Haxa: meeting with Nicolò Pelizzon

Haxa

Thanks to BAO Publishing, we had the opportunity to chat with Nicolò Pellizzon, writer and artist from Verona coming out these days with the third and final volume of his Haxa saga, about which, in addition to other issues, we talked, together with other colleagues of the sector.

The meeting (which took place remotely, via videoconference) begins with the introduction on the nature of the meeting by Chiara Calderone from the press office of BAO Publishing and Caterina Marietti, one of the founders. The questions then began, especially related to the Hexa saga, so we advise you, if you have not yet read the work, to proceed with caution, because the whole chat could contain Spoilers on the events narrated.



After recalling the imminent release of Haxa's latest volume, we moved on to talk about the origin of the work, in particular where the idea for the work was born:

“I think it came from where all the sagas where magic is in the middle like Harry Potter or Shadow Hunters for example are born. In the end, the idea is always that magic exists, we just can't see it, which in my opinion is also linked to that period when you are a kid and you realize that magic does not exist and then you try to convince yourself that, growing up, it is not she who does not exist, but you who no longer see her. "

Haxa has within it various "contaminations" from Japanese works and the author was therefore asked what his inspirations come from the world of the Rising Sun:

"At this moment Bloodborne, the video game by From Software comes to mind, because when I like something I can put it in my works, but not as a" tap on the shoulder "to the reader to show that the 'I put in the story, but more conceptual as, for example, the infusion of consciousness through the blood that is seen in Haxa (inspired precisely by Bloodborne); I liked it and I put it there, obviously revisiting it. "

Initially, Haxa was to be developed in four volumes, which later became only three. Pellizzon explained the reason for this final choice:

“Initially, Haxa started out as a series of episodes. When you build a world, such as that of Star Wars, it exists regardless of the episodes that are told and among these episodes many coe happen to the protagonists that we do not see. But I realized, during the writing of the third volume, that “this is how it had to end”, that Sofia's story ends exactly at that moment and in that way. Then, being the "lord of the occult" who created everything, that world goes on by itself and surely there are other episodes within it, but this saga ends like this and there was therefore no need for another volume. "

Magic and technology come together within Haxa and the author was asked the reason for this choice:

“I remember reading a story by Ursula Le Guin, which should be one of the first in the collection of "The 12 cardinal points", where there is a magician who creates a dimensional portal with which he manages to get in touch with what he believes to be another magician, but who in reality is will turn out to be a scientist. Because, in reality, in the end we see scientists as people who do something extremely boring, but think about how they saw in ancient times all those who did or understood things that were obscure to us. So this merger is not that absurd for me. "

When asked why the cast of Haxa is predominantly female, Pellizzon replied as follows:

“As I am, it is quite natural for me to include female characters in my stories, however much, actually, when I start writing them, they have no sex. At first I just think they have to do a series of certain things and then, only later, they become female or male characters. Then, it can happen as in Haxa, that they all become girls, even if mainly Haxa's characters live in a world that is hostile to them, even if there is an unspoken sub-text in which it is understood that in any case society has become more inclusive. "

At a certain point in history, a sort of "blood cult" is inserted. It was asked why this choice and the reasons that see the protagonist stay out of it:

"I think that people are moved by a faith in something, or in any case by believing in something. I don't think there is anyone capable of not believing in something, be it a faith, a way of life or something else. Sophia is not that she does not believe in anything, because she is lost inside the world and is looking for her path to her, so in a sense she is looking for something to believe in, which will also lead her to do terrible things . "

The author was asked how the writing of Haxa began, where did it start:

“I started thinking about the world where the story would take place, even for several months, in which I wrote notes on what could have happened in the near future, even things that are not even narrated in the book. Then everything was built practically around Aiko, even though she was too extreme a character to make her the only protagonist, so she was joined by Sophia to compensate for them. Also because they live a sort of human relationship, under different facets: they are first friends, then they love each other, they leave each other, they hate each other, they ignore each other, but always with a very close bond. "

The characters of Haxa are all particular and well characterized and when asked if there are spin-offs on some of them, the author replied as follows:

“At the moment nothing is planned in this sense, but each character has been conceived precisely in this sense, or that each of them can have its own totally independent spin-off. There are no "secondary characters", because they are all equally important. "

The language used within Haxa is a mixture of English, Italian and Japanese and the author was asked how he arrived at this linguistic solution:

“I didn't intend, all 'start, to put a strong Japanese linguistic component, but when I created the world of Haxa it was the period in which there was the Fukushima accident and I realized that Japan has always been destroyed countless times, but they have always recovered . Also at that time, but even now in reality, there were several strange reports that the Japanese prime minister wanted to re-militarize the state and that the Japanese were down in the dumps and instead of promoting enlistment, they build Gundam, which it's an incredibly crazy thing. So, I thought that after 2035 Japan would re-militarize and be ready to handle this thing that people can do magic and that's where the anti-magic police came from.

We all speak English not because we like England, but because after the Second World War America colonized a large part of the West and so did Japan, but for the whole world. So everyone may not speak Japanese well, but especially if you live on the street you begin to use terms that combine English, which already existed, with Japanese, along with ways of doing typical of that language, such as forms of respect. hierarchical that are already present in the Japanese territory. "

Nicolò Pellizzon has always been an author of “short stories” and Haxa can be defined as one of his longest and most complex works. He was then asked if he already has some ideas for some other "long" story or if he wants to go back to basics:

"For many years I have made short stories also for anthologies and magazines, but since 2012 I have started making stories that did not go below 150 pages and Haxa is still a very long project for other cartoonists too. It came quite naturally to me because with short stories I couldn't build real characters, there are too few pages to do it. And a normal comic of about 80 pages is always not enough to deepen a character even in different parts of his life, because I was also interested in this type of growth.

The setting of the short stories always remains with me, because for me, a book is made up of different scenes, as often happens in Haxa, where there are a series of secondary events that happen in sequence. It was a job of "gluing" many small scenes into something bigger, despite the fact that there was a common thread in the plot and it was already outlined. "

It was asked if this "change of style" in the narrative was difficult. This is the author's answer:

"It was certainly difficult, but not what I thought at the beginning. More than anything, you are the one who adapts when you do a certain thing. For me, finishing the first volume was not as satisfying as with the third, I only felt strong sensations when I finished the last one and I realized that I had become a new person. "

In closing, the author was asked if, from the first draft, he had in mind the type of public his work would refer to:

“I have never ruled out that it could be read by very young boys and in the first sketches I had thought about it. Moving on, however, I didn't pay much attention to it and I thought that anyone could have read Haxa, which is a book that I did as it pleased me, but which winks slightly at the youngest, not so much for the substance though. , but for the shape. "

An hour of meeting that flew by quickly, at the end of which the usual photo was taken with the third volume of Haxa, which is available from February 25th.

If you want to buy the third volume of Haxa, you can do it simply by clicking on this link.