[Dr. Otto]

Personally, I'm not all that cosy with the word "fetish". Every time I hear it, I think of Dennis Hopper chugging helium in BLUE VELVET. Or (shudder) the "Lust" victims from SEVEN. Specific things involving physical object objects, like shoes or cars. But TF is more of a state of mind than a physical object. The TF genre is a whole lot more complicated than what some disgusted, conservative "grown-up" might think of it.

Transformation can have a sexualized ingredient, for sure, but as a storyteller, I feel there's so much more to it than that. More often than not, the TF scenes in movies and books that linger with me are the ones that don't feature the "turn-on" factor. Take Franz Kafka's THE METAMORPHOSIS, or Osamu Tezuka's ODE TO KIRIHITO. These are tales about pathos and struggle. I won't lie that TF and TG can have its adolescent "Playboy centrefold" appeal for me, but it can just as easily appeal to my cerebral adult self, if I so choose.

In any case, I'm grateful that Arania shares similar thoughts on the subject. Having commissioned a few sequences from her myself in the past, I can say that her terrific personality makes up for some of the flaws in her artwork. I'd rather commission Arania than a five-star artist who behaves like a one-star twit.