Image set: Mystery Hunter Natsumi Tanaka (Patreon)

This time on posting old art, we're checking in on the psychic schoolgirl Natsumi Tanaka, a member of the Mystery Hunters club at Benzaiten Academy.

The story behind Natsumi is kind of interesting (at least I think so, and I'm completely unbiased). Long story incoming, so if you're not really interested in knowing how I created this character, just ignore all of this.

It all came about when Pantboy introduced me to the new setting he and fellow art commissioner Sinnz4u over at HF were working on, as well as their respective characters. It was a paranormal school setting, with the focus on a club of people who went around supposedly looking for "mysteries".

I would assume the inspiration was something along the lines of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi (the idea of the club going around looking for mysteries) mixed in with Bible Black and various occult hentai stuff.

I decided to create my own character to join the club, and I did so by going back to a concept I had created a few years prior for a roleplaying game campaign that sadly never really happened. Some friends and I had finished two campaigns in this pen-and-paper RPG known as Panty Explosion, which in my opinion is one of the best games ever made. The first campaign had reached Legendary status among us, and it's been fondly referred to by all of us whenever we recommend or talk about this particular RPG. It was just that good.

We were trying to follow this up with a third campaign and my idea for the character this time was a schoolgirl with a split personality; a "light" side that was shown outwards most of the time, and a darker, more twisted one on the inside. The idea was that the conflict inside her would slowly escalate through the campaign, and that her awakening psychic powers would make things even crazier and more difficult to keep in check.

Sadly, the campaign never really happened, since we kind of ran out of juice. Those previous campaigns were fantastic, but it was difficult to keep going and I was eventually left with this unfinished character concept.

Thankfully, I tend to keep things like that around, and thus Natsumi Tanaka was born out of the ashes of this dead-in-the-water character. A girl with psychic abilities who tends to end up in a lot of trouble with a lot of dicks involved. And deep down inside, she really does like it. Her dark side is her true side.

PS. If you are into pen-and-paper RPGs, and you get a chance to play Panty Explosion, go for it. It's great. There is a more recent version of the game called Tokyo Brain Pop, but from what I hear it's not as good of a game as the original one.