Failing Witch:Volume1 Afterword
Afterword[edit]
This is Kamachi Kazuma.
The theme this time is witchcraft! Although I went with the term Maleficium instead. When writing a battle story, it takes a lot of courage to introduce flight. Once one person can fly, then everyone has to fly. I had been hesitant to introduce it before because I was afraid of that kind of power inflation, but then I realized I could turn the idea on its head by creating an entire world of only people who can fly. Then I threw in all my ideas for that. After that, I asked myself who are the cutest kind of people who can fly and decided the answer was witches on their brooms. The next best idea would maybe be succubi? Harpies and sirens are also winged girls, but strangely they don’t seem as cute to me. Why is that???
When I was thinking about what my idea of a witch was, I came up with all sorts of things, from adorable texts to disturbing rituals. But if these ideas came to mind right away, I figured they all had to be correct and I decided it would be fun to have a world that combines all those things.
And so this story is about witchcraft. It is a purely borrowed power gained by praying to another being and joining with them, so I made it so humans have a life and lifeforce but they can’t directly convert that into magic power.
The magicians in my other series call on power from within them or from the void to place it inside a talisman and consume it or fuse with a being known as a god to reach that being’s level or at least control them from the human side. But whether they are priestesses of an ancient god or a participant in the Black Mass, the witches of this book serve a higher being and borrow their power. Thus, gaining too much power to control is baked into the setting.
But isn’t it strange that you don’t see anyone serving a higher being in all the fairy tale stories? I thought maybe a monotheistic culture didn’t want the kind old woman who helps out the lonely heroine to be a servant of (a being known as) a demon in stories meant for small children, but you don’t see the wicked witches serving a higher being either. Hmm, there must be more to this…
To enjoy this on a deeper level, it might be fun to find all the differences between this book and Index. Or you could imagine what the “other world” of Earth must be like based on the reports mentioning things like the United States collapsing.
Since there is a witchcraft system based on a goddess with three aspects, I combined that idea with the idea of a three phase motor and wondered if the witches could use that to fly. I quite like that the Formula Broom handles open up like a three blade propeller when unsealed. I initially pictured it like opening up a passenger plane’s giant engine, but I knew it would be better if it fit the Three Aspects idea!
The story is set in the gray life of a once-failed student. I started with the ideas of a prep school and a tutor, added in the swords and sorcery fantasy and the Halloween costumes, and then made it pop more by increasing the girl content. I wanted to write a strange place that was nothing like an ordinary school and does nothing to promote a healthy mindset. I wanted to depict the greedy and somehow inspiring side of exam students who have failed once already and thus pursue their goal all the harder. That mindset where they’re willing to die if it will let them do well on the upcoming practice exam. This is the result of everything I did to create something new by combining witch flight techniques with the overheated mindset only found during entrance exam season. I hope you enjoyed it.
Once the entrance exams are over, you realize they weren’t really all that big a deal. This book is only a piece of entertainment. The world is a big place, so don’t push yourself too hard!
I give my thanks to my illustrator Aroa-san and my editors Miki-san, Anan-san, Nakajima-san, Hamamura-san, and Matsuura-san. I was picturing another world full of Halloween witches, but that must have required giving each and every person in the crowd their own individual look. Thanks so much!
And I give my thanks to the readers. Brooms, cauldrons, transformations, hats – what first comes to mind when you think of witches? I hope this world of witches rather than magicians worked to expand the horizons of your imagination.
And this time I also need to give my thanks to the Golden Dawn Magic Compendium 3: The Flying Scroll – Secrets of Advanced Magic. (Francis King Volume, Translated by Eguchi Koretaka, Supervising Editor: Akiba Tsutomu, Published by Kokusho Kankokai).
I will end this here.
From fairy tale to horror, what kind of witches do all of you like?
-Kamachi Kazuma
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