Volume 3, Afterword
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(Postscript Open ??/?? ??:??)
Afterword
Here we are at Volume 3.
This is Kamachi Kazuma.
I was worried that having the White Queen as a temporary ally in Volume 2 had weakened her position as the final boss a little, so this time I focused on making a story that shifted things back into neutral. No matter how cute, love struck, useful, or head-over-heels for her brother she is, I feel like the Queen has to have that depthless insanity that “seems to widen every pore on one’s body just from seeing it”.
Similarly, I went all out dragging Shiroyama Kyousuke down during the ending. However, destroying a part of your body to prove your resolve has long been a part of Japanese culture. The most obvious would be Seppuku/Harakiri, but there is also the Yubikiri-Genman performed in the red light districts and the priests who gouged out one of their eyes which led to the stories of the Hitotsume-Kozou.
The special summon this time was a single hair. That might seem surprising, but deified hair is not all that rare. Cultures around the world think that women’s hair holds special power, so you have the Norse goddess Sif whose blonde hair was wheat or the Greek Gorgons whose hair was said to be countless snakes. Nuns hide their hair because it is said to hold a devilish charm that leads men astray and witches will show off their hair for the same reason. Take that far enough and the hair itself can be raised up as its own unique existence. For example, Japan has a shrine that uses hair as the worshipped divine item. You can find more detailed information by searching for Asaoke no Ke.
I want the Queen to be someone who can infect the world with the tip of a fingernail or a single hair. I want her to be able to toy with the most powerful protagonist and throw him into despair.
The theme this time was the soul. At first glance, this might seem similar to last time’s theme of life. But as you can tell after reading both, this was quite different because it focused on the usage and processing of the soul.
There are stories all over the world of placing the souls of the dead in something to speak with them, but that just shows how attractive that power is.
The ultimate form of that is the ability to place a soul in a doll (or to make a remote connection with someone else’s soul). A Japanese person probably thinks of the Ushi no Koku Mairi first of all, but the folklore of Western witchcraft includes methods of sealing blood, a fingernail, a hair, etc. in a wax doll and stabbing pins in it to cast a deadly curse on the oblivious target. It seems that humans around the world tend to have the same ideas, so I used that for the Girl’s Backdoor.
I bet a lot of you thought the Girl’s Backdoor sounds extremely vulgar, but if you see what the legends say people asked of the higher beings they summoned, you’ll find an awful lot of surprisingly vulgar things. You should find some obvious examples if you look into what you can do if you summon each of Solomon’s 72 demons. The benefits of summoning them include things like becoming smarter, finding buried treasure, and becoming popular with the opposite sex. (But aren’t you already pretty smart if you can use these summoning techniques?) If I was going to take the theme of summoning seriously without avoiding any aspect, I felt I had to use a theme that included the more vulgar side of things, so I went all out with it here.
That brings me to the Anthill Project which mass-produces vessels who are talent-based and in short supply. If it had succeeded, it would have destroyed the balance between the three major powers, but one important point is that the Meinokawa Sisters of Freedom casually achieved this very goal with almost no real risk. I enjoy creating a twisted and intertwined balance of power rather than a simple pyramid-like inflation of power.
Also, I touched a bit on Shiroyama Kyousuke’s “family”. …This is only a personal view, but when I see a love comedy where the parents are on overseas business trips for no real reason and a non-blood related sister moves in instead, I can’t help but think, “What, did you send the unneeded parent cards to the sacrifice corner to summon the ultimate cute girl card from your deck?” So if the parents aren’t necessary, I have a habit of building that fact into the fundamental setting…and this time that reason was quite heavy.
The enemy character of Biondetta was at Freedom’s 900 level just like Kyousuke and I had her go on a rampage as a revenge assistant who “helps” people in the opposite way from him. As you know if you read to the end, she was an unquestionably awful person, but did you notice that a portion of that actually applies to Kyousuke as well?
Biondetta was only helping fulfill people’s revenge because it makes her feel better than anything else, but Kyousuke saves people for similar reasons. If he fully respected the heroines’ positions, his usual “goodbye scene” would not exist. (Of course, it would also be terrible if a heroine he had saved for nothing in return ended up crossing her arms and haughtily ordering him to fight for her to the bitter end.)
It isn’t that they are unaware of this contradiction. They are aware of it, but they continue on and turn it into a success. That may be the true tragedy of Kyousuke and Biondetta. (Simply put, they have no one to scold them or stop them. In other words, they have no one they can truly call family.) Granting her client’s wish but taking something unexpected from them truly feels like a demon’s contract.
Biondetta could have been a maid, but I made her a waitress instead because I thought it was a nice way of showing her stance as a revenge assistant: I will bring you whatever you might order, but it is up to you to look after your health and wallet.
Also, the White Queen herself is not part of the Fifteen Siblings Project. The story behind her calling him “brother” is a little more complicated than that, so I hope you can try to just imagine it for now.
I give my thanks to my illustrator Ikawa Waki-san and my editors Miki-san, Onodera-san, and Anan-san. This one started with a midair battle over the Pacific and ended with a naval battle on top of a giant stingray, so I doubt the locations were easy. Thank you very much for going along with all of that.
I also give my thanks to the readers. Now I have finished my presentations on Government, Illegal, and Freedom. But there are still plenty of strange terms to go: the Round Table, the Fifteen Siblings Project, and (most importantly) the Toy Dream Company. I hope you will continue reading.
And I will end this here.
More Materials have shown up now, so maybe a valiant warrior will show up and attempt to analyze the language…
-Kamachi Kazuma
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