Sachi the Spirit Fox is the mascot I designed for Squishy, a free and open source modern SCSI platform. This is the 2nd version of her design. I updated her looks in 2023 because the 1st version in 2021 did not look so well after I improved my art skill. I’ve also added her human and animal forms, as well as a small story about how her fur got bleached.
The picture above showcases Sachi and her IBM 9348-002 9-track magnetic tape drive, a tape roll, the SCSI cable of the drive, and an old IBM ThinkPad laptop that can connect to the drive via a SCSI connection.
“Squishy” is kind of a word-play of SCSI (skasi). SCSI was a widely used data interface back in the old times. Some old servers used SCSI ports to connect hard drives, disk drives, and magnetic tape drives, etc. SCSI was replaced by the IDE interface in 1990s when personal computer became popular, and IDE was later replaced by SATA, M.2 in succession. For those who were born after 2000, they probably haven’t heard of SCSI.
Squishy is a platform for working with old SCSI devices with modern systems in a flexible manner. It has a software part and a hardware part. Squishy is a free and open source project. You can visit its website here: https://github.com/squishy-scsi/squishy
During our discussion about the mascot, the maintainer of Squishy sent me a demo using a Japanese version of IBM 9348-002 magnetic tape drive. Every label on that machine was in Japanese. So I designed a mascot inspired by Japanese culture.
Sachi wears a proper Shinto maiden costume. Instead of blindly following the stereotypical, simplified ones often seen in anime, I studied real world maiden costumes very carefully — especially the tailoring and the process of putting on the costume. It was a very educational experience for me to understand how actual clothing works.
Sachi’s flower-like hair decoration were made from used magnetic tapes. The small story of her red fox fur getting bleached into the color scheme of a IBM 9348-002 drive was inspired by Youtuber 8-Bit Guy’s retrobriting videos.
Sachi’s Japanese name is “さち”, it sounds similar to “Search”. It can be converted into kanji “幸”, which means “good luck” and reads “コウ (kou)”, similar to “kon” — a sound Japanese people attribute to “fox noises”.
Sachi likes to study ancient Japanese history. She is friendly and ready to help others, many Japanese spirit animals like to call her “O-Sachi” — a way ancient Japanese people call popular female figures in local community. The inspiration of this nickname partly came from the famous 1983 Japanese TV drama “Oshin” which left a strong impression in my childhood.
Sachi usually disguises herself as human, and assumes the identity of Professor Suga Sachiko to teach Computer Science and Ancient Japanese History. When her spirit power runs out, she hides herself by possessing an IBM 9348-002 tape drive on her office’s desk.
Sachi’s IBM 9348-002 tape drive was old and broken. The plastic parts were so severely yellowed to the point to resemble Sachi’s original red fox fur. One of her students came from a family with Shinto background, and they sensed something off with Sachi and her tape drive. One day when Sachi was hiding inside the tape drive, this student, out of good will, repaired the machine and retrobrited everything. Sachi’s fur was bleached into light grey just like the bleached tape drive, and it stayed that way since.
Sachi’s design had no use to be this thorough and intricate, but I had a lot of fun working on her. Maybe Squishy as a project exists because it is fun to do whatever the maintainer wants to. Such is the way of free and open source, I suppose.
When I designed the 2nd version in 2023, I added Sachi’s human and animal forms, and the world building about her disguises as a human professor to teach in a college. This idea later developed into a key concept in my original project “Spirit Animals in Disguise“.
Perhaps I will give Sachi a cameo role in Spirit Animals in Disguise. After all, my project had been in the development hell for as long as I can remember, until she came along, and provided the final missing piece of the puzzle.
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