Serenity's Male Harem

Hello everyone!

Phew.... It's been a long time hasn't it? A VERY long time! Looking at my own history on deviantart, I think this may be the longest I've ever taken to submit a new deviation! Well.... I blame real life and lack of motivation/inspiration for that.... But I hope that this new piece will begin to change that. As I mentioned in my journal last month, I've been inspired by other things as of late and I hope that may mean something new and exciting in terms of the art that I create. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about this piece shall we?

Yeah.... where can I even start about this one? I guess I should say that for better or worse this piece took an insanely long amount of time to complete. Not that I'm unhappy with the result mind you, but I'm a bit perplexed myself why it took THAT long to do! As a whole it's not too complex an image, despite the thought behind it, but again, I like to believe that it's due to the reasoning above, at least in part.

So let me simplify the concept behind it then.... I suppose some of you may be wondering about the title that I gave this piece, for starters. In truth, it's rather innocent despite my hopefully eye-catching title of choice. As per each year, I find it tradition that I do a crossover piece which began several years ago with my Yami Yugi and Sailor Moon painting:



It seemed the trade mark of the crossover, originally began with the depiction of both Yami Yugi AKA Atemu/Atem and Sailor Moon AKA Serenity. I've done a few more pieces with them also but last year in particular I decided to do a piece on a bit of a wider scale:



In this image, I wanted to depict not only Atemu and Serenity but a few more crossover characters from not only the world of Yu-gi-oh but also "Red River," which is a manga title that also has Egyptian themes in it.

This year, I decided to take that same concept (I received a lot of attention over last year's image, as many people claimed that Yami was in command of a rather diverse harem) and flip it, so to speak; with Serenity, as Neo Queen Serenity, with a "male harem." I don't know if I would call it a harem in a literal sense of course. In short, I myself decided to depict all of my favorite anime men throughout the history of my interest in this animation genre.

Again, I thought it would be a lot of fun to do so, but I also wanted to take the time to do this, as part of me was slightly disappointed that I rushed last year's piece, which resulted in a few details that I wasn't completely happy with in the end. I wanted to take great care with this one. Though still I didn't expect it to take as long as it did!

It started at first with the individual sketches of each character which can be seen in my scraps gallery:









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And then when I got each character just the way that I wanted them, I combined them all together to create the final painted image that you see before you. As for the background, I wanted a rather simple one, as I figured the characters themselves would would be rather colorful and eye catching alone. I thought perhaps a "busy" background would detract from them so I thought maybe a decorative wall with carpetting would be sufficient. In addition, I thought about a cool color scheme (the use of blues, greens, etc) as I wanted the background to appear as if it could be a room within Crystal Tokyo; given the fact that I had Neo Queen Serenity (Sailor Moon's adult form) as the center of the image. Her harem, her world, after all!

As for the actual men in the piece, as stated before, I suppose it's more "my" harem so to speak, as I depicted all the anime men that I've loved for an extended period of time. Of course there have been others, but most of them fleeting. I thought I'd narrow it down to those who I liked the most in the past 12 years. Gosh.... 12 years.... has it been that long already?

ANYways, of course you can't have Serenity without Endymion right? He was definitely my first anime love. And obviously Serenity's own as well. ^^ Although.... I must admit that I was never quite fond of King Endymion's lavender outfit. I mean I liked the metals and the sword and what not, but I must say that I greatly prefferred his prince outfit from the original Silver Millennium. Perhaps Neo Queen Serenity doesn't look quite right with "Prince" Endymion, but ah well.... perhaps she had Sailor Pluto abduct him from the past.

