HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Afterword

Afterword

To everyone who has picked up this book: welcome.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

Five years after my debut, I am introducing a new series. This one is about ultra large weapons. Mechs that are not humanoid robots is my personal preference, but don’t get me wrong; I have no real problem with the humanoid type. I made this choice because I felt more irregularly shaped machines would be more intimidating in this kind of story.

At 50 meters and 100,000 tons, they are quite large.

Their weight is probably about the same as two Nimitz class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. If you add in the weight of the weapons, it’s probably even more than that.

Having things like that going through careful martial arts-esque footwork at speeds of 200-500 kph may seem a bit ridiculous, but even existing weapons can do some pretty unbelievable things.

As I said before, even with how huge the Objects are, they are still only the size of two nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. When those nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are constructed, ridiculously huge cranes are used to lift the parts and numerous pillars are used to support its weight on land. With the smaller 8000 ton Aegis ships, they have large vehicles that can hold and move the entire thing. I find the creative power of humans to be amazing, but what do you all think?

Anyway, I wanted to give priority to a sense of exhilaration with this book and I used various techniques to make things more exciting. For example, I made the main character a student rather than a soldier to make him a little easier to identify with and I purposefully showed as little of the thoughts and feelings of the enemies as I could.

Most likely, many of you found some of the things the main characters said a little odd. If you think carefully, I think you will find that is partially because they showed relatively little difference in how they treated the lives of enemies and allies. I see that as the war on the macro scale playing tricks on the human mind on the micro scale. I will be glad if you simply enjoyed the story and even more so if you thought this showed just how twisted a thing war is.

I give thanks to my editor Miki-san and my illustrator Nagi Ryou. I feel this was probably quite a taxing novel to illustrate for. I am truly thankful they stuck with me to the end.

I also thank all of the readers who have read this far. Thank you so much for picking up this first novel of a new series to see if it is any good.

By the way, there is not just the one way of destroying the Objects Quenser and Heivia fought this time. If you have time, it might be fun to try to find a method they did not use.

And so, I think I will end this here.

I lay down my pen while hoping this book will remain in your heart in some way.

Is it just me or were the main characters the truly unbelievable ones this time?

-Kamachi Kazuma