A Sister’s All You Need (Imouto Sae Ireba Ii) is a romantic comedy about Itsuki Hashima, a light novelist who keeps writing novels with a younger sister as the heroine, and depicts the lives and events of him and other various creators.

Anime!Anime! conducted a six-part interview series with the staff members of the anime series. For the fourth part of the interviews, the interviewee was Sumie Kinoshita, the anime’s character designer.

She talked about the trial and error it took to transform Kantoku’s illustration into anime, and what she paid extra attention to when she drew the characters based on the storyboard. She also shared some behind-the-scenes stories of the sexy scenes.

[Interview: Shigeyoshi Okimoto (underwear supporter) & Taichiro Onose (total nakedness supporter) / Composition: KarzuSP (underwear supporter)]

A Sister’s All You Need

http://imotosae.com

Kantoku’s illustrations have an artistic sophistication

First of all, could you tell us how you became involved in the production of the anime series?

Kinoshita

The producer offered me the job. I looked at Kantoku’s illustrations for the light novels and loved the cuteness of the characters. I immediately accepted the offer, thinking ‘There’s no way I would refuse this offer! I must do the job no matter how busy I am!’

Kantoku’s characters have an artistic sophistication which mine lack. My drawings of girls have a realistic body line, whereas his slender girls look like beautiful porcelain dolls or works of art.

Kantoku’s illustrations have sophistication as well as cuteness.

Kinoshita

Although Kantoku’s characters often show underwear and other things [laugh], their eroticism is different from the eroticism in adult magazines. They can be looked at by women as well as men without embarrassment, which is very rare.

My character designs change depending on the style of the original drawings on which they are based

Is the sophistication of Kantoku’s illustrations derived from the body shapes and lines of his characters?

Kinoshita

Hmm… I would say his works have an overall aura of sophistication. The contrast in the strength of his lines, the way he paints and blurs their skin, the facial expressions and poses: everything is sophisticated.

His illustrations are simple but have a lot of information and are unarguably cute.

What was your plan for the character design for the anime adaptation of A Sister’s All You Need?

Kinoshita

Prior to this one, I did the character designs for the anime series Girlish Number. The original characters drawn by QP:flapper were soft and graphic. I was worried because they could end up looking nothing like QP:flapper character designs, or they change their style depending on the key animator or key animation supervisor when adapted into anime. There were many comical and sharp-tongued characters, so I designed them more suitable to anime to make them more expressive.

On the other hand, Kantoku’s characters are already anime-like, so I didn’t need to change much.

In fact, Shin Onuma, the director, asked me to change the character designs drastically like for Girlish Number at the beginning of the planning of the anime. There was a lot of trial and error. For instance, I changed the balance of Nayuta’s eyes and the outline of her face a bit. However, I realized that even tiny alternations made the characters look completely different from Kantoku’s original designs. Therefore, I was very careful about not changing the balance of the characters’ features. It was quite a difficult task to keep the balance.

You’ve said that the original characters were easy to adapt into anime. Which parts of the characters did you alter?

Kinoshita

I reduced the characters’ hair volume and altered their proportions. I increased the ratio of their heads to make it easier to draw for the animators. I tend to draw girls with curvy bodies, so Onuma had to warn me repeatedly about their curves. [laugh]