A few days ago while doing my routine “Ogiue” keyword check on Twitter, I noticed that someone had created an Ogiue Bot on Twitter which sends Ogiue catch phrases every so often into the wild.

The creator of the Ogiue Bot also has a Twitter account of his own, and unlike me and my shameful Avatar-based betrayal, he sports an Ogiue icon.

When I saw it, my first reaction was, “Ooh, that’s a nice Ogiue.” My second and more important reaction, however, was, “This looks oddly familiar.” After a bit of memory-jogging and browsing old sites, I realized just how familiar it really was. That Ogiue drawing up there is one of mine.

You may remember a few months back when Anime News Network got their current Answerman that I sent in an Answerfans response where I talked about my communications and befriending of Ogiue fans in Japan. The above oekaki is from that period.

I have to thank Soramugi, as I had all but forgotten that image, and I’m especially grateful to him for liking my drawing so much. It was kind of an unreal experience just seeing a drawing of mine being used like that, and I know Soramugi is just as surprised that he got to meet the artist behind his icon. He even posted about it! You can also see our correspondence, albeit in Japanese.

I’ve got a good feeling, the kind of feeling you get when you know you’ve earned a comrade.

As an aside, I thought it was pretty cool that I was actually able to recognize my own drawing style.