Life? That would be the short answer, really. Chahiro is incredibly personal to me in that he represents some very difficult and troubling parts of my own life, as well as the suffering I’ve seen in my close, personal friends. Chahiro is at the cusp of adulthood with everything before him and still questing to decipher the mystery of his own identity. We all go through it to one extent or another but for Chahiro, the questions are an overwhelming behemoth.

His search for identity, who he is and what he is, represents a lot of my own strife while at the same time, living out the strife I have seen others bare. Myself, I had to struggle with my own sexuality on some major terms. I grew up Mormon where straight was the only acceptable orientation. Then I fell in love with a transgendered individual who was my same sex but mentally the other gender. That was confusing as hell. Was it really gay or is it kind of straight if I love them for their mind? I explored same-sex relationships for a while before eventually concluding that both dicks and pussies are awesome and settled into being Bi.

A bit of the difficulty I saw my trans friends endure came out in him being a transvestite. And even more came out when I made him an orphan after forming a close friendship with someone who grew up in foster care. But at his core is my own identity crisis I fought with for years. I’m comfortable with where I am now but I express a lot of my feelings through Chahiro- which is why I’ve been fairly guarded about the character for some time.

-TB