Nikkei
When Shani Sato discovers that her precious housecat, Nikkei, has the ability to turn himself into a quasi-human, well, mostly she’s just mad he revealed this to her while she was in her bath towel. But the consequences for this discovery are greater than that, and Nikkei leads Shani and her brother Myoku into his dangerous past. Hunting him is the fearsome vampire Eripmav Kaehn, who blames Nikkei for the death of his father many years ago. It doesn’t make matters simpler that Nikkei’s half-sister, the half-cat, half-vampire Kyasai, has had a child with Eripmav’s little brother Alucard.
In this feverish, heartwarming story of loyalty and faith, Nikkei will capture your love till the last tragic scene in this four-volume manga.
2004-2005
manga
4 volumes
inspiration
This was the story that started it all. I’d gotten into Yu-Gi-Oh not long before 6th grade, and by middle school, I had subscriptions to Shounen Jump and Shoujo Beat and was starting to collect (way age-inappropriate) manga. After a trip to Ely with my grandpa and dad, I was off and running writing a story inspired by my cat Cinnamin. The question that started the story was “what if my cat could turn into a human?” What resulted was a 4 volume romance, action, adventure that defined a number of important characters I’d brought forward from online roleplaying games I wrote with friends.
I channeled all my angsty middle school drama into these stories and even changed the ending when I unfortunately lost Cinnamin to cancer when I was 12. The story was an experiment and my first exploration into my writing world and my art.
RECURRING CHARACTERS
Who wasn’t in Nikkei? Most of the characters I carried forward started here, but several were pulled from my roleplaying days and those were: Myoku, Shani, and T’Kai (the Satos), Atermist (Bakura now known as Andrew), and the FHV (fka the Freaky Horny Vampires) which included Eripmav who went on to become Danyil, as well as Mikara who went on to become Ingrid.