SPINA ⭐ スピーナ
Toyhouse Profile | Art Fight ProfileSpina is the current incarnation of my original Saiyan OC from 2004. Initially called Pooka, she evolved, in a sense, from a Pikachu OC of the same name from 2003. The name was derived from Puka, the Pikachu featured in episode 67 of the Pokémon anime. Sometime in 2005, the Saiyan’s name’s spelling changed also to Puka, and so it remained until she was rebooted completely as Spina in early 2020 - it didn’t feel right not having a vegetable-based name for her. The name Puka was split off into a Tuffle character, who is Spina’s best friend from childhood.
In spite of her significantly longer legacy, like all the other OCs, her story didn’t begin to be conceived of until the 2020s. Prior to this time, she was little more than “me with a tail” - used as a vehicle for emotional expression. In early 2020, I was inspired by a bout of nostalgia that spawned an OC compilation piece, which for most of the subjects was the first time I’d drawn them in years - leading to a bit of revision in their designs. I was also watching MasakoX’s “what if” DB stories at the time, so it led me to ask myself “What if this silly self-insert OC from 2004 was molded into a real character with an actual story?” And thus, Spina was the result of that question.
In order to approach building her into a character, I started by deciding how she would meet Vegeta (in the main storyline it’s while he’s training for the androids, right as he unlocks Super Saiyan), and worked backwards with thoughts like “why is she out there in the first place?” To this, I ended up having her be the daughter of two low-class Saiyans who escaped the Frieza Force and crashed on a planet full of Tuffle colonists who’d fled the Saiyan-Tuffle war long before, called New Plant. At age 12, Spina’s home and family are destroyed by Frieza Force soldiers who find out about the deserter Saiyans, leaving her to search alone for other Saiyans for a huge chunk of her life.
In the main timeline and one of the spin-offs, Spina becomes the sole protector of a Tuffle ship, the last remaining legacy of her home and life before its demise. Its design is a crude approximation of “What if a Runabout from Star Trek had a more Toriyama-esque shape language” as vehicle and ship design is far out of my wheelhouse. It has meager accommodations for a crew of up to two, and in the back is a simulation room (think a cross between present day VR and actual holodeck tech) which enables her to train to survive being alone in space.
Personality-wise, Spina is friendly and easy-going, having spent most of her childhood knowing only peace. Once on her own, though, she develops an un-Saiyan-like sense of “playing it safe” over time, never revealing her identity and keeping everyone she meets or helps at arm’s length. She is not inclined to take a life unless that’s the only option for removing a consistent threat, and is more likely to flee a too-dangerous situation. All this changes when she finally finds a Saiyan and meets the people of Earth at the beginning of the Android conflict, as she finally feels she’s found a home and friends again and will do anything to prevent losing that.
One of the spin-off stories has the original Saiyan trio (Vegeta, Nappa, and Raditz) find New Plant rather than random soldiers, and this results in a fight that ends in a stalemate (rather than a desperate planet-destroying move), and then a tenuous truce and plan to train to take down Frieza (this takes like six years). I wrote this story because I thought it’d be fun to have the characters meet earlier, include the other two, and let all the rest of my characters live and develop. In this story, Spina’s tendency to deliberately befriend difficult people for the challenge of it is made more prominent, as is her lack of baggage compared to her father.
The second spin-off story is a more hypothetical timeline created by Spina travelling back in time to just before Goku’s fight with Frieza on Namek in order to save Vegeta, get him healed, and let him fight Frieza again with one more boost, which allows him to transform and kill the tyrant. Spina stays after just long enough to give her fellow Saiyans some cautionary words and a planet to train on, then leaves mysteriously. Present day Spina runs into the plot at the same time as the main timeline, but Goku is out there training, too, and no one knows about the androids as Trunks wasn’t born in this timeline. This story basically exists as a “how would things actually play out if I made a silly wish fulfillment scenario actually happen” thing.
GALLERY
For Spina specifically, I'm splitting the art gallery into sections for her pre- and post-reboot eras.
2000s
This is the era in which she was known as Pooka or Puka, and before she had a story or her distinctive hairstyle. Her hair at the time was based more on how mine was in my late teens.
2020s
This is the era beginning from when I renamed the character Spina, gave her a new design, and wrote actual stories with her.