What is a vampire? Wikipedia describes them as “… mythological… beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures regardless of them being undead or a living person.” Webster’s says they’re “a preternatural being, commonly believed to be a reanimated corpse, that is said to suck the blood of sleeping persons at night.” Others still believe them to exist as a human body completely physically distorted by a demon of the devil. Whatever the case may be, some would argue what in the world gave Stephanie Meyer the right to turn the whole genre on its ear.
In her debut novel Twilight, vampires have the conventional super-strength and speed, as well as eternal life. However, Meyer takes quite a few liberties with the classic notion of the beings. They glitter in the sunlight rather than explode, and the story as a whole debunks several theories such as garlic and stakes through the heart being a vampire’s bane.
What probably bothers Meyer’s critics more than anything, though is how the Twilight saga brought the whole vampire and werewolf genre to mainstream culture. Many anti-Twilight people seem to cringe at the thought of that notion alone. What apparently adds more fuel to their fire is that the seemingly overnight popularity of the series is based off of ideas that do not coincide with the classic vampire novels.
Extreme critics of Meyer’s take on the classic horror genre would consider the work known as Twilight to be a complete mockery – if not an abomination – to all things vampire. And that’s not the only backlash towards the saga; the books also seem to mirror to a very troubling extent the work of another female author. Rumiko Takahashi, who wrote and drew the insanely popular Inuyasha manga series. While there is no proof that Meyer took any elements for Twilight from Inuyasha, several parallels between the two are very apparent.
Both series boast a young school-girl who fall in love with a supernatural being; in Twilight it’s vampire Edward Cullen, in Inuyasha it’s a half-demon of the same name. What’s more is that both Edward and Inuyasha have a rival in love with the lady who is a wolf; Jacob Black and Koga the wolf demon respectively. In addition both sagas feature a fairly commonplace theme of the girl riding on her non-human crush’s back as he speeds his way through the forest.
Takahashi does have a few advantages over Meyer, however. She didn’t design Inuyasha to be perfect like Edward Cullen had apparently been designed. Although Edward has his struggles he doesn’t face death on a daily basis like Inuyasha. Inuyasha initially struggles to be perfect in Japan’s feudal era, attempting to possess a jewel known as the Shikon no Tama to become a full-fledged demon. He then develops as a character when he meets Kagome, a 20th Century schoolgirl who had traveled back in time via a well in her family’s shrine.
Which of course makes the characters a Takahashi’s graphic novels much more three-dimensional than Meyer’s. Of course as most people know Stephanie Meyer started her initial novel work as a gift for herself. Ultimately is Twilight even a new enough concept to be justified as such an original work? Or is it merely an attempt to stray away from a classic formula as well as somehow mirroring the work of a woman more than half a world away? Whatever the case may be, never forget that Stephanie Meyer’s premiere work is netting her millions and millions of dollars.
