Bestselling Japanese novelist Hideyuki Kikuchi and his long-time illustrator Yoshitaka Amano are legends among anime and manga fans in both Japan and America for their collaboration on Vampire Hunter D, an ongoing series of prose novels about a vampire hunter who is half-vampire himself. The 1985 animated film adaptation, released in North America in 1993, was one of the first anime movies to reach Western shores and remains a cult favorite.
Kikuchi’s illustrated Vampire Hunter D novels have an international fan base and are wildly popular. The books have sold more than 17 million copies around the world. In the U.S. the prose book series is published by Dark Horse, which has published 11 of the series’s 17 volumes. In 2007 Digital Manga Publishing released the first volume of the Vampire Hunter D manga adaptation, and while Amano continues to be the primary illustrator associated with the franchise, Kikuchi chose manga artist Saiko Takaki to draw the manga adaptation. DMP has released 2 volumes of the manga adaptation.
Anytime these two superstar creators appear together it is a big event. Kikuchi and Amano say they rarely see each other in Japan, but for this year’s New York Anime Festival they were able to schedule joint appearances at the show as well as holding individual spotlight panels. Kevin Leahy, a long-time friend of Kikuchi who also translates the Vampire Hunter D prose novels into English for Dark Horse imprint DH Press, translated for the two Japanese natives during the festival.
The Vampire Hunter D event on Saturday, which filled a large theater hall with enthusiastic fans, also featured a live performance of one of Kikuchi’s previously unreleased Vampire Hunter D short stories by American anime voice actors. The short story, titled “The Wanderer’s Ship,” was published for the first time in the New York Anime Fest guidebook.
During the question and answer period, Kikuchi told fans that Madhouse, the Japanese animation studio that produced the Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust animated film in 2000, is interested in making another Vampire Hunter D movie. Because of Bloodlust director Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s schedule, however, he said it might not be possible for several years. Kikuchi also added that he hoped the next film would be either a remake of the original Vampire Hunter D movie, or else based on the North Sea stories from his novels.
In his spotlight panel, Amano talked with fans about his original Dark Horse project, Shinjuku, an upcoming collaboration with writer and director Christopher “mink” Morrison. Shinjuku, which is scheduled for release in summer 2009, will be set in Los Angeles and the Tokyo district of Shinjuku, and involve “yakuza [Japanese gangsters] and subterranean monsters.”
Amano also discussed his childhood interest in American superhero comics, citing DC Comics legend Neal Adams as one of his favorite artists. Amano mentioned that he had been thinking about creating a new superhero named Tako-Man [“tako” is Japanese for octopus], described as “a regular boy who is fused with an octopus from outer space.”
Although he has not pitched Tako-man to any publishers yet, Amano said that he wants to find a way to use the character in one form or another.