Next up is Tamahome from Fushigi Yuugi. Hmm.... In truth I don't know if I can REALLY say that I loved him but.... It's rather hard to explain. I did love Fushigi Yugi! It was definitely a special anime series, one that touched me, but unfortunatly I watched it all in one fell swoop so in a sense, I wasn't able to fully immerse myself into it as I did with some of my other favorite titles. I guess I feel that burned right through so QUICKLY that I wasn't able to get AS into it as I would have liked. I did like Tamahome though, especially since he reminded me of what Mamoru AKA Endymion was SUPPOSED to be like towards Usagi or Serenity as seen from the manga version of the story. The romance of Fushigi Yugi was definitely something I hadn't seen at that time so I completely devoured it! I guess the act of including Tamahome in my image also represents my love of ALL of Yuu Watase's (the creator's) works other than JUST Fushigi Yuugi. I found that I liked EVERY title, both in anime and manga form, and I usually found at least one of the men to like too, so my Tamahome within my painting, again, stands for my like of them all!

Next up is Asato Tsuzuki from "Yami no Matsuei" or "Descendants of Darkness." I think in a nutshell he was relatively a rather "fleeting" love of mine, and yet for a time it burned pretty brightly, to say the least! I was instantly attracted to this character when I heard that in the dubbed version of the anime, he was voiced by Dan Green, who also voices the english version of Yami Yugi. That was the hook.... with that I watched the entire anime and read the entire manga in a matter of weeks! This was only over a year ago (Dec 05) so it's all still pretty fresh in my mind. Ah... Memories!

Positioned to the right of Tsuzuki I have Blue Seed's Mamoru Kusanagi. Blue Seed..... certainly one of my older loves, much like Sailor Moon and Fushigi Yugi. Perhaps it's not one of the more known titles, especially these days, but it's certainly one that made an impact on me, for whatever reason. Back in the late 90s I recall I had an interest in two titles, both "Blue Seed" and another called "3 x 3 Eyes." I got into them both simultaneously as they were both written by the same author Yuzo Takada and thus had a lot of similarities between them. In short they were both great titles that had action, romance, and (my favorite) some mythology in the mix! Since I liked both titles more or less the same amount, I thought including Kusanagi would help represent both interests. (He also had a more unique look to him opposed to the male lead in 3 x 3 Eyes.....)

Of course there's Serenity herself. Not too much to say about her other than what I've said so far, but I suppose I should mention that I wanted her to look like a strong adult woman in this piece, opposed to her younger teenage self. Especially given that some of the men are much older than her teen couterpart, I wanted her to look like she could be a match for any one of them, should she choose to. This is perhaps one of my few attempts of depicting Serenity as Queen; the last painted in 2002 as seen here:

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And finally there's the two men in front. Yami Yugi of course needs no introduction! Evidently he was an anime man that I was completely and utterly fascinated with, for a very very long period of time! I suppose it's unnecessary to describe the reasoning why as I'm sure I've mentioned it in my many other paintings that depict him, but I can say that he is and always will be one of my true anime loves, hands down! In this image, for a change of pace, I decided to paint him wearing his battle city outfit rather than his pharonic garb. I also thought that this way, he'd blend more as part of the "harem" than standing out among the other men.

And last but certainly not least, I have the newest of my interests, my sweet Sho Fukamachi from the anime and manga Guyver. Hmm, I suppose he's a little different than the other men that I've depicted. I don't know if I'd exactly call him a bishonen, or a pretty boy (though personally I do think that he's cute) and he's not as dark and mysterious as the other men are either....

Ironically enough, I think I liked him simply for his "human" elements rather than the more "romantic," fantasy-like qualities found in the others here. Maybe that has to do with my more realistic perception of things these days, (especially in terms of men both fictional and non-ficitional. Or maybe its just what I was able to see beyond the "ordinary" facade; for I like to think that sometimes when you are able to look beyond the surface, you really can find a real diamond in the rogue, so to speak. You know? I think in the end, that's what I saw in this character. I found a sweet, sensitive yet strong willed character who, despite his own evident fears and feelings of uncertainty was able to rise to meet any challenge and was willing to give his life for those he loved without hesitation. How could you not fall in love with someone like that? ^__^

Anyhow, I suppose that sums it all up! About time eh? As always, this piece was painted using opague water color. Thanks for looking everyone!