Volu 2, Afterword
If you’ve been buying one volu at a ti, welco back. If you bought them all at once, welco.
This is Kamachi Kazuma.
It’s Christmas day! In GT1, I got a lot of ordinary people involved to take a look back at the scale of the city and how its law enforcent works, so for GT2, I had the powerful characters push away the ordinary people to focus on a battle between the elites.
The #3 joined the battle in the previous volu too, but once the #5 shows up, you really see more political power and concern for their surroundings, don’t you? I had her repeatedly change clothing between her school uniform, the nurse uniform, the Santa costu, and the Mitsuari Suit(?), but that was to lighten the overall mood that could have been pretty heavy when done straight, especially as a continuation of the last volu. Lighten up! The one flaw is that using Shokuhou a lot doesn’t leave Shirai Kuroko any room to appear. Hopefully I can find so way to let them coexist.
Shokuhou shines most when Kamijou is around. She might think he ruined everything and she might be angry with him, but that queen’s body still rejoices. I am still learning more about how to use Shokuhou who is basically visiting semi-permanently from Railgun, but I think her cutest point is how she might seem to be cleverly manipulating everyone else, but she fails to notice how she herself is being manipulated. (We never made a joint rule about this or anything, but thinking back, the original novels, the various manga, and the ani all have a lot of scenes of that queen being beaten up and losing badly, don’t they?) She can satisfy both the doms and the subs depending on which side of her you’re looking at, so we’ve really raised one hell of a girl here.
Mikoto and Shokuhou can never seem to get along, but I think their biggest difference in the original novels is whether or not they’re willing to get help from an enemy without any reconciliation. (When it cos to controlling your allies without any explanation, Mikoto is actually in a gray zone herself since she has a tendency to not tell anyone what’s happening and run off to fight on her own, aning she decides for her allies that they will not participate. It seems to that she’s so sensitive to having her friends controlled because she subconsciously fears that will boorang back and criticize her own actions.) In that sense, the rules of the battle change when Shokuhou is around. You might be able to see their distinct fighting styles if you compare GT1 and GT2.
Also, Kamijou’s way of fighting by tearing down the barriers between enemy and ally is different again from both Mikoto and Shokuhou’s styles. He rushes to the scene on his own much like Mikoto, but he’s been doing that for ages without feeling the slightest twinge of guilt about it, so that might be where the difference cos in.
The setting this ti was that District 7 hospital.
This may be the first ti that place has been the primary setting in the main series. It isn’t the sa as his dorm or school, but I wrote the manuscript while hoping it could feel like a place where Kamijou could relax. Did you notice how weird Kamijou is for feeling like the hospital is his ho away from ho?
And this ti I had her use her right hand and him use magic. You could call it the shocking “Wait, did he just use magic!?” counterattack. When I looked back, I realized St. Germain was one of the few magicians who had left the story without being saved, so I made sure to rcilessly save him this ti.
What remains at Kamijou Touma’s core once everything else has been stripped away?
In a city where your esper power determines your worth and in a world where everyone focuses entirely on his right hand’s special power, I thought it would be most astonishing for him to display the ordinary power to bring people together. That just seems like who Kamijou Touma has to be. …And being so sure about that is another upside to being able to write this series for so long.
I give my thanks to my illustrator Haimura-san and to my editors Miki-san, Anan-san, Nakajima-san, and Hamamura-san. Christmas ended up lasting more than one volu, so I probably used up a lot of what had been stockpiled for the occasion. Thank you so much for going along with my nonsense every single ti.
And I give my thanks to the readers. It is up to all of you to decide whether Kamijou Touma was successful or unsuccessful this ti. It took so doing to work out a way to explain the fragntary information on that era-hopping magician St. Germain, but I ended up really liking him. I hope he will remain sowhere in your hearts. Thank you so much for reading this far!
It is ti to close the pages for now while praying that the pages of the next book will be opened.
And I lay my pen down for now.
Writing about flavors is hard too, but it’s so easy to forget about the winter cold if you aren’t careful.
-Kamachi Kazuma
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