I purchased the artbook Star Wars: Tribute to Star Wars for one reason: Among the many manga artists who contributed their talents to this collection is Kio Shimoku, author of Genshiken. I expected some nice art (of course), but the real shocker comes from his comments.

As seen above, Kio states that he once drew 350 pages of thumbnails for a Star Wars doujinshi…and that he’s a fan of Nute Gunray and Rune Haako. If you’re not that into Star Wars, you might be asking, “WHO???” And if you are a fan, you might be asking, “WHY???”

Nute Gunray is the viceroy of the Trade Federation, and Rune Haako is his right-hand man. In other words, they’re the bad guys at the beginning of Episode I: The Phantom Menace. So that answers the “who,” but as for the “why,” I actually had to ask the man himself on Twitter. Here’s his response: 

Thank you for buying the book!

In 2010, I published a Star Wars douujinshi. Among them, they were in charge of comedy. So I think it's cute.
But they are destined to be killed by Anakin …

— 木尾士目＠はしっこアンサンブル全8巻 (@kioshimoku1) June 6, 2022

He even followed up by finding his original thumbnail with the characters and confirming something I suspected: The doujinshi he’s referring to is a genderswap doujinshi, titled Sister Wars. Kio had previously talked about it in his interview with VTuber Luis Cammy.

その同人誌を発見しました。ダースモールにガクブルしてたり、王様のベッドでふたりで寝てたり。憎めない小物感が大好きです。
あ、ネーム本なので絵が荒いのはご容赦を。 pic.twitter.com/wQx0xQhahe

— 木尾士目＠はしっこアンサンブル全8巻 (@kioshimoku1) June 12, 2022

はい、それです。

— 木尾士目＠はしっこアンサンブル全8巻 (@kioshimoku1) June 16, 2022

I don’t own the doujinshi—though I wish I did. That being said, there may be a few copies floating around on auction sites and such. I haven’t yet tried to get my hands on it, but maybe I should make the attempt…