Ka-ren

Ka-ren is a barbarian born in the northern lands of Howaru. She grew up in a tribe of hunter-collectors, where she learned to survive in the harsh conditions of the Northern Howaran wild. When she was a teenager, and while she was hunting with Ton-tah, her tribe was attacked by an unknown military faction. When Ka-ren and Ton-tah returned to the village, they found that every last one of its inhabitants had been massacred. From that day, Ka-ren has been wandering the lands of Howaru, in search of adventure.

Nanase Ohkawa describes her as follows:

“Ka-ren is definitely not a hero. Howaru is too harsh a place for anybody to be heroic. She is an anti-hero. Her main goal is surviving in a world where this is not easy. That survival instinct seems to contrast with her disposition to engage in dangerous enterprises. She is a survivalist due to her natural impulse and upbringing, but part of her is actually looking forward to get killed in battle. The **** of her family and tribe affects her deeper than she would admit, being the origin not only of her recklessness, but also her cynicism and general lack of empathy (that is very blatant in the way she treats Ton-tah)”.

“Although Ka-ren borrows personality traits from a variety of sources (from Don Quixote to Mad Max and from the wandering ronins of the Japanese tradition to the lonely gunslingers of the Spaghetti Westerns), most of her character is an exaggerated version of Conan”.

About Ka-ren’s appearance, artist Satsuki Igarashi commented:

“Physically, she is an attractive blonde with big breasts and a very athletic body. The choice of her hair color was one of our first decisions. Conan’s long black hair is one of his more recognizable characteristics. Later on, when Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith created Red Sonja, they made her a redhead. That was a strike of genius. If Sonja had had black hair, it would have been much more obvious that she was just a female version of Conan; but her red hair gave her an iconic look, that made her stand out and differentiate herself from the original. Since black and red were already taken, we thought that having long blond hair was the best way to make Ka-ren aesthetically different from Conan and Sonja”.

“This matched perfectly with the parodic tone of the manga. If you look at her, Ka-ren looks a lot like Barbie. Only, she is more violent and rude than a thousand vikings combined. She is Barbie, if she had grown up in a world like Conan’s, and that had made her ultra tough. We thought that this was funny”.

About her relationship with Ton-tah, Tsubaki Nekoi declared:

“Ka-ren always treats Ton-tah terribly. This illustrates the status of the **** population in Howaru, and the general level of cruelty and barbarism of that society. But, most importantly, it tells us a lot about Ka-ren. She is not a very likable person. She might be the protagonist, but she is certainly not a hero in the traditional sense of someone who acts in a heroic way. Also, her constant abuses towards Ton-tah are partly a façade and partly her way of dealing with her own insecurities. Ka-ren knows that Ton-tah is her only friend, her lover and the only person who would give her life for her. For a lonely spirit like her, this means a lot more than she would care to admit. Precisely for this reason, Ka-ren feels the need to constantly belittle, humiliate and mistreat Ton-tah: because she is ashamed of having feelings for a ****”.