of X-Men. The stance of his, never bending
his philosophy of the survival of the fittest, is awesome and cool. As a man, I want to be like
him, and as a manga artist, I want to draw him.
  The other motif of Kujiranami, besides the lips, that is, the "a middle-aged macho man",
was quite fun to draw. No matter what they say, muscles are a symbol of power and so they're an
important asset when drawing battles, so from now on I'd like to try many other types of
muscles.