Blonde Sunrise
is a webcomic made by Mana, starting on January 24, 2011, updating every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with the occasional month of daily updates.
In the city of Creston many hunters have been gathered together to eliminate all monstrous creatures. Leonard Derrin is one of the hunters within these hunting units, and despite having only a year of experience under his belt, he has managed to become very successful.
His luck takes a turn for the worse however when he has a chance encounter with a mischievous lycan girl, Daine Lunas. With just one bite, Leonard's life is changed forever. He must now free himself from his new master's curse or else risk losing his job or, worse, his life. However, he finds that things have become way more complicated than he thought.
This webcomic provides examples of:
- Animal Motifs: The lycans are likened to, of course, wolves.
- Arch-Enemy: While all the witches are considered to be hostile to lycans, the Fire Witch in particular is considered the enemy of all lycan-kind due to her powers over one of their only true weaknesses. She has wiped out entire packs of lycans over the past few decades, including Vince and his father's original pack.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership:
- The heir to the lycan queen gains her position by defeating every other eligible female lycan in a battle royale. Elaine is unusual for being strong enough to gain the position at a very young age, though some other lycans Leonard meets make the claim that she only won because those stronger than her were eliminated sooner.
- Zigzagged in the case of lycan kings. The heir to the lycan king is chosen from birth by default, as it's believed that any male child of the king and queen are worthy of the position simply by virtue of who they're descended from.note However, they can be challenged for their position by another lycan if they're perceived as unworthy for any reason, with the price of losing being banishment from their territory.
- Aura Vision: The Four Witches have the ability to perceive souls, which they mainly use to identify each other or see if someone's suitable for possession.
- Badass Normal: Hunters normally lack any sort of powers, but go toe to toe with all manner of monster.
- Berserk Button: The Earth Witch's is being underestimated, as she flies into a rage and attacks when Daine says she's not scared of her.
- Body Horror: When we see the flashback in which Cyran loses his eye to a basilisk while saving Leonard's life, we see the basilisk's fang pierce the roof of Cyran's skull and push out his eye in gory detail.
- Character Title: Blonde Sunrise refers to Daine's lycan name.
- Classical Elements Ensemble: The four witches, who control earth, wind, water, and fire. The Earth and Wind Witches are met over the course of the story (With the former getting killed by the latter), the Water Witch was killed several years beforehand, and the Fire Witch remains at large.
- Covered in Scars: Flint's body is covered in burn scars due to his run-in with the fire witch who killed every other lycan and his and Vince's old pack, which he normally keeps under his clothing.
- Creatures by Many Other Names: Werewolves are more commonly referred to as lycans.
- Dark and Troubled Past:
- Leonard's mother disappeared, his father died due to being unable to pay for treatment at the hospital after getting sick, his one friend Isaac disappeared on him without mentioning why (Unbeknownst to Leonard at the time, he was forced to leave for losing the King's Bout to Vince), and the reason he's in the hunting units in the first place was that the alternative was getting executed for murder which it's hinted that he might not have actually committed.
- Due to being a one-eyed Lycan, Daine was treated like a pariah by her pack, and even by her own parents. She used to be friends with Vince due to his similar transformation troubles, but then he tried to kill her out of the belief that the reason he was having said troubles was because Nebeous viewed their relationship poorly. Up until Kane and Elaine's family virtually adopted her, she had no one to turn to.
- Cyran's mother died from complications after the birth of his younger sister, his father turned neglectful out of the belief that she was responsible for her mother's death, and later he was the sole survivor of a fire that claimed both of their lives that people suspect him of starting. Much like Leonard, he's a pariah among his fellow hunters.
- Raymond's home country of Terra had all its inhabitants turned into trees by a curse, a fate he only escaped because he happened to have ran away from home.
- Distinguishing Mark: Lycan packs tend to share similar traits while in human form:
- The lycans in Daine's pack are mostly blondes, redheads, or strawberry blondes with light green eyes.
- Vince and his father Flint are marked as not originally being from Daine's pack by being brunettes with dark green eyes.
- Dramatic Irony: When Leonard talks to Daine about feeling like Michelle and Cyran don't fully trust him, the biggest irony is that Cyran's bond with Leonard was the main thing that stopped him from killing Leonard the moment he found out about the curse, while Michelle has been keeping the secret of his lycan curse safe this whole time without his knowledge.
- Fantastic Racism: Initially, like most humans, Leonard thinks of lycans as little more than monsters. As he spends more time around them he starts to change his mind.
- Fate Worse than Death: Although initially left ambiguous, Hadia does something to Xavier that she says 'won't give him the pleasure of death', and tells him to 'rot in Styx'.
- Foreshadowing: Vince and his father look different from the other lycans we see, being brunettes with dark green eyes in human form as opposed to the other lycans being blondes, redheads, and strawberry blondes with light green eyes. This is due to them not being from the same pack originally, as different lycan packs have different shared characteristics while in human form.
- Fur Against Fang: Defied; while vampires exist alongside lycans, the groups don't appear to have any particular animosity between themselves.
- Half-Human Hybrid:
- Paul Shein's mother was the deceased Water Witch.
- Vince's transformation issues are heavily implied to be because he's actually a half-human hybrid, with his mother being Michelle's mother, making them half-siblings.
- Hammerspace: Born Lycans can store their clothes in a sort of "soul pocket" when they transform, something not shared by omegas.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Leonard is decently tall, but Daine is either at or slightly under five feet.
- Nepotism: Downplayed in that Michelle does have legitimate skill, but Hadia Grim insinuates to Cyran that the only reason she's Unit IV's captain instead of him is that her father is head of Creston's hunting units.
