:: origin of the comic

Well, I know that sometime, somewhere, somebody will ask us something along the lines of "where the hell did this whole idea come from?" Whew, that was a few too many "some"s for one sentence. Glenn and I had been reading online comics for a while, and suddenly, without any warning, Glenn turns to me and says "Hey, we should do our own webcomic!" My reaction? Stupid idea, we'd never actually get anywhere with it, there's no way we could do it, so what the hell let's do it. I proceeded to do a few comics to test out this idea, and the comic was called "Roommates no Baka." These comics made our friends roll on the floor laughing, which isn't too surprising considering that just about everything in the comic was true. But those comics took too long to make, and they really didn't seem all that funny or fulfilling for me. I really enjoyed the idea of making a webcomic, though, so I was determined to try again, without confining the comics to real life events, without spending forever coloring each one. And I wanted to tell a story with the comic, not just have an endless series of random jokes. I guess I was inspired by Megatokyo, with its amazing combination of great art, humor, and a progressive story. But we needed more than just the two of us, we needed someone else thrown into the mix. We'd be boring by ourselves, we'd run out of story and jokes too fast. And what happens in anime when you're introduced to a couple lonely guys? The girl of their dreams comes out of nowhere and turns their lives upside down.

:: origin of Yuki-chan

Yuki-chan was the character I came up with to be the girl of our dreams. Well, I dunno about that. But she was designed really to be the catalyst for most of the jokes in Neobaka. She being a robot makes for lots of possibilities for weird situations and technology/gaming related jokes. As for her design, I was inspired by a lot of animes--too many to count. Ones that come to mind are Battle Angel and Ah! My Goddess. Those for the metal parts on her cheeks. Although it was tempting, I avoided love-sim influences when designing her. She isn't meant to be a sex object. She is meant to be extremely cute. And I believe that a large part of cuteness is innocence.

:: origin of the name "Yuki"

When I need a name, I usually check a bunch of anime art sites, looking for names that are semi-common and not distinctive enough to get people thinking of other characters when they hear the name. (Imagine if I had picked the name "Asuka" -- which is a common name) So, on one art site I found a drawing of a girl named "Yuuki," and I liked the sound of that... Though I decided to drop the extra U. I told Glenn about this, and he looked up "Yuki" and found that it means "snow." Kawaii, methinks. "Yuuki" however, means courage, bravery, boldness, etc., which isn't nearly as cute and doesn't suit Yuki's innocent, childlike personality.

:: origin of the name "Neobaka"

Most people who are into anime know that "baka" translates to something like "fool," "idiot," or "stupid." Glenn and I have used the word "baka" in titles for a few things over the past couple of years as a joke--telling Japanese-savvy people that we're idiots right in the title. So, when trying to name the comic, we had to do it again. The name we settled on, "Neobaka," has two meanings, I think. One, it just means we're new fools. The idiots of the future. Hey, the first comic was posted on the first day of the real new millenium. And two, it's a play on other names and titles. It's "Neo-baka," as in "Neo-Tokyo." And in that, we might even be referencing Megatokyo by proxy, you never know.

(That's all for now, we'll add more info later!)