Director Yasunori Ide and writer Yosuke Kuroda talk about their work on Mizuho’s character in Please Teacher, revealing they drew heavily from Mitsuru Adachi’s manga for inspiration.

Very tangential and opinionated side note: I will never ever ever ever get over the fact that Ide was not called back to direct the series’ spiritual successor, Ano Natsu de Matteru. Nothing against Tatsuyuki Nagai, I just feel Kuroda/Ide had a chemistry working on this series from the way they come off in articles (especially this one) that couldn’t easily be replicated, and they really got how to tell an effective romantic comedy story in a way most teams don’t. Ano Natsu felt like the epitome of a show that pulled all the surface elements from a franchise (mysterious alien girlfriend, country setting, love triangle drama) and tried to replicate its success without really understanding what made the first show special (snappy couples dialogue, advancing a relationship way past the point of romantic confession). It’s not like it sold poorly, and it was an ok show, but I will always regret that we missed a golden opportunity for those two to work on a similar project again.