Interview with ”Hates to Lose” Rabbit-Lover and Artist - Ikuchibyouin

I started drawing comics and illustrations with rabbits 2 or 3 years ago, but I’ve been a rabbit owner since about 8 years ago. A long time ago, I was a cat lover, but before I knew it, I had awakened to my love for rabbits.

Well, they’re cute no matter how you look at them. They can be haughty and moody, which is adorable. No matter how they treat you back, I think I find it endearing… 

She’s practically a queen. When she gets hungry, she’ll bite and stamp her feet to be fed, in a proud, demanding way.

They say rabbits are difficult to train; supposedly, they don’t remember many things. So a poorly trained rabbit is the fault of the owner. It’s too late: you’re now its slave. I didn’t housebreak Popotamu-sama properly, and now she believes my entire room to be her territory.

Droppings come with the territory with rabbits. Rabbits are also cecotropes, after all. But anybody who likes rabbits learns to not mind their poop. I believe the cutest poops in the world are rabbit poops.

Honestly though, it’s a one-sided love. I’m pretty sure I’m just a tolerated existence since I feed them. Once, when I went on a trip for 2 days, I came back and they couldn’t have cared less, probably being like “Who are you?” and having forgot about me...

But when my dad or other men get close, they growl and reject them, none of which they do around me, so I take it as them not hating me, at least. That’s enough to make me happy.

The truth is I think everything about them is worth drawing, but I try to draw them faithfully to real life. I can play around with the characterization--be it anthropomorphising or deforming them--but I still think the best way is to draw how wonderful they are on their own.

I sometimes make the rabbit characters with paw pads, but real rabbits don’t really have those, or they’re too fluffy to see properly. I also love how fluffy those feet are, so I try and depict that faithfully as well.

In order to draw faithfully, I actually draw while observing Popotamu-sama. Obviously, deformed versions are cute and easier to adapt to story situations, but the original is so cute, I feel like I should stay close to it.

Rabbits are very unexpressive, so it’s really hard to show differences in their emotions. I might furrow their brows or raise the sides of their mouths a bit.

I’ve loved drawing as long as I can remember. I knew I always wanted to be an illustrator or a mangaka. Somehow, filling my sketchbook with Voltorbs from Pokémon became a daily task. (lol) I liked the look of those eyes.

I read a lot of picture books with animals with them. In particular, I liked Akiko Ikeda’s “Neko no Dayan” series. I also watched a lot of Disney and Pixar movies. My favorite was Randall, the villain from Monsters, Inc. There’s just something appealing about how eyes like those are set. The first drawing I put on the internet, too, was a picture of Randall.

I like to imagine a lot, so I’ve come to not relate well to typical Japanese anime and manga characters--they’re a little too perfect. I’m more into foreign animation. I’ve recently also been getting into Phineas and Ferb and Gravity Falls.

We created a manga club in high school, but other than a making a couple of club magazines, we spent most of the time reading just lazily reading comics. I thought that was a waste, so one day, I thought I’d draw something with the intent to upload it to pixiv, and that’s when it started.

When I first started, I was happy if even one person bookmarked my picture. I’d even write in my journal how many more bookmarks I got! (lol) I’m very conscious about people’s opinions. If I get a 8 out of 10, I’d focus on the 2 that I didn’t get and wonder what was lacking.

I’m pretty ambitious and I hate to lose. I think about how other people--with busy day jobs--still manage to put out really amazing artwork, but for me, I think, “this is all I do, so I can’t lose to that.”

Most of my works are rabbit-related, so no matter what I look at, I see rabbits in everything. If I go to a restaurant, I’ll wonder what the employees would look like as rabbits… that’s where my imagination tends to take me.

It was just a wildly imaginative idea that came from thinking the disconnect between the sheer cuteness and the wolves would be funny.

In an unrelated work, Shinnyuu wa Usagi, we see the dealings between a human senior employee to the junior rabbit. We let that rabbit off the hook for things that a human would never get away with because we think they’re cute, don’t we? (lol)

わたし、爬虫類とか虫とかも大好きなんですよ。だからほかの生物がメインの話も描いてみたいですね。実は、爬虫類を飼おうとしたことがあるんですが、虫を育ててエサにしなきゃいけないって言われて……。自分で育てた虫を食べさせるなんて無理だ！と思って断念しました。

But I think rabbits are like insects, in a way. Like moths--they’re both fuzzy. Also how rabbits’ eyes look kinda blank and inorganic, it reminds you of insects too.

I sometimes bring it up with my editor too, and everyone says the same thing. But what if it were a BL (Yaoi) story about insects? I mean, there’s already a Kabutomushi x Kuwagata manga on pixiv. (lol) Insects are like blank slates with their lack of expression, so it would really let you be imaginative with them as a creator.

First, the cover is amazingly cute. I’d like everyone to appreciate the contrast between the cutesy cover and the bizarre content inside! Also, there are a ton of original drawings created for the compiled book that readers of the serial can enjoy for the first time. A lot of work went into this book, so please grab it if you have the chance!