Failing Witch:Volume2 Afterword
Afterword[edit]
This is Kamachi Kazuma.
Failing Witch now has a second volume, making it a series! Are you familiar with the Three Aspects system of magic yet? With the field trip and the flea market, I focused on events outside the prep school this time. And instead of having Yagoro and the three girls together as a single party, I split them up so the battles would play out differently from the first volume. I wanted to show the strength of the bonds that connect them even when they’re apart.
In volume 2, it’s important that Viocia, Dorothea, and Melehe’s flying has advanced even further than in volume one thanks to the modernization of their Formula Brooms at the Goddess’s Spring. …By the way, did you know that the original version of the story with the gold axe and silver axe has the god Hermes appear from the spring, not a goddess or female spirit? I really did go “ehhhh!?” in surprise when I found out.
Also, while Viocia and the others could barely handle flying on a broom at all in volume 1, now they’re using special maneuvers and attempting games like Elbow and Drop Marker that aren’t just about speed. As an author, how to adjust the balance for the famous dunce Viocia was an extreme challenge and I ended up where I did after a lot of trial and error, but what did you think? I hope she’s made progress since volume 1 but still feels like the same person.
Specializing in a single direction can also mean doing poorly in every other field. How will Viocia and the others use their newfound traits to attempt the exam? I hope you will continue to watch over their growth.
Also, this one had a ton of polite speech! I realized in volume 1 the only polite heroines were the mystery mama and the unmotivated gyaru-style instructor, which was really just being polite as an act. That must have broken something inside me, making me explode. Everyone speaks politely now! You should have seen a ton of variations on polite speech in volume 2!!
For the enemy boss, I introduced a fairly nasty one in episode 1 of volume 1, but this time it was a serious battle between teachers. That’s a subtly different structure from the 3-against-3 student battle in volume 1. Both of them care about their students, which is exactly why they can never get along. I wanted to use their conflict to dig into the nature of the protagonist and what it means to be a teacher. Convincing someone to give up can be a kindness too. You all may have had experienced that somewhere in your lives. Or had it said to you. And when it happened, did you still find yourself wanting someone who would give you encouragement? This is Dengeki Bunko, so the protagonist has to be the one shouting the nice-sounding answers. Will you chase your dreams or give up? I feel like that holds great meaning in the special environment of entrance exams. I hope you enjoyed seeing the strongest tutor in another world risking his life to follow through on the things he says. And the only kind of fictional teacher who can rival that tutor’s charm has to be a young woman!! Why not try imagining how that wedding dress teacher must have taught her students before she ended up this way.
This battle wasn’t simply solved by Yagoro as the strongest one there. Instead he used the failure of the girls’ earlier attempt as part of his magic to try and help them improve. I hope you saw his tutor side showing through in the way he made sure to boost his student’s confidence and strength like that.
I give my thanks to my illustrator Aroa-san and my editors Anan-san, Nakajima-san, and Hamamura-san. Drawing the illustrations must have been a lot of work with even more events crammed into this one than in volume 1. Thank you again.
And I give my thanks to the readers. Yagoro, Carraway Cs Prep School, Sassafras Cfa Prep School’s delinquent girls, the Squatter’s District, Sabbath Party, the Maleficium witches, the Limit Breakers, Tarou and Hanako, and the goddess. A wide variety of groups have already appeared, but which ones have tugged on your heartstrings? Nothing would delight me more than for you to have found a favorite among them. Thank you!
I will end this here.
Well? Who did you just picture in your head!? Well, well!?
-Kamachi Kazuma
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