This time, the theme was the Amanojaku. Itâs a strange Youkai thatâs name appears in everyday conversation with no connection to the occult, yet even the expertsâ opinions are split as to its origin. As a symbol of lies that always answers with a lie, that position left quite an impression on me, but what do all of you think?
At first glance, this series has a lot of eccentric behavior, but itâs actually more human (for better or for worse) than the characters from my other series and it tends to move things along by saying âWell, thereâs no other way of solving thisâ.
I emphasized that this time and created a conclusion that the characters are being inevitably swept toward and a conclusion that that they struggled until the end to achieve.
The Perfect Shinobu who appeared at the end of the âworst endingâ in Side A is one possibility I pictured for Jinnai Shinobuâs perfect form. He was not born to be a hero, so if he doesnât head down a new path himself, he would be stuck with an unchanging life (while giving up on a few things). But if he steps off the path, he can tumble down to the very bottom. That was what I was trying to briefly show, but what did you think?
He intentionally made use of how Youkai like him, he mastered both technology and the occult, he even made use of a girl from his class, he threw away everything, and he ran down the path of evil to overcome that great past and reclaim his life with the one heroine, the Zashiki Warashi. I really threw everything in there, but Iâm fine with characters like that. Câmon, everyone loves ordering something with âeverything on itâ!! The story structure of the high school baseball player gradually improving over time isnât my kind of thing, but you can enjoy the story of a legendary hall-of-famerâs exploits in an entirely different way and I donât think you can really say one or the other is better. I just wish I could create a world wide enough to include both kinds of enjoyment.
And in this story, I wanted to make a conclusion that wasnât the result of pre-installed elements or talents. I wanted it to come from the strength of the charactersâ choices influencing each other.
I suppose the main centerpiece was Singer Song Liar. Automatic songwriting software isnât all that rare these days and I hear itâs looking like they might develop a program to mechanically write novels before long. As an author, I have to admit that something someone didnât work to make wouldnât be as enjoyable (although as an author, so I can continue writing them myself), but these days, you can type on a computer and have the kanji automatically chosen for you and you can instantly send the manuscript data to your editor over the internet. To the literary masters of the past, things today are probably so convenient they would skip straight past anger and just feel exasperated.
Also, if you include things from other fields (like people casually wanting to make a movie or wanting to make a dream team in baseball or soccer), then âcasually wanting to write a novelâ is probably a pretty popular desire for a lot of people. Thatâs why I added in something a few steps ahead of that in this story. If a service like that really did exist, you would all want to use it, wouldnât you?
In addition to the two-layer structure of Side A and Side B, another gimmick I used was having the characters in Side A act a little off. I casually put in things I couldnât in my other series like having a protagonist die. I just hope you found it really exciting. And if you can guess why Iâm not able to do that in my other series, you might be what is known as a âconnoisseurâ.
I give my thanks to my illustrator, Mahaya-san, and my editors, Miki-san, Onodera-san, and Anan-san. The illustrations must have been tough with so many differently-colored locations like the casino, the mountain, the airport, and the cruise ship. I appreciate it all as usual.
And I give my thanks to the readers. I think the Kechibi might have been a little rare, but what did you think? There are still a ton of Youkai I want to put in the story, so I hope you will stick with me from here on too.
And I will end this here.
The hardest part of this one was coming up with the concrete âproofâ for the end of Side B.
-Kamachi Kazuma
Liked it? Take a second to support Novels on Patreon!