A New Addition for Class of 2422: Aika Koizumi

Remember I made a post awhile ago saying how crazy it would be if I added a new character to the main cast of Class of 2422 this late into its development?

Well crazy's here!

Just when I thought that I had the main cast totally finished and set in stone, we have a new character to introduce! Meet Aika Koizumi (小泉 愛佳), a Japanese student that transferred to Codik High School in an exchange program for her final year of study.

Her creation comes from a place of necessity. Even though the main characters are Robert and Marilyn, I came to the realization that because the supporting characters are mostly relationship-oriented with Robert, Class of 2422's story is primarily Robert's story.
Of course, the supporting characters also have relationships with Marilyn, but not in a strong sense as with Robert. I realized that I didn't have a character that was tailored for Marilyn, so from that void I created Aika. I wanted Marilyn to have a friend she can hang out with and talk to about her interests and bring out Marilyn's personality; she needed a good gal pal that's not mixed up with the main "will they, won't they" story.

Why make the new character Japanese?




Around the time I was thinking about creating this new character, I had gotten myself into 1980s Japanese pop (J-pop.) I had interests in J-pop and city pop before, but this time I started digging around in the genre, listening to songs that really struck me as ear candy.
Eventually, I discovered an amazing artist by the name of Yurie Kokubu. Her albums "STEPS" and "Relief 72 Hours" were basically perfection to my ears; I really loved the sound in those albums. During one of my repeated listening to "STEPS," I realized that this new character that would be Marilyn's friend should also have a strong career interest to singing and music, just like Mary herself. I thought it would be nice since Mary's musical interest reflects 1950s rock/rockabilly, and this new character would reflect interest in 1980s J-pop/city pop.
From there, I decided that this character ought to be Japanese and started designing. Aika-san's singing/music in-universe would obviously be heavily influenced by Kokubu's music, along with other sounds from different 80s J-pop artists. Whenever I listen to any of Kokubu's songs such as "Just Go Up" or "Tobeshite Taxi Man", or songs from other artists as Miki Matsubara's "Stay With Me" or Junko Yagami's "Bay City," I 100% hear Aika's voice and picture her strong charisma shine through her dance performance on stage.

Speaking of dance, this isn't the first time we've seen Aika by the way!
She made an early appearance in one of my animation practices back in November 2019.

Her design wasn't finalized at the time, but I wanted to do a dance animation to (oh look!) Yurie Kokubu's "Refrain" and of course, Aika was the ONLY character that can fit the role for the animation.

There's some pages of Aika sketches I wanted to share while she was in development, but this post is long enough, so I'll end it here. Thanks for reading!