Leuki and Female Classic Manga Characters

Classic Manga always demanded a good main female character.

She has to be cute, interesting and have some wacky powers. Downhome Little Planet’s main girl is Leuki Nora, carefully crafted to check all the boxes. And when it comes to a good female lead from classic manga, there’s one who stands out. Mainly due to the tiger striped bikini.

Leuki was a left over from my last web comic, Metal Wraith. Oddly enough, that version got her inspiration from Starfire, from the Teen Titans TV series. The good one, mind you… However, her abilities were drastically stripped down to just having technopathy. She could control electrical devices with her mind. She retained the same kind of sweet, quirky personality seen in the Teen Titan series, while remaining her own person.

Of course, with Downhome Little Planet taking so much of it’s inspiration from classic manga, we had a new vision for her. Leuki’s redux came after I binged over 200 episodes of Urusei Yatsura. Lum, the show’s main female lead, became the ideal inspiration. I wanted Leuki to have a more mischievous side, along with more of a pinup look. One thing I swayed away from was Lum’s overkill on domestic abuse. It seemed Lum would shock Ataru in every episode. Initial response from readers led me to go easy on Leuki beating Twitch with his own prosthetic.

In all of anime, classic manga has some of the best female characters. The older I get, the more classic characters there are…

I just don’t remember them being classic!