Manga artist Inio Asano (浅野いにお) has stunned fans online after revealing that he spent an entire month building a fully realized 3D model of a rural Japanese town for an upcoming one-shot manga — before drawing a single page of the actual story.
Asano shared the project on X on July 13, writing, “I spent a month building a 3D rural town in order to draw a one-shot manga. I haven’t finished a single page of the manuscript yet!” The post included images of the environment, which showed an astonishing level of detail: cluttered household interiors, a family altar (butsudan), sliding paper doors (fusuma), and even a retro vending machine, all rendered with a lived-in, slightly worn realism. One image also recreated a real vending machine spotted on Google Street View in Midori, Gunma Prefecture.
The post quickly went viral, with fellow creators and fans expressing disbelief at the amount of work involved. Manga artist Tatsuki Noda commented that it was “the kind of thing manga artists think about doing but never actually do,” while other users praised the uncanny sense of everyday life the space conveyed, from dust on surfaces to the warmth of a lived-in home.
Responding to questions about how the work was made, Asano explained that he used a mix of previously purchased 3D assets and original models. New modeling work — including the altar, sliding doors, and vending machine — took about two weeks, with an additional week for placing objects in the scene and roughly another week for other tasks, all done almost entirely by himself. Other users in the thread noted the workflow resembled techniques increasingly used in manga and game production, where building a complete 3D environment first allows artists to plan camera angles and character staging before drawing begins.
Who is Inio Asano?
Inio Asano is a Japanese manga artist known for character-driven, often melancholic stories exploring youth and everyday life, including works widely known overseas such as Solanin, Oyasumi Punpun, A Girl on the Shore, and Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction. He is currently serializing MUJINA INTO THE DEEP in Big Comic Superior. Asano is also known for composing his own music and, as this project shows, building elaborate 3D environments as part of his creative process.
As of this writing, Asano has not announced when the one-shot manga built around this 3D town will be published.
