BXBX NOVEL Volume 6, Afterword
Volume 6, Afterword
If you bought one volume at a time, welcome back. If you bought all six at once, welcome.
This is Kamachi Kazuma.
Boo Boo has reached its 6th volume too. The final obstacle has finally shown itself. The enemy this time was the Iberian Orcs. Their powerful bodies functioned as a great advantage for the protagonists since the very first volume, but now they are appearing en masse as enemies.
I tried to include all the settings, characters, and gadgets that had appeared before. I hope I made use of what I had built up.
What is strength?
With the title what it is, I made some twists to that concept and then approached the theme anew here. I tried to fill the manuscript with depictions of many different kinds of strength: in combat, as a person, in facing someone you love, and so on. Chapter 4 (which was not included in the table of contents) is the most striking example because I took a hard turn from the previous three chapters so I could present something that surpassed simple physical strength.
What did you think of Boo Boo’s and Beatrice’s choices?
Whether it is good or evil, I think the true strongest is something that does not allow external factors to determine its actions and that can turn white into black or black into white. If you look back at their actions with that in mind, you might see things from a different angle. We are talking about something that creates a happy ending on its own terms and forces things to be a happy ending no matter how much harm is done. If I have a chance to do a self-crossover, would he be rebuked or would he do the rebuking? I’ve made another character that would be fun to have in a clash between the different protagonists.
For the entire Boo Boo series, I had decided to just do what I wanted without worrying about the power inflation.
What kind of drama could be found when a true strongest clashed with another one?
That is a part of the reason there were so many terms that point to a strongest being: the Level Cappers, the Break News, a Demon Lord, the Sage, the ultimate weapon, a Cold War hero, the Underworld Lord, the three royal families, and the Iberian Orcs. Instead of finding a new theme with each volume, I let the power inflation continue to rise with more types of strongest in each new volume. That sounds simple, but would be impossible with the normal battle story logic. And attempting something outside the norm is a lot of fun. Even with so many different strongests divided into their own categories, it isn’t normal to not have a clear hierarchy where one of them stands at the absolute peak. Also, most of the main characters from Earth went by their handle names and did not have their real names revealed. I personally liked the odd gap of placing the Thousand Dragon and Sutriona in the same category of monster, but what was your favorite strongest? You can always have your story feature multiple heroines as something of a carpet bombing to ensure everyone will like one of them, but this was a test to include multiple strongests to see what kind of catharsis tugs at your heartstrings. I hope you found at least one strongest that was perfect for you.
There were so many strongests roaming that world, but I also wanted the setting itself to be relatively carefree. Of course, that was partially because I wanted that idyllic landscape to hide the secrets related to Abyss and Ground’s Nir’s name hidden at the bottom of the Labyrinth, but it had more to do with the strong impression of the characters themselves. From the beginning, I had the idea of the Break News that cause disasters and create battlefields wherever they go, so I thought of them as a part of the landscape. If you have a 1000m dragon flying around the sky and causing downpours, things will seem strange enough already.
Also, as the series went on, I secretly upgraded Boo Boo’s cooking and I intentionally worked the costumes into the plot starting with the second volume. Making those little themes for myself really sticks out to me. For Blood-Sign, I created an entire special language to create a difference between Earth and the other world, but I focused on a special ecosystem for this series. That said, the names were decided by the humans who visited that other world, so some things seem a bit mismatched. ...I think that’s just how it is for adventurers who irresponsibly set foot in a foreign land, but what did all of you think?
I give my thanks to my illustrator Mahaya-san and my editors Miki-san, Onodera-san, Anan-san, Nakajima-san, Kishigami-san, Mitera-san, and Yamamoto-san. I decided to try my hand at fantasy because I thought it would look exciting, but once I got started, I realized it had to be an incredible burden on the illustrator!! To be honest, my guess is there were a lot of characters and Shining Weapons that would have been difficult for the readers to picture without the illustrations. Thank you so very much for supporting the Boo Boo world which included just about everything: humans, nonhumans, and machines. I think the most incredible part was that piglet Boo Boo was actually cute. Even though he’s a pig. Again, he’s a pig, but the visual was cute enough that you could see why Beatrice fell for him. I can only say that I’m in awe.
And I give my thanks to the readers. This series was about the charm of the word “strongest”, but I hope you all had a chance to rethink that topic. A strongest that has grown in only one direction is a somehow twisted thing. And even if that strongest covers every direction, having no weaknesses will also make you twisted. If you were immersed in that double-edged sword of strange charm and risk, then I could ask for nothing more.
And I will end this here.
Abyss died in her debut volume. She supposedly died...but she’s done a hell of a lot since!!
-Kamachi Kazuma