History and Story Mediums

Karin was originally conceived as a manga serial written for the Japanese magazine Dragon Age published by Kadokawa Shoten, with publication starting in 2003. Collected chapters of the manga are periodically published as tankoubon which are notable for the inclusion of an autobiographical omake by the author in which she discusses the creative process of writing Karin, and her career as a manga author.

In 2004 Kadokawa asked Tohru Kai to write a series of mystery novels based on Karin. Although this was initiated independently of Kagesaki, who in one of her manga omake's disclosed that she had been sceptical that Karin could be turned into a mystery story, in the event she declared herself delighted by the results, and acted as the illustrator for them.

In 2005 Karin was adapted into an anime series by Shinichiro Kimura. The Karin anime series began airing in November 2005 on the Japanese TV channel WOWOW and quickly became well-known amongst English speaking anime fans as several fansub groups translated it. Although the first part of the series roughly follows the first 7 volumes of the manga, it then departs company with the introduction of a vampire hunter (Winner Sinclair), and proceeds to an anime-only ending. Kagesaki was consulted in some matters such as the voice acting, but has not offered an opinion on the anime-only storyline. In February 2007, the series was licensed for Region 1 distribution by Geneon.

Meanwhile the English language rights to the Karin manga and novels were acquired by Tokyopop who published them under the title Chibi Vampire. The change of title was greeted with bemusement by the anime community as Karin is not chibi in drawing style nor in her physical stature. From her blog, it seemed that the author only became aware of the title change on receiving copies of the overseas editions.

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