POSTSCRIPT

_

The two volumes of Mysterious Journey to the North Sea were to be the first multi-volume tale in the Vampire Hunter D series, which has since gone on to include others like Dark Road and Pale Fallen Angels. Up until that point, each tale had consisted of three hundred and fifty to four hundred hand-written pages, but along those lines I couldn’t tackle any really grand stories. There was also a limit to the number of characters I could use. As a result, I was growing increasingly frustrated. Now, even in a ten-page short story, something is either interesting or it’s not, and in a massive five-thousand-page tome you won’t tell a story that can’t be told. Since I’d already undertaken the Herculean task [laughs] of writing a three-volume tale for my first adult-oriented novel, I wasn’t particularly worried about penning a thousand pages of Vampire Hunter D.

I adhere to the motto that bigger is better [laughs], and even when it comes to boasts and fabrications, I like them as large as possible. I tried to repress that propensity while working on this book, but while I was writing this volume, I stopped and said, “Huh?!” at the scene where D descends into the huge pit (which resembles the scene where the Count goes down the wall in Bram Stoker’s Dracula). What was it, a mile or more across? As I recall, on the way down D looks back and sees that the opening is far off in the distance, and that it’s shrunk down to the size of his little finger. However, if the diameter was more than a mile, D would have to climb down a hundred miles before the opening would seem to shrink to that size. Although I noticed this right away, due to my own foolish nature, I usually let consistency fly off into the depths of space once I get a grand vision in my head. That being said, I didn’t want to re-work the image into something weaker. But to climb a mile down into a hole and have an opening as wide as it is deep still gaping above you—that’s just comical. Honestly, I was really stuck at that point.

Still, there are parts in Mysterious Journey to the North Sea that later works couldn’t touch on. The section where D and the heroine visit a Noble’s manse and reflect on the beauty of that civilization is something I haven’t been able to use since, and it’s the scene that best illustrates the “elegance and refinement” of the vampires. I hope that will please all you vampire fans out there. Mysterious Journey to the North Sea is actually one of the candidates for the next animated feature—as is a remake of the first story—and if they decide to do this story, I truly hope they include that scene. Though to be perfectly honest, I’m not a big fan of anime at all . . .

To be continued next time [laughs].

—

Hideyuki Kikuchi

November 1, 2006

While watching Ame no Machi

(the film adaptation of one of my stories)