057 “The Return of Love Letter Boy”

Yes, it is true, when I run out of ideas, I do make new threads. In this case, it was a gold mine — this thread rewarded me well, creating a fan favorite of Sexy Losers, Mrs. Shibata, who, in survey after survey, is always voted the Best Female Character by far. Which is odd, because her character design always seems to change from strip to strip, by Volume 5 she looks NOTHING like she does in this strip. Part of the reason why is that I had decided to ink this with nibs instead of pens (#1 and this strip being the only time I used nibs until I adopted them full time in Volume 4). The other part of it is, I just didn’t have a clear idea what her character should look like.

Regardless of what she looks like, the personality hasn’t changed a bit from this strip. The third panel captures what I was trying to achieve in her personality quite well, I think. The longing, the seething passion barely contained under the surface, that’s exactly what I wanted. Nowadays she’s definately more playful and not as well contained. But I think that’s more due to the passage of time rather than a change in character.

And Kenta’s personality is defined here as well. I mean, it’s not totally clear WHAT he’s thinking when his friends are teasing him. What I tried to play with here and in following strips was the mom’s overt sexuality versus the boy’s becoming a man, who is aware of SOMETHING but never lets the audience in on what.

This is not only the second strip in the series but the second strip I’ve had arguments about the ending. Apparently it’s too ambiguous once again, and people have used this strip as evidence as the mom and son actually having some degree of sexual intimacy. For the record, she is NOT giving him a hand job. She is just washing him. Damn you sick people. She’s his MOM for chrissakes.