Horizon:Volume 2B Afterword

Afterword

Here is Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon 2-B.

While things had “started moving” before, I feel that they “are moving” now. From here on, they will be more actively involved with the other nations and any middle or high school readers will probably find points of overlap with their Japanese history and world history textbooks.

In this age, there was still a strong element of fantasy even in real life, but it’s interesting to see what surprising things they already had or did not yet have.

Take Spain’s bullfighting for example. In the 16th century, bullfighting was done by knights on horseback. The style that used a matador on foot came about at around the 18th century and that’s when the bullrings were built. These origins, continuations, and reforms leading to “the next style” of cultures or civilizations are linked with the changes to society, but I think this period changed quite a lot on the cultural front even for an age of reform. (I kind of feel like the reform of civilization began with “steam”. Maybe you could say fantasy is stability and steampunk is reform.)

Now for a quick chat.

“Give some kind of school memory in about five lines.”

“It’s not much of a story, but you know those small water intakes on the walls of pools? During our summer pool classes in elementary school, people were saying sticking your dick in one made you a hero, so I actually did it.”

“Are you here to troll my afterword?”

“Anyway, it turned out it was too easy, so the rule was changed to sticking it in all the holes. I had no choice, so I did so during our free time in the pool.”

“Why do you sound so proud of that fact?”

“Later, my teacher asked me why I did it. I didn’t really know, so I said, ‘Eh? You don’t know either?’ He told me to stop joking around, but I wonder what he was going to do if I’d been serious?”

He would probably have abandoned all responsibility. Anyway, the story reaches the mainland next time.

“Who was the greediest of all?”

I’ll leave you with that. The BGM was Takahashi Yukihiro’s Suteki na Hito. (Nakamori Akina’s Ophelia is a good choice too, but it’s the song I used while thinking up the plot.) I think it would work best as an ending theme.

Next up is the Musashi’s repairs at IZUMO, so look forward to that.

April 2009. A morning of persistent pollen.

-Kawakami Minoru

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