<Afterschool Handholding> is a web comic project about the friendship and love between two animal boys, Mato the rabbit and Daisy the turtle, who attend the same elementary school. While we aimed to capture the cute behavior of the characters and a bright and wholesome story, we also wanted to portray the elementary school routine that our main audience remembers from their childhood, so that they could relate to the subject matter.
I conceived of two boys with different personalities based on the motif of 'A Hare and A Tortoise,' which are often quoted in traditional fairy tales, and then devised episodes that humorously illustrated their close relationship, which I freely serialized in a four-color comic strip format. I focused on depicting not only the cute appearance of the characters but also their sweet relationships, and I remember that many fans around me who like anthropomorphic animal characters responded to it.
Fifteen of the thirty-six episodes conceived so far have been published in various communities on the Internet, and the story was supposed to continue, but I stopped to focus on more important activities.
