Hidamari Sketch
Shinbo granted Urobuchi a large amount of autonomy in writing the series and determining the path of the story. In describing his interactions with Iwakami and Shinbo while working on the series, Urobuchi commented that "neither one is the type to show their hand, they would always wait for me to make the next move". To create a successful deconstruction of the magical girl genre, Urobuchi studied aspects of traditional magical girl media that were "troubling or overlooked". He also stated the plot development was heavily influenced by the character drawings by Aoki. He also credited horror fiction author Stephen King and Shinbo's previous projects such as "Hidamari Sketch" and "Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha" as inspirations for the series.