ALIAS? Mikaila (one of my actual RL nicknames)

GENDER? Female. I should’ve chosen a more gender-neutral screen name, huh?

BLOOD TYPE? O

HERITAGE? Filipino, Spanish, Chinese

WEIGHT? 108 lbs

HEIGHT? Five foot...something. I’m not tight-lipped about weight, but I am about height. Most of my shoes are platforms.

HAIR? Dark brown. It’s been that way since I was born and I wanna dye it.

EYES? Brown.

PIERCINGS? Just ears. But I want my bellybutton pierced. Someday.

OCCUPATION? College freshman at an art college in San Francisco; intern at a PC hardware/software/networking store; freelance web designer

PETS? My two jittery parakeets, Leyte and Calais. If you can guess where their names are derived from, I’ll give you a cookie. Also recently inherited my sister’s cat, Manapua.

BEST SUBJECTS? Art, English, history, economics, science

WORST SUBJECTS? Anything with advanced math in it. The left side of my brain isn’t as developed as my right one, I think.

LANGUAGES? Bisaya (Cebuano), English, Tagalog (I can understand it and read it but can’t fluently speak it), and a little Japanese—I can write and read hiragana, katakana, and the most common kanji

COLOR? Blue. Or silver. Black. I can’t decide.

HOBBIES? Drawing, writing, messing with my PC, website building, reading, shopping, singing, translating Japanese doujinshi, playing video games, collecting Japanese video game magazines, making short animated movies

SPORTS? Volleyball, badminton, swimming, basketball (as much as one of my height can play it)

ANIMALS? I adore tigers. White tigers in particular. And wolves and cheetahs. They’re all so shamefully pretty. But I gleefully admit that I’m a softie for all kinds of animals...even rats, snails, and spiders (the last of which I’ve been known to rescue from drowning).

ANIME CHARACTERS? Miroku, Sango, Kouga, Ayame, Kikyou (“Inuyasha”); Ryouga, Ukyou, Akari (“Ranma ½”); Sorata, Arashi, Aoki (“X:1999”); Goten, Gohan, Goku, Bardock, Bra, Krillin, Piccolo (“Dragonball Z”); Kuwabara (“Yu Yu Hakusho”); Shizuma (“Real Bout High School”); Wolfwood (“Trigun”); Kaji, Rei (“Evangelion”); Jubei, Kagero (“Ninja Scroll”); Yakumo (“3x3 Eyes”); Iruka, Naruto, Lee, Kakashi, Shikamaru, Hinata, Kiba, Sakura, Ino...hell, practically the entire cast (“Naruto”)

NON-ANIME CHARACTERS? Rogue (“X-Men”); Helga (“Hey Arnold!”); Simon, Emma (“Ruse”); Spider-Man (“(Ultimate) Spider-Man”); Gir (“Invader Zim”)

VIDEO GAME CHARACTERS? Tifa (“Final Fantasy VII”); Seung Mi Na (“Soul Blade/Calibur/2”); Borus, Ace, Lilly (“Suikoden III”); Leon, Claire (“Resident Evil 2”); Billy, Emeralda (“Xenogears”); Julia (“Tekken 3, 4”); Jessica, Kyle (“Lunar: The Silver Star Story”); Jr., Ziggy (“Xenosaga: Episode I”), Knuckles (“Sonic” series); Glenn (“Chrono Cross”)

COUPLES? Sango x Miroku (“Inuyasha”); Kouga x Ayame (“Inuyasha”); Ryouga x Ukyou (“Ranma ½”); Ryouga x Akari (“Ranma ½”); Goten x Bra (“Dragonball” series); Gohan x Videl (“Dragonball” series); Krillin x Android 18/Juuhachigou (“Dragonball” series); Sorata x Arashi (“X/X:1999”); Cloud x Tifa (“Final Fantasy VII”); Helga x Arnold (“Hey, Arnold!”); Leon x Claire (“Resident Evil” series); Wakka x Lulu (“Final Fantasy X/X-2”); Knuckles x Rouge (“Sonic” series); Jessica x Kyle (“Lunar: The Silver Star Story”); Rogue x Gambit (“X-Men”); Rogue x Iceman (“X-Men”); Rogue x Magneto (“X-Men: AoA”); Simon x Emma (“Ruse”); Jubei x Kagero (“Ninja Scroll”); Yakumo x Pai (“3x3 Eyes”); Rubedo/Jr. x Sakura/MOMO (Xenosaga)

