These scans are almost all from early to mid-2011, when Key and I first started working on Maria. We started off with Chika, and kind of developed the story around her character--the idea of a timid, shy magical girl who runs around in jeans and a t-shirt, and fights her opponents by whacking them with her magic wand.

Momiko came along almost immediately afterward, and most of their development was done in tandem. From early on we made them opposites: so Chika is shy and retiring while Momiko is outgoing and charismatic; Momiko is open and friendly unless hurt while Chika is reserved and quiet unless threatened, and so on. They weren't named for a while so early on we called Chika MC (Main Character) and Momiko PG (Popular Girl).

The gag with the roach-host SWARM from chapter two was planned from almost the beginning.

The image of Mariya facing a huge robot is from a draft of chapter one that we were working on in October of 2011; as you can see we hadn't quite settled on the human-sized design yet. Also, they had built-in rocket launchers. And their arms turned into huge guns. The image next to it is closer to what we wound up with.

Uehara was another character we came up with early on. At that point, the Maria uniform was just a regular uniform, not the SWARM-inspired magical shape-shifting backpack uniform. Key came up with the idea of a manager whose job was to get Chika where she needed to be (whether that meant whacking monsters with sticks or posing for promotional photos), who had been Mariya's manager as well, and was very attached to all of the official Maria paraphernalia, and very shocked and annoyed that Chika wasn't interested in looking the part. Which is why there are a couple of doodles up there of him chasing Chika down, uniform in hand.

The Maji Co. logo and the title took a bit of work.

That's it for now! After our hiatus, Maria will return with chapter six in March of 2019. Thanks for reading, and see you next year!