Hello everyone.

Does anyone remember reading a paperback manga, with every so often, in between chapters. An insert by the author would appear where they'd talk about some of the things that had just gone down, or else just spoke about some of their inspirations etc.

One I particularly remember was from Masashi Kishimoto where he talks about his editor taking him out for fugu (poison blowfish), or another in which he writes about how he almost gave up manga until he saw a poster of Akagi (Gambler manga series), which reignited his desire to continue drawing, or something like that.

This is kind of my attempt to do the same thing, minus the funny pictures. My author's panel so to speak. Here I'll be speaking about some of the inspirations I had throughout the writing process, how some things came about, and how some things ended. So if that's not your cup of tea, I fully understand. But for those of you who were wondering how I came up with Coco or Gretcha, this might shed some light on all that.

So without further ado….

About: The series itself (JJBADH)

I'm actually only a recent convert to the Jobro society. I'd known tepidly about the series for years in a secondhand sort of way, but never gave, or never had the opportunity to watch it properly.

Two or three years ago when I finally got Netflix, I finally decided to give the series a try. It was long, apparently very popular, and I was bored. That first season, Part 1…was boring, i'll admit. But Part 2 with Joseph and the Pillar Men had me hooked. I watched parts of Part 3, but the overly stoic Jotaro had me often times pausing my binges. Eventually I would finished it, but only after I had skipped to Part 4, and was first introduced to Josuke, my all time favorite Jojo.

Finishing that, and hungry for more, I read the entire colored editions of Part 5 through 8, cried my heart out, and to this day, am still waiting for Steel Ball Run. I can only pray a good studio does it justice.

Anyway, at some point I thought, Wouldn't a fusion of Jojo into Hunter x Hunter be amazing. Never did it cross my mind to bring Gon of Killua into the Jojoverse, don't ask me why.

Initially, I had several different ideas.

Young Joseph, reborn in HxH.

This story, but Jotaro instead of Josuke.

Even a Kira, reborn as a prince of Kakin story.

These are just a few. I can't remember where my mind was at when this was all going down. Then at some point I just knew that it had to be my boi Josuke.

He was perfect. He had all the qualities to be strong, but still be threatened by the big bads of HxH. I knew I could write him to have Hamon, an ability I think Araki dismissed too soon, and have it make sense.

It all came down to the why. Why would he be in the Hunter Hunter universe?

And also where. Where would this all begin?

Then it hit me. Meteor City.

A common link to the Phantom Troupe. A place so loosely talked about, and shown so little of, I knew I could introduce him here and it would all fit together. He would have lost his memory, and now be in a place where identity and history meant nothing. It was perfect perfect perfect.

Hell, even finally seeing chrollo and the Troupe's childhoods hadn't changed anything ( Yes, I wrote this before that chapter came out.)

That's where this all began. Then I wrote to her.

About: Coco Abelnite

She wasn't supposed to die, if you can believe it. That was a journey I didn't initially start when I created her. What was supposed to happen was that she was supposed to get sick or get injured and eventually fall into a coma.

Only becoming a Hunter and getting her into one of the best hospitals in the world would be able to save her. Thus giving a reason for Josuke, and maybe Sen, to go off and meet the HxH characters.

Eventually, it would become Josuke's mission to get the Angel's Breath card from Greed Island to save her.

Then I thought, Wouldn't that be putting a lot of weight on Josuke? I'd only be able to write him being overly serious like Jotaro. A dour mood of constant concern plaguing his mind. No. He had to be free of that. And so at some point I decided I would write her out, but with a mind to make her death not only respectable to the character, but a way for Josuke to grow.

I can only hope I succeeded in this.

Now if you're wondering where she came from. She's heavily inspired by two characters, one from each series.

The first is Battera's Unnamed Lover. I always thought the character was pretty, and so took creative liberties in hair color and so on.

The second character she was based on is Reimi Sugimoto from JJBA Part 4, the ghost girl. At some point I realized I had made a carbon copy of Reimi in my head when I wrote Coco.

I guess you can think of her as an amalgamation of both ladies.

