Exclusive Interview With Writer Sinitus Tempo, Creator Of 'Allure: The Evening Primrose'

TV & Film

Sep 9

CultureSlate recently had the honor of sitting down with music producer and mangaka Nathan Peters aka Sinitus Tempo to discuss exciting updates on his manga series ‘Allure,’ its planned anime adaptation, and a new comic in the works.

CS: What inspired you to get into the world of writing and producing manga and comics?

ST: I grew up loving anime and I know a lot of people's first…Their beginning is normally like Dragon Ball Z, but mine was… I would say Ninja Scroll, Perfect Blue, and Blood: The Last Vampire. Those were my, you know, my stepping stones into anime and then, of course, Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon and stuff came later, but, you know, I've always loved anime. I've always been a big fan, buying them on VHS and it was just something that I wanted to always get into and just didn't know how to get into.

So I believe it was maybe 2010, 2011, I was like, well, I'm just going to write a story, put it to my music and that would be it. That's when I met Reb Pierre. He reached out to me and was like, hey, he needed music for his YouTube page and we just ended up getting the talking and we started kind of just working on just projects.

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It wasn't until a few years later that I had the idea for Allure. I was bouncing around ideas for a while and then around 2015, he reached out to me again. I was like ‘Well, hey, I got this project, I have about a chapter done. You want to check it out?’ And he's just like ‘Yeah, sure’. So he read it. He was like, ‘Man, I think you got something good with this one.’ So we started doing the artwork. He started doing the character art and basically, just it went from there. Like we crafted it over the few years and…um...I guess the time it took was a little too long and unfortunately, [Reb] went on to other projects, mainly his own. I kept on with it and ended up with the Noir Caesar deal and the rest was history. They went on to push it and we landed the deal so that's where we're at with it.

Allure comic art — Image Source: Allure: The Evening Primrose (via Webtoon)

CS: You kind of got into this a little bit, but I wanted to ask what were some of your inspirations when it came to the Allure: The Evening Primrose and Allure: Queen of the Night?

ST: So, my biggest inspirations were, I would say the manga Gangster. Also, the anime Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom. I would have to also add in some ‘My Hero Academia’ and One Punch Man. I just like the over-the-top crazy action and everything exploding and high-moving stuff. Those, I say, were like my my inspirations on crafting kind of crafting the world of [Allure], and how I wanted it to play out.

CS: While the use of CGI in comics is common for backgrounds and assets, Queen of the Night uses CGI for its character designs as well, so I want to know what informed this decision and what some of the challenges were that came with using CGI for character actions while still retaining the aesthetic of a hand-drawn manga.

ST: Yeah. So for Queen of the Night, it was around the time that Reb had gone his own separate path, and at the time I was not too great with art. So I was already learning 3D modeling and game development, so I was like, well, why not just go that route for now until I can pick back up and learn some more skills as far as art goes and everything like that? And that's how ‘Queen of the Night’ ended up becoming that. Now I am, at this point, probably going to go and backtrack it. And I didn't want to do it because it's so much work and I had two volumes done of the comic and everything like that but I'm taking it back to the beginning and changing the art style back to the original our style. I'm going to go through the whole thing from the beginning to the end and then I'm picking up Queen of the Night with that same art style.

CS: Outside of the change in art style for this overhaul, do you see any potential opportunity for changes in narrative as well or are you just going to focus on just making sure you get that art style to a consistent aesthetic?

ST: I want to really get the art style right. I feel like as far as the story, I might go back to the earlier chapters of the first Allure and try to tighten some things up. And because honestly, if anybody, most people have probably ever read the books, which were basically…What can I say they were? They were outlined for the longer [story]. So that was basically what I wrote was cleaned up by my editor, Kenny, but he just put the stuff together, you know? And when he stepped out, we didn't really have anything to do. So it was just like, well, let's just kind of put it together. How we can put it out as a kind of like a short novel, you know, short three-part novel, and that'll be that.

But with the whole deal also and you know what we're working on with that, I think it would probably be best to actually have the manga along with it, so people normally gravitate more towards the art in the manga rather than a novel or light novel you know. So I think that was a big part of the decision and taking it back because they're going to like the art style that was originally, you know, for Allure and meant for Allure so it makes more sense to just go back that way.

CS: I understand that details on this front may be tight-lipped, but earlier this year, Deadline revealed that Naomi Osaka and production company Hana Kuma had partnered up with Rebel Maverick to develop an anime adaptation of your work. But what does all that really mean in the larger scheme of things? And if you're at liberty to say, what would be the next steps for Allure on the road to becoming a full-fledged anime?

ST: So I'm not sure how much I can speak on as far as that. So with the Rebel Maverick and Matt Nicholas, and Naomi Osaka and Hana Kuma, they would be executive producers. And we already know that Naomi Osaka would be voicing Akane as the main role.

We have a lot of the pieces so the puzzle like basically already done. I can't speak too much on [anime] studio and all that other stuff. But we're getting we're getting very close to, you know, the end goal and what we want and that's really all I can say. I don't want to ruin anything so that's really all I can speak on. It's been a journey I want to say, we're going on maybe three years.

Three years we've been putting things together so it could be a lot. It could be a little bit longer; we don't know. Hopefully, this year is when we know everything is good to go, but we don't know yet. I mean, we got, we have Kenny Byerly as our Showrunner and, you know, he has a lot of credits with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and other series and stuff like that and connections. And so does Matt, so I mean, it's moving. We're getting a lot of good nods and a lot of good thumbs up, but that's all I can really say, but things are moving. I’ll say that much.

CS: As the creator of the series, what do you think will be the key to making an anime adaptation the best it can be with the team that’s formed?

ST: I would say probably just consistency. Like I know a lot of anime fall off due to lack of consistency. They might start strong and then fall flat. You know they might have too long of a break. And then people get uninterested the longer might draw on too long and then the story just kind of fizzles out because of the interest. So I think it's just we just have to be on point and consistent with it like and I think draw as much inspiration without copying and being our own thing and I think we'll succeed.

Honestly, as many people as I let read the story. I haven't gotten the ‘Oh man, this sucks’ or ‘This isn't good’, but I've just got genuine excitement from people, and that's how I know that we have something pretty good.

Zara manga — Image Source: Sinitus Tempo

CS: With Allure still in development, you've started a new project called Zara. Do you mind speaking a little bit about it?

So Zara is a project that I've been working on for a little while now that I started at around the same time as Queen of the Night, so that's about three years. So I've had the idea kind of bounced around with it and I like story plots that you can't really put your finger on it like it could change at any minute, basically expect the unexpected type of story plots you know. It's a story about revenge.

So Zara, she's a Senior High School. Her father is the ex-police chief. This city is basically overrun by three major gangs, and one of them killed her father, so her whole thing is ‘I'm going to infiltrate and I'm going to take them down from the inside out. And it doesn't matter how I infiltrate and rise up the ranks. If I have to kill a civilian to gain their trust, then I'll do it.’ So it gets a little crazy and I think it's not a super long manga like how Allure is very long. But I think it will serve its purpose and I think people will be excited when I drop it.

While a remaster is now in the works and expected to release its first chapters this October, Allure: The Evening Primrose and Allure: Queen of the Night are available to read on Manga Plus Creators and Webtoon. The first chapter of Zara is expected to be released this December.

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