Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item5 Afterword (section)

==Afterword==

If you picked them up one at a time, welcome back. If you bought them all at once, welcome.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

Item has reached volume 5! Oh, and that’s the same as the number of people in Item if you count Hanano. This one was all about Mugino in athletic bloomers!! …No, wait. It was about the previous year’s Daihaseisai. Of course, this sports festival was from the perspective of the dark side, so it highlighted some fairly dark aspects.

It might be fun to compare this version of the Daihaseisai to the one in OT 9-10. The most obvious examples are how the fireworks show that was a symbol of salvation in the main series became a trigger of mass murder here and how the cheerleader outfit that Komoe-sensei worked so hard to wear was used as camouflage by an enemy.



This one also shined a spotlight on Takitsubo’s past. She might seem like the most sensible member of Item, but she is actually the most mysterious. And some of that was finally revealed! …But, well, with the dark side involved, the official records can be altered and power can be boosted with special equipment, leading to the creation of a lot of what you could think of as Level 4.5 espers. Makes you wonder what the ranking would be like if it was ranked by pure strength rather than applicability.

That the scariest thing this time was technology rather than esper powers was one thing I really liked while writing it. In my mind, that’s how it should be for Academy City.

Ultra-high-speed photography, a high school girl’s homemade laser, and a pain stimulant that increases the human sense of pain by 350 times. I included a lot of ridiculous weapons to grab your attention as you read the book.

I had all the crimes this time be focused on creation and erasure.

For me, the heart of crime fiction isn’t the violent scenes themselves but the moment in which something happens that shouldn’t be able to happen and the absolute rule of law is broken by cleverness and brute force. (For example, changing one’s face with plastic surgery or erasing one’s fingertips.) But what do all of you think?

Nothing would make me happier than knowing you enjoyed the contrast between the students working up a healthy sweat below the pleasant September sky at the Daihaseisai and the bloody battles on the dark side.



I give my thanks to my illustrator Nilitsu-san and to my editors Miki-san, Anan-san, Nakajima-san, and Hamamura-san. With the extreme contrast between the business of the athletic festival and the criminal atmosphere of dark sports and with sportswear both high-tech and nostalgic, the illustrations must have been difficult. Thank you yet again.

And I give thanks to the readers. Yes, that’s right. Athletic bloomers are still in use in this world. Which means our Earth will be flooded with them once technology advances 20 or 30 years!! 

…A more obvious example of this issue is the folding cellphones. This is a work of fiction, so if I don’t want something to disappear, I can keep it alive in a more advanced form. I just hope all of you are willing to accept it! Thank you for continuing to read these books!!



And I will end this here.



I had the most fun writing the chase with the cheerleader.

-Kamachi Kazuma

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