萩尾望都
In her youth, Moto Hagio disliked stories featuring vampires, as they were depicted as "villains who attack human beings." In 1962, the manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori published the one-shot (single-chapter) manga "Mist, Roses and Stars", a science fiction story about the tragic life of a vampire girl, in the manga magazine "Shōjo Club". Hagio became inspired by the manga, and began to conceive of her own "beautiful vampire story" about a vampire who "long[s] to return to a normal human existence" but is "rejected by humanity."