As for her name; Coco. I made that up on a whim. One thing about Hunter x Hunter names is that they never sound normal, only like they could be normal. Coco was just the first name that came to mind, and this is fairly true for every other character as well.

But what about her sister?

About: Sen Abelnite

Is she annoying? Did I write her to be too much of a brat? To be perfectly honest, I love her, and think she could be a protagonist on her own if this wasn't someone else' story.

That said, I wasn't 100% on her stowing away with Josuke. The idea for that scene comes from the game Grandia which I played and beat on my switch. Sue, a playable character, stows away on a ship to follow Justin, the protagonist. When caught, both are forced to do manual labor throughout the ship to pay for passage.

Anyway, It was a coin toss. If she didn't come with Josuke here, she'd meet Killua when he went back to the Hunter Exam during Greed Island. It was a tossup but it was when I was listening to Light up the Night by the Protomen that realized she needed to follow him. She could be a character all her own if given the chance.

Who she was inspired by is harder to pin down the specifics of. She's kind of a combination of three characters.

Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivruski IV from Cowboy Bebop. Goggles hair and mechanics.

A younger Sami from the Advanced Wars game series. Attitude.

And this will seem a little out there. But Mag Launcher from Evolution Worlds for the Gamecube. I still remember being like, 12, and getting this game from the dollar bin at a Gamestop to play with my cousin. We never did beat it, but Sen being a gearhead and basically a female version of him was very much something I imagined. She may even get that mechanical third arm later….

And what about the last Abelnite?

About: Gretcha Abelnite

Maybe you already have an idea of what this spry old codger looks like? I always knew she was going to be part of the story, and that it would be her to give Jojo his final farewell, but even that changed throughout the story.

At one point the ship was supposed to come in the middle of the night as the town's small farewell party got out of hand and became a sort of street festival. She and Josuke have their final teary goodbye as she tells him that as someone thrown away, he has no right to leave Meteor city forever. He was found by them, after all. The world can't take him from them. Or something like that.

Ultimately I thought the group send off was for the best. It would have been poetic, but I think it's out of place to watch as Josuke left by himself.

Probably the one thing throughout this story from beginning to end has been Gretcha's appearance.

I'd like to say she's inspired by Dola, from Laputa: Castle in the Sky. But I'd be lying. Though perhaps I did write a bit of Dola's attitude into her.

No, Gretcha is directly inspired by the character Balkirsh Eihon from Kaoru Mori's masterwork: Otoyomegatari, otherwise known as A Bride's Tale. It's a wonderful anthology about Stepp cultures, and about the beautiful lives of several woman with their husbands and fiances set against the backdrop of the 19th century Russian expansion into Central Asia.

The artwork is beautiful, and even if you aren't a fan of slice-of-life, I highly recommend the series purely based on the master story telling of Kaoru. It truly is a treat.

Anyway, yeah. Gretcha is based on the squat short matriarch of the Eihon family. A spry old woman who rides a goat and can still hunt and falcon with the best of them.

Is there anyone else…

Oh yeah….

Him…

About: Muska

In some ways he's almost the most original character, and also one of the hardest to write. I'm still not satisfied with how I wrote him if I'm being perfectly honest. Writing as a medium can only do so much with words to describe a mental breakdown, or show his sociopathic tendencies.

I really hope you all grew to hate him as much as I did writing him.

When I think of him and Coco's death, I'm constantly brought back to Yang Wen-Li from Legend of the Galactic Heroes. His death was so sudden, and yet so insignificant for one who had such an impact on the series. Bleeding to death because some no-name soldier gets lucky and hits you in the artery. Dying all alone. It was impactful because it was so real.

Anyway, I can't speak to how I wrote about his personality. I only wrote him as I thought a narcissistic sociopath could and would act given a certain degree of power.

His character design however is almost purely based on Sakyo from Yu Yu Hakusho. Though his hair is green, and tied up in a ponytail at the shoulders. That's not what Sakyo has, but it's what I remembered him having in the anime, which is probably wrong.

That part with him taking the [Bitch's Brew], well, I hope I don't have to explain the name for that comes from an album, but the entire fight was unexpected. I struggled to write that chapter, the actual rescue, in part because I had no idea how any of it was going to go.

