Afterword

Afterword

AFTERWORD

I want to see magical girls launch from battleship catapults to fight in space!!!

Thank you for bearing with me, kind readers, this is Asato Asato. I’m glad to bring you Eighty-Six—86 Alter.2 .

By the way, the is supposed to be read as “Kira ”

Just kidding, no it isn’t.

Originally, this was a short story packaged as an extra in the Eighty-Six anime Blu-rays, but when the time came to put them in print form, I fleshed out the setting and characters, so it’s worth reading, even for those who read the extra story.

In the extra story version, I didn’t have enough Republic characters to include as magical girls, and some of the Eighty-Six had to painfully be cut out. But in the print version, Mina, Matthew, Ochi, Io, Kariya, Hariz, and Shuri all got to appear, meaning that all members of the early Spearhead Squadron got to make their novel debuts!

By the way, my favorite addition to the print version was Lena’s mom going on the offensive!

Suzume Somemiya made a manga adaptation based on the extra side story version, so I recommend you read it and draw comparisons and differences with the novel version!

Now, for some commentary on the additions to this release.

• RAID Devices (magical girl wands)

These actually didn’t exist in the extra side stories. Which is to say, when I-IV approached me with staff designs for the manga version, it dawned on me that I never wrote about a magical wand! How could I forget to include that…?!

• TP Particles

Based on the English version of the Eighty-Six rendering, the cat’s nickname was TP. Which is why the particles’ sound effect is meowing. I could have just made it Transformable Particles, but I made it Transformable TP Particles for no reason other than pointless flavor.

• Séneville and Echo

Séneville was a Republic soldier in charge of developing the Juggernauts’ weapons, introduced in the side story packaged with the HG1/48 Juggernaut plastic model produced by Bandai. Echo is an anime original character, a young Republic soldier introduced as Lena’s subordinate (the girl with the bobbed hair). Echo didn’t actually have any name or defined background at the time, so her appearance in the novel is when she got her name.

• The New Chapter

Vika and his jolly siblings going up against the (anthropomorphized) Phönix. This counts as anthropomorphized, right?

In the main series, the more I wrote about the Phönix, the more obsessed it became with Shin, to the point where it started reading like a yandere . It’s kind of funny. So, this being an absurd parody, I figured let’s take the yandere vibes to the extreme. It came across as such a stalker, my editor Tabata got kind of worried about Shin.

I hope I’ll get a chance to put into print a side story that introduces the big sister Feodora soon…(sorry…)

Lastly, some thanks.

To the editors in charge of me, Tabata and Nishimura. I know I made a lot of unreasonable demands about adding characters and increasing the page count. With that in mind, the credit for having the Alter series epigraph be a parody of the main series epigraph goes to Nishimura.

To Shirabii. Finally, you got to draw characters with animal ears! The two on the cover were so cute, it just knocked me out. Doggy ears Shin and his buttony little eyes…!

To I-IV. I was impressed by how you included the Republic’s background from the main series into the San Magnolia battleship’s design. I’m glad reading about the Chaika Zhar Ptitsa gave you a good laugh.

To Somemiya. On top of the manga, you also drew the frontispieces for all the chapters! I keep going back to your manga just to see all the cute magical girls and Eighty-Six you drew. I can’t wait for Volume 2 to go on sale!

And to you, kind readers, for sticking with me. My personal policy is to always go all out, no matter what—which means that when I fool around, I go all out, too. So please, do enjoy this side story volume that had all the minutiae from the anime included. Like I wrote earlier, I recommend comparing it with the manga version and the anime!

In any case, I hope that for even a short moment, I could take you to the sea of stars occupying the dark, endless expanse. To a fleet of battleships on its endless voyage, accompanied by magical girls and their tiny Eighty-Six companions.

Music playing while writing this afterword: Piros’ Theme (.hack//Game Music Perfect Collection).