INTERESTS? World War II, U.S. history, military toys, economics, supernatural phenomena, cryptozoology, computer motion graphics, computer imagery, literary quotes, horror movies, Western comic books (particularly the late-lamented “Ruse”, “The Ultimates”, and “Ultimate Spider-Man”), graphic novels, Saturday morning cartoons, Chinese and Japanese mythology, the Tour de France (Armstrong-era), Sherlock Holmes, video games, Japanese PC games

FORMAL ART TRAINING? Currently majoring in Computer Arts New Media. Before that, next to nil: I had two years of Advanced Art in high school and an informal summer art class when I was in fourth grade.

ART TOOLS OF CHOICE? A 0.5 mm Pentel mechanical pencil for sketches and rough drafts, Adobe Illustrator CS for tracing CGs, and Adobe Photoshop CS for coloring them.

ART INFLUENCES? I have to thank the following for helping me in my fumbling attempts at art: Disney movies (“Lady and the Tramp”, “Bambi”, “Aladdin”, etc.), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, “Tiny Toons”, Jim Lee (“X-Men”), Marc Silvestri (“Darkness”), Michael Turner (“Witchblade”), J. Scott Campbell (“Gen13”), Randy Queen (“Darkchylde”), Atsuko Nakajima (“Ranma ½” anime character designer), Akira Toriyama (“Dragonball/Z”), Masashi Kishimoto (“Naruto”) and a whole bunch of other people I can’t name off the top of my head but are still appreciated.

BOOKS? I don’t really hold any stringent preference for any one author in general, but anything with Oriental and/or world mythology, culture and language, various economic systems and how they pertain to global status, historical battles (particularly World War II), war toys, U.S. history, Japanese/Chinese poetry and verse, comic and/or manga art, collections of timeless quotes and writings (a la Robert Fulghum’s “Words I Wish I Wrote”), and mystery/horror anthologies, I’ll gladly read. My tastes also include old classics (i.e., “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Edgar Allen Poe’s writings, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries) and graphic novels (particularly “Maus”, “Adolf”, and “A Contract with God”).

MUSIC? Eclectic’s the word that springs to mind when it comes to my taste in music. Anything that sounds good to me, I like. I have MP3s from Sarah McLachlan, Linkin Park, Puddle of Mudd, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Destiny’s Child, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Eminem, Coco Lee, U2, Nirvana, Lifehouse, TLC, Fuel, Disturbed, Tom Petty, Korn, Martina McBride, Creed, Nelly, and Nickelback, among others. Along with the usual pop music stuff are instrumental tracks and themes from the anime Naruto, movie soundtracks (“Armageddon”, “Booty Call”), musicals (most notably “Miss Saigon”, which I’ve been able to sing in its entirety ever since I was eleven), “Pure Moods” instrumentals, a few J-Pop/K-Pop offerings (Hikaru Utada’s “Can You Keep a Secret?”, H.O.T.’s “Get It Up”), a few Chinese songs (Coco Lee’s “Baby, I’m Sorry”), some Tagalog songs (Orient Pearl’s “Pagsubok”), and various bilingual recordings.

