BXBX NOVEL Afterword
Afterword
It’s been a while. This is Kamachi Kazuma.
This here is the Kamachi Kazuma 10th Anniversary Special Project!! I was asked to write a book that threw in as many of the series I’ve written as possible. It’s also meant as an advertisement for all of the books I’ve spent ten years writing, so if you’re interested, make sure you head out and pick up all those books!!
Anyway, I knew I had to gather together the characters from several different series, but instead of creating an original universal timeline just for this, I asked myself if one of the already existing series would fit the bill. I ultimately chose the Norse world of The Circumstances Leading to Waltraute’s Marriage. It was an untapped goldmine of convenient ideas I could use, so it’s useful when I’m having trouble.
I wrote The Circumstances Leading to Waltraute’s Marriage with the personal goal of writing short stories for Dengeki Bunko Magazine that focused on comedy instead of battles, but to be honest, I also wanted to familiarize the readers with Norse mythology because Index was about to reach that territory at the time (with the anti-Othinus stuff). I of course succeeded if you simply picked up the book, but I also think I succeeded if word got out that I was writing a story focused on Norse mythology.
Instead of the new characters, I think the main point in this novel was the chemical reactions seen when characters from different series were allowed to interact, but I also didn’t feel like writing a simple love comedy story with no real context. Since I was using The Circumstances Leading to Waltraute’s Marriage as the baseline, I decided to add in trivia about Norse mythology and the destruction of the world to show off the chemical reactions between the characters.
Hel is a wonderfully mysterious topic and one of my favorite people(?) alongside the Valkyries. That may be why about two “Hel-chans” have already appeared in Index.
Also, when you line up all these characters, you can tell that, for some reason, I find girls wearing a long, white, dress-like outfit to have a powerful mystique. A character like that already stands at the center of a few different series. …I’m not going to dig too deeply into my psychology here, so let’s back up some. But first, one more point. Heavy Object’s Princess has short hair, wears a military uniform, and has medium-sized breasts (i.e. not huge but not flat either). In other words, I intentionally took her in the opposite direction of my usual tendencies. …Her most notable feature is the special suit, but that was actually Nagi Ryo-san’s idea and she wore something like a fighter jet’s anti-G suit in the original draft. If you look at all this, you might be able to tell how I was trying to throw in everything Index did not have in order to create a second series to follow it.
I give my thanks to all the illustrators and to my editors, Miki-san, Onodera-san, and Anan-san. I don’t think I would have been able to create such a self-indulgent celebration if I simply wrote the manuscript myself. I am truly thankful that they have helped keep me going for ten years, that they gave me free rein in the name of a celebrating the tenth anniversary, and that they gave me this project.
And I also give my thanks to the readers. It is undoubtedly because all of you enjoyed it so much that I was able to produce so many different worlds and characters. I am hoping they will continue to live on in your hearts in the future, too.
And I will end this here.
Now, what to do for the twentieth anniversary?
-Kamachi Kazuma