Heavy Object

Volume 16, Afterword

And with that, this is Kamachi Kazuma!!

Heavy Object has reached its 16th entry? The theme this time was camouflage and deception. I’ve long been interested in the military application of the mimicry used by insects and marine life, so I put in all the material I had stored up.

And I finally used Legendary Maid Quensette who’s been mentioned for a while now! Now, everyone, let yourselves be confused. If I was doing this, I knew I couldn’t limit it to a single gag scene and I did my best to keep the maid thing going throughout the serious scenes too. And since I was writing a novel with a camouflage and deception theme, I knew this had to be the place for it.

From a more internal perspective, I found the series getting more extreme than I expected while I was writing Volumes 14 and 15: The Wisest Abandonment of Thought as the first two-parter for the series, so I decided to shift things back into neutral. I especially wanted to write about Quenser and Heivia’s idiocy instead of running away from it. Thanks to that, the actions in this one were more one the positive side and I kind of set aside the whole concept of good and evil seen in standard entertainment. It might have been even more psychedelic than something in Blood-Sign, another series of mine. But I did originally start this series to achieve a kind of exhilaration I never could in A Certain Magical Index which directly deals with the concepts of good and evil. Seriously using a vomit weapon, hitting your partner in the temple with an explosive, and playing rugby with the villain’s severed head in the climax. I think it’s best for those to be things I can only do in HO, but what do you think?

Don’t overlook that the Dobermans appeared as enemies in Chapter 1 and Quenser fought alongside a German Shepherd in Chapter 3, or that Quenser got all fired up about Hina Liqueurball who as struggling against a world power in Chapter 2 and yet he mercilessly attacked Woodstock who had been similarly rejected by the world powers in Chapter 3. The burned-down forest and collagen gel are also important points. Also, Woodstock was a hint at what happens to the people who actually rise up in the world using dirty tricks like Quenser and Heivia always want to do.

I already had an Object designer final boss with Sladder Honeysuckle in Volume 2: Adoption War, but Grinov Quarterdeck should have had a different flavor to him. Instead of a genius who stood out as an individual, I wanted him to be the charismatic type who absorbed people’s frustrations and spoke on their behalf. ...To put it another way, he could not have had so much influence if he was not hiding behind all those other people. You can think of that as using the crowd of people for camouflage and deception.

But while the four world powers use their wartime propaganda to twist good and evil as they see fit, they are using the concept of “justice” to hide their true plans. I think that might be the greatest and most wicked form of camouflage, but what do you think?

I give my thanks to my illustrator Nagi Ryou-san and my editors Miki-san, Anan-san, Nakajima-san, Yamamoto-san, and Mitera-san. I imagine Quensette was a tough one. The lead is always the biggest pain, so I really am sorry for all the trouble!!

I also give my thanks to the readers. With Dora Blue-Hawaii and Grinov Quarterdeck, I was trying to include a hint of bitter retaliation to keep it from being an entirely positive ending, but how did you like it? I think this too was something I couldn’t have done in my other series. I hope you enjoyed it.

And I will leave it at that.

Noooo!! I was so focused on the serious story last time I missed Halloween!!

-Kamachi Kazuma

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