Character Profile - Yukishiro (Himura) Tomoe

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To tell the truth, I don't want to say much, but as this column has "No lies and no hides" as 
its motto, I'm telling you. In the beginning, there was no motif for Tomoe. This whole story 
was more or less ready since before this series had begun. Then, Tomoe was a "terribly beautiful
woman that shows no feelings", or a "cool beauty", to sum it up (I digress, but when I told a 
friend of mine about this "cool beauty", he started laughing hard. Is my idea about "cool 
beauty" wrong?) And in these three and half years before her appearance, there was no further
idea to increment the character, so in the end she became a clone of Ayanami from Evangelion. But 
although the basis for drama is the feelings of the characters and their changes, a "cool beauty"
is a "cool beauty" only while she shows none of her feelings. I didn't realize that and in the 
end she became an entirely different character. To make matters worse, her death was exactly 
identical to Yumi's. When I think about Tomoe, I feel not regret, but rather hate of myself. 
But Tomoe as a "cool beauty" was fun to draw and I like the character, so I intend to put her
in a next series, and as a 100% Watsuki original "cool beauty"...

- Likewise, the design was taken from Ayanami too. The only original element was the eye with
only one spot of light, because I thought that such eye would represent better the idea of no 
feelings shown. But the originality stops here. To tell the truth, after four years running a 
series, not only I end up showing more often my feelings than getting into touch with different
feelings, but also I've got less and less time and health to mature ideas and topics to make
them a Watsuki original. This Tomoe depicts faithfully such reality. Now that I ended with Tomoe,
I painstakingly feel that there's a need to change my ways of storytelling, and already I've
started. People who got angry at Tomoe, I beg you to bear a bit more with my manga.