#nkpan

I am about to post the most ooc self indulgent doodles of my life and nobody can stop me because I’m mentally ill

Art collab between me and @ask-badly-drawn-sk involving a love triangle between North Korea and Macau over Japan. Both our OTPs involve Japan so we thought this would be a great compromise between us

I did the sketch and lineart, Robine did the beautiful coloring/lighting

How I started shipping them:

I drew Japan teaching North Korea how to play Neko Atsume at the end of 2015 because the game was Japanese and I wanted to see North Korea play it. Then I started thinking: have these two interacted?

So I began looking into North Korea’s history with Japan. They really hate each other, but their history goes back to ancient times before it was like that. Then I started connecting it back to Hetalia again and well, this happened

Why I ship them:

I think their personalities have a lot of parallels and mirror each other in opposite ways. Japan is calculating yet emotionally stunted and complex. North Korea is emotional but stubborn and simple-minded. They both look like introverted psychos at first glance lol

They would be drawn to each other. Japan loves North Korea’s honesty/passion and North Korea loves Japan’s tactful nature/coolness. They both admire each other but it seems wrong, because of everything that has happened between them. It’s like they’re battling their inner nature to care about each other because they were nutured to hate each other

It does seem extremely problematic, which is why I made them childhood friends to show that they have further history beyond what happened in the century before. I think you can incoporate historical elements into ships that involve both the good/bad parts, and how they deal with it

(thank you for asking, this made my whole year)