During quarantine I started this light novel but it’s been through a lot of changes thanks to beta readers (you guys are awesome).
Hachiko is a one shot story. The story is about a 20 year old boy named Kazuhito, who seeks out urban legends. There is a creature of recent vintage named Hachishakusama. I can’t call her folklore since it looks like the story is from 2010. Her name translates to Eight Feet Tall. An eight foot tall creature with no back story? I just had to do it. There isn’t much about her out there but there is fan art, a nasty hentai, but not too much else. There was an appearance in Otherside Picnic where she is called Hassaku which is another name for her.
I did take some liberties with her appearance. In most pics you’ll see she’s almost waif like. A scrawny eight foot tall woman, dressed in a white dress with a big ass hat. Welllllll… now she’s 8 feet tall, still has the hat and dress, but she has a body. She’s thick. Real thick not a size 6 with a camera angle that makes her look more like an 8 which is also NOT THICK. Also she’s not really given much of an origin or creature species. I turned her more into a vampire/demi-human than a yokai like most women in Japanese folklore. They’re usually scorned women. I’m not going to give away the story here so you have to read the book.
To me, it’s like writing another version of Frankenstein. She has no story so why can’t I make one? Hell, maybe it gets popular and mine becomes her story in the eyes of the public. Would be nice.
I kind of wish I was ready before because during the time I was writing, Capcom decided to make the same character for Resident Evil Village. Lady Dimitrescu who is listed at 9’6″ but that includes high heels and the hat. She’s based on the same character. They even thickened her up like I did. I’m just going to pretend the character designer is following me on Twitter and copied me.
When I was blazing through the first draft, I thought I was on the fast track to finishing but one person who was asking to read light novels, read mine and had one issue. He didn’t like the narrator. I had a narrator who broke the fourth wall and was more like “Look out, there’s a monster in the next room!” type. After consulting other beta readers, no one had an issue but one did suggest possibly going first person. Which made sense after cutting out some parts since the thoughts of the main character Kazuhito and narration were kind of double talking the same points. So I’ve been rewriting everything. It’s like I wrote two books.
So Kazuhito seeks out Hachikushasama thinking that it was just an urban legend but he finds out she’s real.
One of my game beta testers became a beta reader and he said he saw it like an anime and that’s exactly what I was going for. I wanted a light, breezy read but could also be visualized without too much effort. There is an anime it could be compared to, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia. It wasn’t until getting more than halfway through the book, I thought of that show. And I’d love to see it as a anime. Netflix, HBO, Crunchyroll, Funimation, Hulu, Amazon and whoever else out there, I can start writing out the script now.
I’ve started posting the story on Honeyfeed so far and it will be available in other places. I wasn’t actually ready to post yet but wanted to have a test bed. Hope you enjoy Hachiko.