Editing City Series:Volume3b Afterword (section)

==Afterword==

I’ll just start with the phone call this time.

“Oh, is this Kawakami? What is it? We already had our chat for Hong Kong’s second part, didn’t we?”

“It was censored. …And maybe this one will be too if I mention that? Oh, well.”

“Hmmm, okay. So let’s have a serious chat this time.”

“Um, I think I…played around a lot with this novel. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did.”

“You said you thought of this one like a song, didn’t you?”

“To see that, you probably need to read it a second time. I think you’ll get a different impression than the first time.”

“What about the color pages stuff you mentioned before?”

“Yes, after reading both books, make sure to reread the image story in their color pages. It should answer most of your questions…maybe.”

“Just so you know, this guy (He means me –Kawakami), played with the actual text based on the titles of the acts. Part A Act 4 plays shiritori with some of the dialogue and Part B Act 2 has a seven character line every seven lines.<ref>Only in the original text, not the translation.</ref> He said it’s because he wrote it like he was writing a song, but who would ever notice that?”

“I didn’t do anything like that in Part A’s Opening, Act 9, or Final Act or in Part B’s Act 7 or later, so don’t worry. Some of the tricks are pretty short and nonsensical, so it would probably be bad for your health to try to find them all.”

“With that kind of code in there, this has got to be one of the weirder books out there.”

“But isn’t that what we all wanted?”

What did all of you think?

Anyway, this lazy afterword is pretty long this time too.

If you read through both books, you should understand that Hong Kong is a city of music and time. Or I hope you do, anyway.

I really wrote a lot for this one. I meddled a lot in Akira and Gunmal’s designs, so they really turned out to be something amazing in both the text and illustrations. (I’m really thankful to my editor Mr. S and my illustrator Yasu-san for accepting my designs.) Am I the only one who wants to make an encyclopedia for all this someday?

Anyway, this is goodbye for Hong Kong. The story of Akira, Gunmal, and Akira’s parents is complete and I have no intention of adding anything more. If you want to know what happened in Hong Kong’s past, make sure to think on what the living characters said and did. My hints are to focus on the General and to check out the differences between the two stories in the color pages of the two books.

We’ll be leaving Hong Kong with a somewhat dry relationship, but I think that makes it a good starting point for the City Series. After all, Hong Kong’s illustrator, Yasu-san, is also designing the main characters and illustrating the next entry, Osaka (both the novel and game). This should help solidify the previously unclear structure of the City Series.

This series includes the fantastical ideas of Lives, ether, and emblems; the half century or more that has passed since London and Berlin; the history that has occurred in the meantime; and the names of different cities and people. With all that, it should feel like something of a crossover. Which cities’ histories will be closely intertwined from now on? (Well, I have enough material for about ten more stories.)

Now, then. I read back through Part B while listening to the new version of PSYS’s From The Planet With Love. (It would be the ending theme.)

“What was the difference between Double Lee and Akira.”

I also belatedly thought about that.

Now then, now then. The next city is finally in Japan! It’s Osaka! (For information on Osaka, check out the website mentioned in Part A. You’ll find everything there.)



Early November 1997. The morning after coming down with a cold.

-Kawakami Minoru

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