Afterword

Hello there. I was telling the story like normal, and it ended up being the bulkiest volume yet. (Day By Day was longer, but it was split into two volumes.) We have more characters now, and they’re all acting independently, so that eats up a lot of word count. The upcoming stuff is going to be tricky, too...

If I have to give an MVP award to anyone this time around, I would have to give it to old man Courtney (runner-up: Al). He really brightened the mood for Sousuke and Lemon, who were in a dark place with the loss of Nami. I feel like Courtney picked up the “yin” role that Kaname usually serves. I didn’t go into it deeply, but he’s a career soldier who served in Vietnam, and he’s probably seen a lot of tragedy. I like that he uses a philosophical view and optimism to keep from dwelling on that, and I hope I become a bullshit-spouting old fart just like him some day.

This is Courtney’s first appearance in the novels, so if you’re not familiar with him, please look for “The Old Soldiers’ Fugue” in the short story collection Seven Uncertain Tools? There’s a lot of troublesome old men in that one, and unfortunately, Tessa takes the brunt of their attention.

Speaking of Tessa, it feels like she has a bomb strapped to her somewhere. What’s going to happen next? I worry.

Sousuke seems to have gotten over one hump, but he won’t exactly have a smooth road ahead, given who he’s facing now. There might be more trouble in the wings. Kaname seems to have steeled her resolve, but she’s due for more trouble, as well.

Still, when Kaname and Sousuke get together, they just seem to take over the story. Kaname is a mysterious character who sometimes even defies the will of her writer.

I was a little hard on Leonard this time, but... that accident came to me when I was thinking of what to do with him next. Thinking about the location of his injury, it’s not good.

Lastly, we finally debuted the new machine, the ARX-8, and after a lot of thinking, I named it the Laevatein. The one who coined that name was Takemoto-san, the director of Fumoffu and TSR. I had him give me everything he could think of, and I liked the sound of it, so after a year of stressing I went with this one. I’m grateful to him for doing that for me.

The machine’s designer was Ebikawa-san, who is also the designer of the anime-version Arbalest. The exchange I wrote about in One Man Force was basically a joke! It can’t really have those specs! I had them do a lot of rough sketches and thought hard on a few factors, and we settled on “an evolution of the basic Arbalest.” It’s bulked up in a lot of places to look much more powerful. It has a ponytail from the Codarls, too. To separate the Laevatein’s design from the Arbalest, I went with a white base with points of red. The concept was burning fire!

Other famous second-generation robots with red added in include the L-Gaim Mk.2 and the Bilbine, and that’s the image I wanted to convey. I hear the color illustrations in Dragon Magazine were well received, so I’m extra grateful to Ebikawa-san.

Now, for my new machine’s debut, I wanted its first fight to be glorious. A long time ago, there was a robot anime where the hero’s long-awaited new machine finally arrived, but all it did was shoot a few beams and chase the bad guys away. My youthful heart found that incredibly disappointing, so since I was debuting the Laevatein, I really wanted it to go nuts. It does have a lot of weak points, so that should help us maintain the balance going forward, but I wanted it to have a pretty good showing.

And the Eligore Ases—piloted by Fowler and the others—that debuted this volume are what the red Venom that appeared in the anime is supposed to be. A basic Codarl type would have that ponytail in the outer appearance. Sorry it’s gotten so annoying.

As for my plans for the future, Make My Day will be the last volume serialized in Monthly Dragon Magazine. From now on we’re strictly straight-to-novel. I wish I could submit another volume by the first half of ’07, but I still have a lot to plan out, so I’m not sure if I can... (sweats.) When you’re this far into a long-running series, you end up thinking about so much stuff, but for some reason it’s hard to write these afterwords nonetheless. As for what Sousuke and the others will do next, and how the story will reach its finale, I want to convey that in the story itself.

My own life situation has changed a lot since I wrote volume one, too. I realized that the elementary schoolers who sent me fan letters in the series’ early days might be out there with jobs now, and it freaked me out a little. All around me, people will get married, have kids, and be born themselves. Life keeps moving, as they say. I can’t continue to act like I did at my debut, just gliding along. I want to finish this up before it gets to year eleven. I have a vision of how I want the ending to go, so I hope you’ll keep cheering for Sousuke and his friends.

Thanks to everyone in my life. I’m afraid I’ve caused a lot of trouble for Shikidouji-san again, but I can’t find the words to thank you for all the amazing illustrations you’ve given me again. I hope we can keep working together.

And to S-san, my editor. Thank you for all your help for so long, and congratulations. I’m sure it’s going to keep being hard, but I pray for your full recovery after a nice rest.

See you for another round of Sousuke in all kinds of hell.