"Poe" was born - Interview by Moto Hagio III

(Continued from Installation 2)

Moto Hagio Interview (Installment 3)
*So was born "Poe no Ichizoku"

—Some say your magnum opus "Poe no Ichizoku" was influenced by Mr. Ishinomori's short "Mist, Roses, and Stars" (1962). Is it true?

Hagio: Yes, it was. I think I read "Mist, Roses, and Stars" when I was in middle school as a one-shot short in an extra issue of some magazine, just like I read "Yesterday Comes No More, But Neither Tomorrow…" Back then, it seemed like (Mr. Ishinomori) was into time lag—stories that jumped around between the past and future—and he did some full-blown time-shift stories for shojo manga, which were very rare. At that time, I thought "Mist, Roses, and Stars" was such type of story. It was about a girl who turned into a vampire and lived through the past, present and future. So, much later, when I thought about drawing a vampire story, what came back to me out of the blue was "Mist, Roses, and Stars." I thought, "Rather than be confined to one era, one scene, or one town, where a vampire appears, I could draw the past and future of the scenes as well." In "Mist, Roses, and Stars" you have the same scenes in the past and future, but the protagonist doesn't age. So I went, "Hot dog!" (laugh) As for vampire stories, I had read a Japanese edition in a manga called "Dracula the Vampire" by Mitsuteru Yokoyama, but I couldn't finish it because the images were too scary. I was under the impression that vampires were scary, so I don't know what went wrong when I decided to draw [vampires], I remembered the vampire in Mr. Ishinomori's story was beautiful, so I thought I would want to do it myself if it was a pretty vampire.

—I don't think there were any vampire stories that weren't "horror" back then.

Hagio: I don't remember anything else. So I went to see several movies when I decided to draw vampires, but I got scared whenever there were innocent families or a protagonist and they got attacked one by one by vampires laughing, "Mwahahaha." (laugh)

—Those are basically horrors. "Poe no Ichizoku" was special because it was drawn from the vampires' perspectives.

Hagio: Recently, there are some that are written from the viewpoint of vampires, such as The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. I first saw it [Interview with the Vampire] in the film, and I thought it was cool and started reading the novels. When I discovered that they came out about two years after I did "Poe no Ichizoku," I broke out in a cold sweat, thinking "Oh, god, thank god I was first." (laugh) [the rest is omitted from translation]

(End)