The Oni Slayers was first conceived in 2007. At the age I was, anything that involved wild violence with blood and demons was of my interest. I was mainly inspired by the Devil May Cry series and decided to create my own version. Eventually it became The Oni Slayers and grew to be a revenge story. Even as I look back, I feel that some parts of the writing felt too childish or incomplete. However I decided to keep it this way to match with Takuya’s naive thinking.
The original draft was completed in 2009, but I never had the heart to edit it down and refine it. I was too obsessed with other things, but the story always stuck with me in the back of my head. I thought about character relationships from time to time and how they would react to different situations. Though it progressed slowly, the story was coming together. During my breaks at school, I would rewrite chapters or write new material. I even started to draw the characters to better envision them. The names of places and characters were eventually decided on and there was a clear idea where the story was headed to.
My initial setting for the story was always Japan, but since I have never been there myself, I merged the neighborhoods (like Chinatown) I knew of into the story. It was also due the term, oni, that I used. In Japanese it refers to ogres, but here in the story I use it to refer to demons of all sorts collectively. The different oni I thought up of deviated from the traditional oni so I had to change the original meaning of it.
If it weren’t for The Oni Slayers, I wouldn’t have begun to write short stories and other novels. This is the first novel that I have completed. I hope readers that have reached the end have enjoyed this work.
