Oh hey. I was right.
But nevermind that. I managed to go to the con where Yuu Kamiya would talk about the series. Sadly stuff happened and I don't exactly remember all of it [and I missed the second one because they didn't allow ANYONE inside], so I'll just quote translate what I can.
-Yuu Kamiya is a pretty cool guy, would rather be called Thiago rather than -sensei or -san. Even so, they didn't want photos taken because Japanese folk don't like that stuff, so I couldn't record anything...
-He's not that good at Portuguese... example: he doesn't play games, he 'makes' games.
-The series' inspiration comes from years ago. One of his illustrators didn't like drawing fights, so when he was thinking up a fantasy setting, the complaint made him think. "K, a fantasy setting without fights."
-Sora is almost a Kamiya self-insert, with the same personality type and all, though he only admitted to us because if the Japanese found out they'd think he's really selfish or something. Meanwhile Shiro exists because Kamiya really wanted to have someone to take care of his own weaknesses. That's why there's so much emphasis in "they're both Kuuhaku".
-He loved what Madhouse did to the series. The female director had a good eye, could tell what was color and what was not, very well.
-Inspiration animes include Evangelion and two more I can't remember now... his favorite game is Armored Core, but since it's not popular over here, he talked about Skyrim. He spent 72 days-I mean, hours-nonstop playing.
-If NGNL were a game, he'd like it to be like Skyrim, but they don't have resources for such a game, so...
-Sometimes he does that thing of overworking to the point of hospitalization [he needed to come to Brasil during this period, and even wrote NGNL since he couldn't draw], but not to the point of Eichiiro Oda, who he called superhuman/not human.
-He doesn't think much about his popularity in Brasil or anywhere. As long as people like his work, that's good enough to him.
-Unlike the guys who keep the animated adaptation under his control or the guys who are very laissez-faire, he had a very casual relationship with the studio, they basically kept on playing around and shooting the crap and all. It was Madhouse who did some stuff like Stephs' grampa be like a deck's King, or Steph being naked.
-Kamiya and Hiiragi [the artist] keep fiddling on each other's work rather than a proper division, but some of the manga art is quite distinctive from the rest of it. Another point: the color and style of the series are like these PRECISELY because he realized nobody else was doing anything like it.
Also, official name: Chrammy Zell.
...and gods, I'm SO lucky neither version was stolen from me yesterday...