- Lodged-Blade Recycling: When Xavier has Michelle by the hair and is preparing to shoot her dead, Michelle reluctantly pulls the knife she's been stabbed in the abdomen with out, and uses it to cut her hair off before the gun goes off right where her head was a couple seconds ago. While it does save her life in the immediate term, it also makes the wound bleed out faster.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Blonde Sunrise's version of a basilisk has a snake's head and neck on a dragon's body.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Vince's lycan name is revealed to be "Shaded Terror", and he's a violent person who attacks Leonard multiple times unprovoked.
- Never Learned to Read: Due to growing up in poverty and having an ill father who could barely read himself, Leonard is illiterate. It's not until Daine decides to help him that Leonard can even so much as read his own name.
- Our Banshees Are Louder: Xavier's claim to fame was killing Yasmin Baylee, the Banshee of Lavadale who went on a murder spree that claimed the lives of 21 people, including his parents, and Aisha Obsidian, the original captain of Unit II. Or so we think, as it later turns out Xavier framed the banshee for the murder of all those people before killing her, and Aisha managed to fake her death.
- Our Souls Are Different:
- Lycans and most other monsters have black souls, while angels and witches have white souls. Humans have colorless souls, which is what allows both groups to influence them. They also differ in shape depending on species.
- Leonard is unusual for being able to be possessed despite having a white soul, but that's implied to be a result of his mixed parentage.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Lycans can shift between a full quadrupedal wolf form and a human form as a gift from their god, and come in three types:
- Beta lycans are born lycans and have to undertake three primary rituals in order to become alpha lycans after acquiring an omega lycan.
- Omega lycans are humans turned lycan via bite, but they can't transform voluntarily and have to listen to every order their progenitor lycan makes. As a result, they're at the bottom of lycan society.
- Poor Communication Kills: The inability of Unit IV to trust one another is what leads to Michelle deciding to confront Xavier almost entirely on her own because she knows Leonard doesn't trust her, and getting critically injured by a knife to her abdomen on top of getting shot. Had she not been working with Neil, who was shadowing her and managed to intervene in time, she would've been yet another of Xavier's victims.
- Red Baron:
- Daine is known as the "One-Eyed Lycan" since she's incapable of transforming both of her eyes. While in human form she has her left eye covered by her bangs, and in lycan form it switches to her right eye.
- Leonard is known as "The Bloody Demon" due to being accused of murder and nearly executed back when his red hair was much longer.
- Secret-Keeper:
- Cyran keeps both Leonard's curse and his illiteracy secret.
- Upon learning about his past, Daine tells Leonard that she'll keep his involvement in Orion's death between them, even though unbeknownst to him, Orion was her father. This continues even after Leonard finds out the truth.
- Secret Secret-Keeper:
- Hadia Grim has known since first seeing Leonard during his Bloody Demon days that something was weird about his soul, but keeps it to herself. This is likely because revealing it would unveil her own identity as the Wind Witch.
- Michelle was, in fact, in the Unit IV office the day Leonard's curse was openly discussed by her door. She continues to fudge his parole check-ins and claim no leads in the lycan case, despite her resentment that Leonard didn't see fit to trust her about his curse.
- It's revealed that Ericka suspected that Hadia was a witch prior to her death, but never brought it up.
- Schizo Tech: Downplayed. Creston and its surrounding areas have a tech level mostly comparable to the mid to late 20th Century, but they appear to lack computers, the Internet, or television. Melee weapons are used alongside modern firearms by hunters.
- Screw Destiny: Despite the fact that his seer spirit tells him that Leonard is fated to kill him while in lycan form, Cyran still chooses to help him get free of his curse while trying to avoid killing him.
- Silver Has Mystic Powers: Leonard attempts to stab Daine with a silver knife when they first fight, but she manages to bite and curse him before he can.
- Social Darwinist: While not inherently evil as most humans believe, lycan society is based on strength, with only the strongest allowed to be king and queen, and so called one-eyed lycans like Daine are treated poorly because their inability to completely change their shape is seen as an inferior evolutionary throwback and an affront to their god Nebeous.
- Spiteful Spit: Vince tends to spit at Leonard's face more or less every time they meet, due to the latter being a hunter, if physical violence is off the table.
- Squishy Wizard: Despite their great power, the witches are only about as physically tough as their human hosts, and can be just as easily killed like one. The Earth Witch, for instance, is easily felled by getting shot in the head.
- Stinky Flower: The wolfsbane flower is noted to smell particularly nasty to lycans.
- Synchronization: The curse process binds the souls of both omega and alpha/beta lycan together, so killing the latter will kill both.
- This Was His True Form: Lycans return to their original wolf form upon death, which is how Daine figures out that the state knew that Zachary Orion was a lycan, and why Leonard got an offer to become a hunter in exchange for not getting hanged.
- Token Good Teammate: Downplayed in that she's still kinda mean, but Hadia Grim, despite actually being the Wind Witch, is capable of caring about other beings besides herself and mourns the fact that every time she gets close to a mortal they suffer a terrible end.
- Van Helsing Hate Crimes: The hunters will hunt and kill monsters regardless of their actual threat to humans.
- Veganopia: Inverted, born lycans are obligate carnivores even in human form, and the non-meat foods found in their villages are mainly eaten by the omegas.
- Young and in Charge: Vince and Elaine normally wouldn't be doing their king and queen duties so early, but Orion's death has forced them to step up sooner than they're supposed to.
- Weak to Fire: While lycans are normally incredibly hard to even hurt, let alone kill, they are very weak to fire. This is why out of all the witches they fear the Fire Witch the most, as she has powers over one of their few weaknesses.
