Ohtaka’s Backstage vol.175:

“Whenever I’m drawing the metal vessel users, I think about things like ‘which one of them I’d want to follow, if it were just me.

Following Alibaba or Kouha doesn’t sound bad.

I hope you enjoy reading Magi this week. With Alibaba’s appearance, the story began to flow much smoothly and it helped me.“

If you pay attention to behind Alibaba and Hakuryuu, you’ll find the outlines of the other metal vessel users. I marked each one with their name. Some readers in the Japanese fandom think that the black circles on the faces of Sinbad, Kougyoku, Kouha and Hakuei could indicate that they either will fall into depravity or die. There are also white rukhs coming out of Koumei, Kouen and Muu. Another drawing of Ohtaka also had circles like those, but they were on Judar’s face, not Hakuei’s, so I wonder if we should read too much into them.