Editing Kakegurui Trip Fulltext (section)

=Afterwords=
<center>wiki chapter navigation:<br>
<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| [[#Final Chapter|previous]]
| [[#Table of contents|index]]
| [[#Credits|next]]
|-
|}
</noinclude></center>
==Afterword by the author==

Hello.
<br><br>
I'm Hikaru Muno and I'm Homura Kawamoto's younger brother. I have written several published books, including some on job hunting.<br>
I've had a background influence on Kakegurui. I've helped my brother brainstorm ideas for it, even before the manga had begun.
<br><br>
You could say I had clear instructions on how to handle the characters from the manga that appear in this novel. My brother gave me a detailed explanation on how they should react to things and what makes them tick.<br>
Now that I have written Kakegurui Trip, I've come to realize the truth of my brother's words when he said that the characters come to life on their own. Once you submerge yourself in their life and way of thinking, they start to write themselves. 
<br><br>
Nevertheless, I thought a lot about the characters to make sure they stayed true to themselves.<br>
Kirari had to be bone chillingly frightening. Ryota had to be good and honest to a fault. The interactions between Mary and Yumeko had to be heartwarming in the right way. The characters that only have a background role like Midari and Sayaka needed to be completely recognizable as well.
<br><br>
I have to admit, I struggled with bringing the original characters of this novel to life with the same passion and realism. I revised them more than once. Ace went from just a cheesy womanizer to someone with a backstory and a serious attitude towards poker. Kifune went from just the antagonist to someone with a history of sacrifice who lives in a state of denial about some things. Hana went from just an unfortunate soul to someone who finds the future she wants to cling to. 
<br><br>
I understood all characters need a vision of what they think they should be working towards. A reason for existence, a life's passion, a raison d'être. It's in the catchphrase of Kakegurui and I felt I needed to explore it more for my original characters. A novel allows for more psychological depth, after all. 
<br><br>
Everything that has been happening in the manga has been on school grounds until now. I hope you found the departure from the traditional setting in Kakegurui Trip refreshing. It allowed me to do something a bit more wild; a poker tournament that not only impacts everyone involved but also determines the future of a whole island.<br>
I hope you enjoyed how I brought the characters to life outside of their familiar surroundings. 
<br><br>
I want to thank everyone at Square Enix who gave me the opportunity to write this novel. In particular, lead editor Kubota (窪田編集長) and Sasaki-sama (佐々木様), Yumoto-sama (湯本様), and Miyamoto-sama (宮本様) from the editorial department who gave me many insightful opinions and encouragement.<br>
A big thanks to Tōru Naomura-sama who found the time to draw the wonderful illustrations for this novel, despite his busy schedule.<br>
Also, a shout-out to everyone who has been reading and supporting Kakegurui. My brother always says he can do 99% of what he does because of the people supporting him, so thank you all very much. I'm pretty sure he is going to make the manga even more interesting in the future, so please keep up the support.
<br><br>
And of course, I want to thank my brother for making all of this possible.
<br><br>
Hikaru Muno
<br><br>

==Afterword by the translator==

The events of Kakegurui Trip don't quite fit the timeline of the manga and should be seen an a parallel universe story. You can sort of make it fit as an intermission before the start of the Election story arc in volume 7, but this comes with inconsistencies.
<br><br>
Here is a longer explanation of the word play in chapter 1: The school name Hyakkaou seems to mean 'the king of a hundred flowers' and the island name Ryouran something like 'stirring in disorder'. When you take them together and disregard the 'king' part, they mean something like 'beauty pageant'. However, this can be used more abstractly so it doesn't have to be woman, the thing they excel in doesn't have to be beauty and it doesn't have to be literately a hundred of them. So, 'power meet', 'high level summit' or 'a large gathering of people of excellence' can all be translation candidates, depending on context.
<br><br>
In the original text, Kifune is addressed by her staff and Kirari with a honorifics construction that is descriptive of her job; 'Kifune-manager'. I thought it was best for her staff to call her 'boss' and for Kirari to not use any name politeness at all for anyone. Kirari rolls like that in the official manga translation, so I thought she should do that here as well.
<br><br>
In both the novel and the manga, some name politeness rules are used by characters when speaking their inner monologue. I thought this was a bit too alien for the western reader and scrapped it. It just doesn't seem right to use politeness inside your own head.
<br><br>
If you are irked by my choice to not capitalize playing card and suit names; Ace made me do it so blame him. It felt better if there was some distinction between the card and the guy.
<br><br>
The poker variant the writer had in mind had jokers included and had no split pots. Las Vegas tournament poker has no jokers and does have split pots. However, nothing happens in the novel that would warrant elaborating on these things so I just avoided mentioning anything related to them.<br>
A split pot is avoided by having the rules say one suit is stronger than the other. A high card king of spades defeats a high card king of clubs, for example.
<br><br>
The Japanese language approaches many things differently, especially the poetic embellishments. Because of this, I had to take liberties in my attempt to make the novel pleasant to read in English. Please don't assume this is a line-by-line accurate translation. I had to pour some of my own soul into it as well.
<br><br>
I changed some minor details to strengthen the cohesion of the novel. I think the writer did a banger of a job bringing the characters to life, but there were logical inconsistencies. Those that has an easy fix, I fixed. Those that would require a more heavy-handed fix, I left in.
<br><br>
I hope I managed to deliver you something that made your day better. If you have questions, you may be able to hit me up on the Reddit or the Kakegurui Discord.
<br><br>
I want to thank everyone on Discord who helped me out. Also, those who had started an abandoned translation before were an inspiration. It had occurred to me that it would be easier to make a new attempt now, because the OCR and translation bots had improved dramatically in the last couple of years. 
<br><br>
gggvandyk
<br><br>