Shift! The Side-Character Heroine

Zhao Youyue did not expect that Ye Hai and Su Li would ask for her suggestions about the character design of “Yu Shengfan”, Su Li even wanted to take the reference from her appearance.

Of course, she rejected that idea without any hesitation, her personality was not even close to “Yu Shengfan”, and her appearance was not suitable too. These characters in anime were designed accordingly to their personality, except for unique iconic characters. Might as well just follow the tradition and strengthen the image in the readers’ impressions.

“Blonde twintail, lolita body, with cute canine teeth, that’s what I thought about ‘Yu Shengfan’.” Zhao Youyue replied in the four-person QQ group chat, one of them was Ye Hai’s wife, Li Mengyao.

Rosemary had never described the character’s appearance in details. He had only mentioned that “Yu Shengfan” is very beautiful, but never described her hairstyle or body. Because he had never expected that “Yu Shengfan” would become one of the main characters, an important and irreplaceable member of Lin Feng’s team.

“Hmm, blonde twintail characters in anime would most likely be a tsundere ojousama[1], basically people would already know her personality from her appearance… Since everyone liked the moe, twintail, and tsundere traits, I think we can go with this idea.” Su Li was obviously humoring Lady Zhao, but she had pretended to be subjective towards the matter.

“Lolita design would be great! A little girl with incredible hand movement speed and decent gaming skills, these traits are moe indeed! The audience will not be able to hate her insulting words too!” Rosemary happily agreed.

At first, Rosemary had imagined that “Yu Shengfan” would have the same appearance with “Lady Zhao” in Su Li’s photos. As he gradually expanded the setting of “Yu Shengfan” in the novel, he realized her character was going further apart from “Lady Zhao”. The readers never realized it because he had been describing her with words instead of portraits.

After hearing Zhao Youyue’s suggestion, he could easily be visualized a 3D “Yu Shengfan” since he too had watched a lot of animes. To him, the blonde-twintail image fit “Lady Yu Shengfan” perfectly.

Since she was mistaken as a “fat otaku” in the novel, this rumor about her was the total opposite of her actual appearance, this would make the scene where she first met Lin Feng and Tang Yongkai one of the peaks in the novel.

Yu Shengfan was already showing her tsundere trait in the novel, like she would do everything just as Lin Feng told her though she claimed that she followed his orders solely to PK him.

She did this for something. She could not wait to PK Lin Feng.

Even though it appeared that Yu Shengfan despised her beaten foe, Tang Yongkai, she would insult him whenever she could, but she agreed to fight alongside him in a five versus five battle, she had actually treated him as a partner deep inside her heart.

Yu Shengfan’s “tsundere” trait was not the typical exaggerated type under Rosemary’s description. She did not say “I’m not doing this for…” but her non-stop insults and disgusting words. She liked to hang out with Lin Feng and Tang Yongkai, and altogether they were called “The three musketeers”, wreaking havoc as they went around, and this would not make her feel lonely.

In the comments section of “The Strongest King”, fans from the love block had concluded Yu Shengfan’s moe points, these were talkative, abusive words and tsundere. Lin Feng is lucky because he was able to be acknowledged by this rich lady, who yearned for having true friends.

This might seemed lucky to an outsider but Lin Feng was in fact strong in game, even stronger than Yu Shengfan that had not fully reached her potential. He thought that games would not need any moral values from reality, as long as he was strong enough, he can do anything as long as it was not banned.

Lin Feng could overlook Yu Shengfan’s attitude problem, he had no problem with her insulting others for being a noob or having an ugly character… Even though Lin Feng never said it out loud like Yu Shengfan does, but he despised them even more in his mind.

Lin Feng was able to suppress “Hoodlum Master” and “Unpleasant Rain” with his skills and charisma, “Shadow Rogue” was also crowned as the “Terrifying Final Boss” or “The Super Villain” because of his unscrupulous actions, such as killing without mercy and abusing his intelligence for his own benefits. To Lin Feng, power is everything in game!

This kind of character would be the typical villain in Shonen manga, who will make his appearance as a max level character, invincible and emanating a villain aura! Quite the contrary, the righteous main character has to fight creeps for levelling up, then farm equipment from the mini bosses. Along the journey, he will get to know several righteous partners as well, together they will challenge the final boss in the end. Which novel will have a main character that is maxed level since the beginning? How could he prove that the weak is able to defeat the strong? How is he supposed to unleash his full power in a pinch, or blather on all sort of his life principles…

When someone opts for reasoning instead of fighting, it is just because his fist is not big enough, have you seen human reasoning with an ant?

Having finalized the character design of Yu Shengfan, the collaboration between Su Li and Rosemary had gone even smoother, especially for Rosemary. He was almost prepared to release the mind-blowing plot whereby Yu Shengfan revealed her real identity. Previously, he had no idea how to portray her character details, but now, he would not have to describe her with merely two words – “extremely beautiful”, right?

Translation note :

[1] Ojousama – often refers to a rich lady in anime.