#an.an

Trying my first animated gif, inspired by my old Yuzu paper dolls :3 In this case, with the messy hair of the 2015 an-an’s magazine photoshoot 

"This isn't just the case with Sarazanmai; every time I create characters, I base them on the idea of 'loss,'" he explained. "As the character's loss becomes more apparent, other characters who have also lost something become drawn to them, and they come to understand each other through their mutual feelings of loss."

This feeling, Ikuhara went on, is also one of the key motifs of the current era. "Right now, we're going through a period of turbulent change. The post-war era was a world of material things, but it reached its conclusion and ended. I think that the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami is the biggest event that Japanese people experienced in the post-war. What we felt there is a theme across all Japanese people. When you look at the flow of time, it's often said that new things are good, or that it's better to forget the past, or that the future is sparkling. But in the end, I think that there are things that you don't want to forget, or that you mustn't forget. There's no future in just forgetting. I'm sure that the future coexists with loss."