NEZBOX's wand-raised Malfoid

What does the drawing show?

A full-length Malfoid stands on plain white with her ankles crossed in black loafers. The uniform is Slytherin standard issue, drawn neatly: white shirt, green and white striped tie, grey knit vest, grey pleated skirt, black tights. The robe is the showpiece. It is black outside and bright green inside, and it flares out behind her in wide folds, so the lining shows almost as much as the black.

She holds a dark wand loosely by her cheek, between thumb and fingers, the way you might hold a pen while deciding whether someone is worth the effort. Her other arm is folded across her waist. Long pale blonde hair falls past her hips, a gold hoop hangs from each ear with a couple of extra piercings above it, and her nails are painted pink. The face does the rest: half-closed grey-green eyes, a faint blush, a small flat mouth. She is not angry at Potter. She is bored by him.

In the bottom corner the signature reads NEZBOX, next to three triangles in red, blue and yellow.

Where is the joke?

There barely is one, and that is the point. The caption is one word, マルフォイ, Malfoy in Japanese, with no tag and no explanation. By October 2 Japanese X had been passing Malfoid art around for a few days, so the name was all anyone needed to get it.

What NEZBOX adds is polish. Most Malfoid posts are quick sketches or comic pages. This one looks like a finished character design, the kind of clean full-body drawing an anime studio makes before anyone animates a frame. The look underneath is the one @redteneri set on September 22, with the long hair, the hoops and the tie, but cleaned up and lit like a poster. The bored half-lidded stare is the same face that makes the first Malfoid drawing work, minus the speech bubble.

Who is NEZBOX?

NEZBOX posts on X as NEZBOX(イラストレーター)＠VRC. Their Facebook page says they are an ex-animator and staff member at Toei Animation, and their pixiv FANBOX introduces them as a freelance illustrator and former animator.

This was the second of three posts by working Japanese artists in the first week of October. bkub, who created Pop Team Epic, went first on October 1, and Food Wars! artist Shun Saeki followed on October 4 with Gyarufoy. As of October 10 NEZBOX’s has passed 100,000 likes. All three are in our Japanese gallery, and everyone else who has drawn her is on Malfoid artists.