Postscript

As far back as I can remember, I didn’t like the heroines in adventure movies. No matter how I looked at it, they seemed to serve no purpose other than to slow the hero down or get into trouble. Were it not for them, the heroes would’ve been able to accomplish their ends in less than half the movie’s running time without being in any danger. Heroines were no more than a bit of color—or so I believed. But my mind changed when I started writing novels. Though they might have added color, heroines were also necessary. I wouldn’t want to read a full-length novel with no characters but men, even on a dare.

In my debut novel, Demon City Shinjuku, I tried my hand at creating a heroine true to the mold. Quiet and innocent, but capable of action that shows her inner strength in a flash—do you see what I’m driving at? This was unbelievably tough to write. As the typical heroine serves to build up the hero, she can’t be more active than he is, and she inevitably finds herself in terrible predicaments. How conventional! Do women that lovely and simple even exist in this day and age? More to the point, that sort of character really wasn’t suited to my writing.

As a result, for my second book, Vampire Hunter D, I created the stalwart Doris, who battles a vampire to keep her little brother safe. However, in the presence of D, she still reverts to being an average woman. Something was missing!

For my third book, Alien: Hidden Treasure Town, I tried to make up for what the previous book had lacked. Yuki, the heroine who works with high-school treasure hunter Dai Yagashira, represented my ideal. Money grubbing and willing to put her feminine charms to use even when they’re not entirely called for, she would be only too happy to double-cross Dai for profit, despite the fact that the two of them live together. When the going gets tough, she has no compunction about hiding behind the same man she’s just betrayed. What’s more, she’s so self-centered that she never gives the slightest thought to all the trouble she causes those around her. She just flies recklessly ahead, putting herself and everyone with her into constant danger. And she’s completely unrepentant. Oh, how my pen raced across the paper. Now this is a heroine, I thought, giving Miss Yuki a round of applause.

Nevertheless, it’s difficult to deny these heroines somehow wind up as subordinate characters in a herocentric universe. They absolutely cannot overshadow the hero. Iriya the Berserker represents my greatest resistance to the concept of the subordinate heroine. I wanted to create a heroine who could antagonize D, the most powerful hero of all my books—and that was how Iriya came to be. I hope you’ll decide for yourself whether or not I succeeded in doing so.

Hideyuki Kikuchi

May 30, 2015

While watching Only Lovers Left Alive