TV CHANNELS/PROGRAMS? Let’s see: I watch “The West Wing”, “Scrubs”, “Law and Order/SVU/CI”, “The Shield”, “Monk”, and the old British sitcom “Are You Being Served?” with some regularity (as well as the late-lamented “Frasier” and “Boomtown”). Sometimes I catch those Filipino/Japanese/Chinese/Vietnamese/Korean news and variety shows on Channel 8 (they’re kinda fun, even if I don’t entirely understand ‘em). SpikeTV’s “Most Extreme Elimination Challenge” (known as “Takeshi’s Castle” in Japan) is my guilty pleasure—funny, silly stuff. I adore Saturday morning cartoons (“X-Men: Evolution” in particular), and will try to catch “Hey, Arnold!” and “Invader Zim” when I can, as well as various shows on Cartoon Network (particularly those on Adult Swim). But the true staples in my TV diet are the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, TLC, and Animal Planet. I’m also currently digging CourtTV and the Travel Channel. I have this yen for documentaries, particularly those having to do with WWII, wartime toys and technology, and natural, biological, zoological, and historical mysteries and/or oddities.

INTRODUCTION TO THE INUYASHA SERIES? Well, Ranma ½ was the first anime I really got attached to (thanks mostly in part to the incomparable Ryouga Hibiki), and the first that made me want to learn to draw anime style. But the series had already ended, and I knew that the creator had started a new one called Inuyasha. I’d read the early issues my sisters bought and became interested in the Inuyasha/Kagome pairing—enough for me to fork over some money to buy the collected edition that contained Urasue’s and the resurrected Kikyou’s first appearances. But I wasn’t as attached to Inuyasha and Kagome as I was to Ranma ½’s Ryouga and Ukyou, and forgot about them until a year later when I saw the anime series on Cartoon Network. Again I was only mildly intrigued—I thought the animation was cool and the designs were pretty, but that was as far as it went. Eventually I began trying to watch it when I could, and even got my interest in IY/Kag fired up again (I remember being bummed when I missed the episode where Inuyasha first turns human and sleeps on Kagome’s lap). And then Miroku made his debut and I thought he was an okay character—he kind of reminded me of a tamer, more erudite version of the boys from where I came from. But he was a riot; later on, when he made that “it’s impossible, it’s irrational, it’s against my religion” speech, I thought: “Man, I like this guy.” I’m not one to get swayed merely by a pretty face, so for a while I was enamored by his humor and smarts, until one day I watched an episode and realized that he was a babe. And it all went downhill from there: in came Sango, and she was strong and gorgeous and sane despite losing her father and her way of life, and I could relate. She was more than just a girl who kicked butt for the sake of fulfilling some unwritten series PC quota for Butt-Kicking Girls With No Other Motivation, and despite her superhuman strength and inherent toughness, she was human, and she could make mistakes. I wasn’t really expecting anything to happen between her and Miroku, but as the series progressed, I realized how their relationship was unlike any other I’d seen in anime: they were both funny and tragic, mature and childlike, frighteningly smart and oh-so-dense, absurdly innocent and downright sensual. From there on I was just gone, and I’ve never looked back.

ODD RANDOM FACTS:
♦ I’m a tomboy of sorts. I’m not much into fashion, brand names, chick flicks, romantic stuff, and various girly things. I can get dressed to go out in two minutes, I’m more apt to watch SpikeTV than Lifetime or O!, I have two pairs of shoes, I don’t own a single dress or skirt, and love comic books, video games, horror movies, documentaries, cartoons, and military history. The most feminine things about me are my long hair and pierced ears. Boys either treat me like one of their own or a walking gender anomaly.
♦ I have my own author number registered in the Library of Congress. Yup, I’m published in a book...somewhere. And I was on CNN. For, like, two seconds.
♦ I grew up rural—my childhood was filled with mosquito nets, outhouse bathrooms, scorpions, silverfish, centipedes, cockroaches (ugh), snakes, daily black outs, water shortages, and similar stuff. I remember having sixty-five kids in my third grade classroom, riding my first car when I was eleven, the preparation of livestock for consumption on special occasions, playing with my fifteen dogs, painting my aunt’s coffin in my living room, standing on the back of a moving pickup without being ticketed or arrested, and falling down trees, waterfall paths, and rice terraces. I was a clumsy little thing. Never broke a bone, though.
♦ I was twelve years old when I became a high school freshman—I never took seventh or eighth grade because my old school didn’t have a junior high or middle school.
♦ I like chicken. Who doesn’t?