Him taking those Nen drugs from the Witch of Redbad. Transforming into a sort of Oni looking thing. All streams of consciousness as I forced myself to write. It was hard, and probably why I think parts of that chapter in particular seem hard to read, or disjointed.

Speaking of things that weren't planned.

About: A'toni Vultore Miguelo Zeppeli-Reynardo

So I don't think I have to explain too much about who he's inspired by, Tonio Trussardi. If you read Purple Haze Feedback, a Jojo Part 5 companion novel. You find out that his real name is actually Antonio Volpe, the brother of one of the book's villains Massimo Volpe.

I can't exactly remember how I came up with the Miguelo or Reynardo parts of his name, except that it had something to do with the Volpe. I think It's just another name for Fox, but I can't remember.

Anyway, yeah, this guy wasn't at all planned for.

At some point writing Sen's rescue, I realized I was going to have to give her some sort of help if I wanted this to make sense. That's when I thought about adding Tonio's parallel, A'toni. Someone to help Sen save Coco, but I hadn't yet decided to make him a Zeppeli until I had begun actually writing his perspective.

I had known I wanted a Zeppeli, and had thought of writing a parallel to Caesar for Josuke to meet at the Hunter Exam, like Gon meets Killua. But at some point it dawned on me that Tonio was italian…the Zeppeli's are italian…why not add them together.

Anyway if Muska's mental breakdown was hard to write, A'toni is certainly a runner up.

Do any of you have any idea how many Google English to Italian tabs I have open when I write his dialogue. Like two or three sometimes, but still. And writing the broken english peppered with Italian. It can get to a guy.

That said, people have told me that they really enjoy it. So I'm glad people appreciate what I'm going for with him.

Let's see who else…..?

Ah!

About: Moss

Just about every other character in the arc, Horso, Leez, everyone is original. Which means you have some sort of idea of what they look like just from what I described them as.

Except for one more; Moss.

Moss was also a sort of last minute addition to the story. I didn't want all the dialogue between Muska and Coco to just be eating and worrying. So I had the idea to put in a character that, like Josuke, would rather mouth off. Him having a pompadour like his hero was just the icing on top.

Eventually, even as I wrote his dialogue, I began to write him like a character from Zatch Bell I can barely remember. This character was simply named Ted. A punk kid who used body enhancement magic.

That's about it I think.

Except for one last thing.

About: The music…..

One thing I really wanted to talk about was the final songs I recommended or posted with the chapters. Hopefully anyone who was interested took the time to listen.

I probably went through a dozen songs thinking about which to play as Josuke sailed off.

The one I had settled on before the arc was complete (We're speaking months and months ago) was All my friends are drunk again, by Keshi.

It's my favorite song by him.

Josuke was suppose to slowly walk to the Pier as this music plays in the background, prepared to disappear with only Gretcha for company as they silently keep each other company, surrounded by drunken joy.

But that's not how things worked out.

There was other music I wanted to use for the outro.

True [Sincerely] from Violet Evergarden

[OZ] by Yama

Ultimately I settled on one particular favorite, the one I ultimately used, Himitsu Kichi by Kozue Takada.

Personally I really wanted to use several covers, but decided to go with the original rendition I heard so long ago as a young kid staying up on Saturday's to watch Eureka 7 on Adult Swim. But most covers are pretty good.

Please watch Eureka 7 if you haven't btw. It's amazing.

Anyway, maybe a year or so ago, another life-changing anime came out, Sonny Boy on Hulu, and boy…what a watch. How do you even describe that experience?

The ending song, (Boy Meets Girl) Acoustic ver by GINGNANGBOZ, touched me in a way that I can't readily describe.

And so it ultimately came down to those two.

Eventually, after a lot of thought, I figured that Boy Meets Girl's somber acoustic could set the tone for Josuke's final farewell, and so left Himitsu Kichi also known as Secret Base for the finale.

What I like about both Eureka 7 and Sonny Boy is that they're both boy meets girl stories at their heart, and I suppose so was this arc, even if I didn't know that when I first began typing.

I guess that's it….

There's not much else to say..

Farewell….

We'll meet again…..