Heavy Object

Volume 10, Afterword

If you’ve been buying one volume at a time, welcome back. If you bought them all at once, welcome.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

Volume 10! I think? This series is structured so the first volume is the “starter volume” and the order of the rest doesn’t really matter, so even I sometimes forget. But that doesn’t matter as long as I know what was in them!!

The theme this time was a sixth branch of the military I made up to go after the existing five: land, sea, air, marines, and either space or cyber. I defined it as specialists in psychological warfare that thoroughly destroy a human’s inner universe. But with the morale of a small unit, the wartime propaganda of an entire nation, or the justification given to the international community, wars already deal with the human heart quite a bit. I defined the Sixth Branch as a centralization of all that which focuses on using destructive information to directly crush the enemy and destroy their organization rather than just using it to gather the most allies.

Plus, I used the terms Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, Miskatonic, Salem which a certain city was modeled after, the Outer Gods, and Nyarlathotep. With all of that, you should be able to see a certain motif. Since I was using a theme of destroying an opponent’s mind, I added in some Cthulhu stuff.

For that reason, I immediately decided to make the Miskatonic’s main cannon into eight tentacles to resemble you-know-who’s you-know-what. But that might not seem as creepy as it should to us Japanese since we eat octopuses all the time. Firing laser beams from the squirming endoscope cannons might have been a more direct way of doing it, but I followed the theme of “once it surfaces it’s all over and simply seeing it drives you mad” by having the cannons draw energy directly from the reactor and creating such great light and heat that it blinds any and all sensors.

And since I already used a deep sea Object with the Megalodiver, I made this one an evil octopus god ruling over a sea of orange glowing lava.

I think that helped give it the impact needed for a colossal weapon bringing about the end of the world, but what did you think?

The most important aspect this time was the heart. I had a lot of fun with this one by having the great war started for one man’s revenge and having the usual two idiots forced to aim their guns at each other. There may have been some scenes that felt different from the usual Heavy Object, but I’ve always wanted to do the buddy film cliché of the two protagonists parting ways and opposing each other partway through. I think the freedom to not have to center everything on the idea of “doing everything for a girl” is one of the wonderful things about this series.

Nyarlathotep is not the kind of character who can be a protagonist, but I seem to have a habit of occasionally writing a revenge story.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Nagi Ryou-san and my editors Miki-san, Onodera-san, and Anan-san. With eight Objects and a city half melted into lava, there was a lot I could write so easily but must have been hard for them. Thank you very much.

I also give my thanks to the readers. This story’s theme truly was people and not Objects. The fact that I can call that a rare thing, shows just what a miraculous balance I’ve set up with this series. I am truly thankful that you’ve given me an environment where I can spread my wings like that.

And I will end this here.

I hope this book will remain in your heart in some way.

The War Hammer might be a little too convenient...

-Kamachi Kazuma

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