Please tell us a few stories about the creation of this work.

Ohkawa: We’re still very thankful to Takeshi Okazaki-sensei for having lost the originals that we sent out to Comic Genki (laughs). We had to draw everything again. Even if it was only 4 pages.
Nekoi: They were few, but I had added screen-tone to at least one of them (laughs). We wanted to put so much effort in a comedy manga of 4 pages just as if we were doing X.
Mokona: I think we applied two or three times more screen-tone (laughs).

Didn’t you have any concrete purpose with this work?

Ohkawa: Given that Mamoru Nagano-sensei had taken one year off serializing Five Stars Monogatari in Newtype, they proposed us to do a series that would replace it during that period.
Mokona: That’s how long it would last total (laughs).
Igarashi: We didn’t think it would be compiled in a tankobon, either.

What are the main influences of that time?

Ohkawa: To begin with, it matched the boom with the sailor uniforms, I kind of just fell into it. Also the fight video games from that time, with beautiful girls as main characters and with an erotic appeal. Then, story-wise, the movie Barbarella (Miyuki-chan in TV Land) is mentioned, there is also some of it in it.

The title comes from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll?

Ohkawa: Yes. I love it. We wanted the story to be endless.

Did you take someone as a model for Miyuki’s character?

Ohkawa: We weren’t inspired by anybody in particular, but Nekoi’s sister is called Miyuki. When she told us “I would like you to use my name [in a series]” we didn’t think twice. Oh well, it slipped out of me (laughs). I don’t know if it’s okay to reveal the identity of the person whose name we used as an inspiration (laughs).

Did you have a good time drawing this series?

Mokona: We drew a lot of girls in underwear. Personally, the moment I like the most is when the Mahjong Warrior (Miyuki-chan in Mahjong Land) strips off.
Igarashi: Me too. It was very fun watching all those girls appearing (laughs). Now that I think of it, the editor of Newtype at that time, Shin’ichiro Inoue, told us that the scene he had liked the most was the one where Miyuki put her work clothes (Miyuki-chan in Part-Time Job Land). “This is really well”, he said. Although we never really understood what caught his attention (laughs).
Nekoi: Maybe he imagined her writing down in her time card while getting undressed (laughs).
Mokona: I liked drawing the scene where she left the house running to school, while eating a toast and saying “I’m late!”.
Igarashi: But Miyuki’s fate was never meeting a fiancé (laughs).
Ohkawa: We didn’t want a single boy to appear (laughs).

The final story is Miyuki-chan in X Land. Did you draw it for fun?

Ohkawa: Totally. It was an opportunity to have a little fun and to promote the opening of X‘s movie. Besides, we thought it would be the best way to wrap the series.

Miyuki-chan ended up having its own OVA, correct?

Ohkawa: We just thought it was fairly popular but we were very surprised when they proposed it to us. The series wasn’t even compiled in a tankobon yet…
Igarashi: A lot of famous voice actresses from that time were in it and the result was fabulous.
Ohkawa: We asked Mariko Kouda to play the role of Miyuki and luckily she accepted it. At that time I had a radio show and she came as a guest one day. She seemed to me a very charming person.

Looking back, what do you think of this work?

Nekoi: It was very fun. Specially giving so much volume to the main characters’ breasts (laughs).
Ohkawa: Mokona drew very thick lines for the shading of breasts, and I still remember how Nekoi would argue because of that. “They are too large. Soon I won’t be able to tell where to apply the screen-tone” (laughs). “Soon they will look blurry and saggy”. They spent the day grumbling (laughs). Now I believe they would keep arguing about how the breasts would look like just as much (laughs).
Igarashi: Although they’ve always complained while applying screen-tones everywhere, and while it was very tricky, it wasn’t all that bad.
Mokona: No it wasn’t, it was fun (laughs). Besides, since we used a bigger drawing paper, we managed to pass along the sensation that the drawings were overloaded.

Translated from Spanish by Chibi Yuuto.

Source

Interview originally published in CLAMP No Kiseki vol. 9 (Kodansha), page 19, released on May 20, 2005. Original text available upon request.

If you found mistakes in this translation or would like to contribute with translating other interviews, please contact me.