Click for larger version (Hinata); Click for larger version (Might Guy); click for the list of dolls.

So I’ve been horribly sick lately, that is to say I got sick late January, had less than a week of health and then I caught something else altogether. That means I’ve been spending a lot of quality time with Naruto and the rest of the Konoha kids, because when I’m this sick I’m too stupid to follow anything more complicated. Naruto’s great for brainless times because it’s a Naruto law that you never see any important scene just once. If it’s good the first time, it’s even better in flashbacks! Plus, everyone is always announcing the names of their attacks beforehand, giving away their techniques and cunning plans and providing little chibi diagrams for the excitable seven-year old following along at home. If I was a ninja, things would be on a strictly need-to-know basis, but anyways if I was a ninja I’d be total fodder-nin (that is to say, dead before I was 15), so I guess you get the right to give away your secrets if you can back it up with power. Well, I kid because I love. Naruto’s kind of my Battlestar Galactica, which is to say Brian tolerates me talking about it with something akin to politeness, and he’ll never understand the joy of Shikamaru avenging Asuma’s death just as I don’t really understand the whole fracking Bob Dylan thing.

Anyways, I’m totally team Hinata, although I think Naruto will end up with Sakura because Kishimoto has this thing about the generations mirroring each other. Just look at the Sannin triangle between Orochimaru, Tsunade and Jiraiya, every bit of which has been replicated in the relationship between Sasuke, Sakura and Naruto. When history repeats itself like that there doesn’t seem to be any place in that triangle for sweet, loyal and sadly shy Hinata, only for annoying tsundere Sakura. Well, to heck with you Sakura, you don’t get a paperdoll dress even though I like your Shippuuden outfit better than Hinata’s hoodie. If it was up to me, Naruto and Hinata would wind up together, I actually like Sakura and Sai as a couple in the anime, and Shikamaru and Temari round out my Naruto ships. I wouldn’t mind Sasuke and Karin getting together if it’s the sort of tragic love that ends with Sasuke dying disgracefully in a ditch. Yep – I’m the sort of annoying Naruto fan who couldn’t care less about questions like “who would win in a fight, Guy with the sixth gate open or Gaara post-Shukaku?”

… yeah, if you seriously read all of that, you deserve a present, so here’s a bonus costume: the green jumpsuit that Might Guy and Rock Lee wear. The jumpsuit itself, according to Guy at least, is the perfect thing to wear in training, “a miracle gown for all youth,” so I can make it into a paperdoll for a girl with a happy heart. I drew it while I was sick, though, and I don’t like the way it turned out very much, so hey, bonus, enjoy.