A fanart of Krystal appeared on national television in Japan last week. I heard about it thanks to this tweet that Ayano Harumaki retweeted, since it has Krystal in it. Asking around, we managed to figure out that the show was the most recent episode of "YOUは何しに日本へ？" (Why Did You Come to Japan?) where they approach foreigners at the airport and ask them the purpose of their visit to Japan.

You can check out the video on DailyMotion or YouTube and skip to around the 18 minute mark if you just want to see the Krystal parts. Before I get into it, I wanted to talk about the segment.

Show Segment

On January 22nd, 2018, TV Tokyo broadcast this episode of Why Did You Come to Japan? The show focuses on trying to find interesting stories about different people, from famous athletes to everyday travelers. For some interviewees, they just ask a few questions, or perhaps ask for a demonstration of their skills. For others, they follow the visitor around to their destination, to get a more in-depth look at their interesting reasons for coming to Japan.

This time, one of the people they interviewed was "Kai" from Australia. He is an illustrator for whom manga meant a lot to him as a kid and now he seeks to learn how to be a great manga artist. Two years ago, he happened to attend a lecture by Fukaya-sensei at a Manga Café called Manga Kūkan (Manga Space). This café served drinks, provided computer services, and, less commonly, hosted lectures and classes to learn how to draw manga (more about the café).

With permission, the TV crew followed him as he went to the café again. There was a minor hiccup what with the café going out of business, but his teacher was willing to meet with him at his other teaching studio. At the new location, he met with his teacher to learn how he had improved over the last two years and where he could continue improving. It was at this point that he showed off his Krystal artwork to the cameras, as well as some other artwork featuring Sonic and Samus.

Overall, Fukaya-sensei thought he was doing well, and should continue practicing to improve. Kai asked for a tutorial on making dynamic angles and action often found in Japanese manga. He was given an assignment to make a five panel comic about a character being punched in the face to show what he had learned about dynamism.

There is a whole page about the trip on TV Tokyo's website. A lot of information about the trip above comes from a Google Translation of that page, so it miiiiight not be entirely accurate.

Finding the Artist

With only a handful of details to go by, I set to work trying to figure out who this Kai from Australia was. Searches for Kai and Kay from Australia were no help. I even considered emailing Fukaya-sensei about it. But before that, I tried another option.

Using my amazing image editing skills, I managed to undo the perspective projection of two different screenshots from the video, digitally combined them, and then digitally reconstructed missing portions. This was the result:

Not my best work, but with some hints, it was just enough to get Google's reverse image search system to identify the original!

It would only occur to me later that the artist was actually wearing a shirt with his own logo on it during the show. I could have just looked him up. But we here at the Krystal Archive believe firmly that "If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing!"

The Artist is ShadowFenrir

He created the Krystal artwork in a Sketch Request, and the requestor begged him to color it. The colored sketch was posted on May 23, 2016 via Patreon. Later, he would post the finished version with a painterly background on his Tumblr. As far as I know, he hasn't posted the art anywhere else, but he does occasionally offer it for sale at conventions he attends. I do not think he has ever posted the original sketch anywhere. This is the only Krystal artwork he has done to my knowledge. Perhaps one day I'll run into him at a convention and be able to purchase this fanart. It looks great!

This artist does a lot of NSFW art, so I urge caution if you decide to go through his galleries. I did manage to get into contact with him, and he wanted me to let you guys know that he is starting work on a new comic endeavor and a live competitive art duel series soon called Quick Draw (detail video). One last thing, my best guess places his visit to Japan sometime in July 2017, meaning his story wasn't broadcast for 6 months after filming!