Okita Sōji
The character of Yu Kanda was carried over from an unpublished work created by Katsura Hoshino, who designed Kanda to introduce a change into "D.Gray-man"s Western setting. Kanda's design "came out very naturally" according to her, because in her early manga, before she became a full-time writer, she frequently drew boys with Japanese swords. She liked young samurais, such as Okita Sōji of the Shinsengumi special police forces; this influenced her designs for Kanda. He wears a long coat, and though series' protagonist Allen Walker wore a similar coat, Hoshino felt that the design better suited Kanda's defensive personality; the long coat became Kanda's "trademark" Black Order outfit. Multiple hairstyles and character designs' were also considered by Hoshino before she chose the final version. Hoshino has said that she found Kanda difficult to illustrate due to his sex appeal. Ever since his introduction, Kanda made few appearances until the tenth volume. In the release of this volume, Hoshino joked about how she missed Kanda. In response, within the manga Kanda impaled Hoshino's own character avatar, claiming that Hoshino did not know how to illustrate him well, so that Kanda made few appearances in the series' beginning.