AFTERWORD

Hello! It’s been two months since we last met. I’m Mamare Touno.

Thank you very much for buying Log Horizon, Volume 3: Game’s End, Part 1. There are two parts to this one, and Log Horizon, Volume 4: Game’s End, Part 2 will be in stores next month. Log Horizon: brought to you on a monthly basis. I’m deeply indebted to everyone involved. To those of you whose allowance won’t stretch far enough, I’m really sorry! Still, as with Part 1, Part 2 is scheduled to be jam-packed with content.

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And now that I’ve role-played as a responsible adult, I’ll talk about the Bon Festival dance.

The weather here is hot one day and cool the next, but where I live, it’s almost Bon Festival dance season. I live in Katsushika Ward, one of Tokyo’s leading Shitamachi neighborhoods, and this means it’s one of the greatest Bon dance towns in the world. How amazing is it, you ask? When this season rolls around, to keep the schedule staggered, the neighborhood association schedules Bon dances every weekend, and the Tokyo Ondo song is in heavy rotation. Women’s associations that have trained hard all year for this head out to nearby neighborhood associations’ Bon dances and show their stuff in a type of diplomacy.

The streets are alive with the boom ba-boom and tak-takalak of drums, and the sounds are more a part of everyday life than at the Samba Carnivals of Rio or Asakusa.

And why are festival food stalls so absurdly alluring, anyway?

The scent of scorched sauce, the color of synthetic-looking sweeteners… It’s obvious they can’t be good for you, but I can’t get enough of ’em.

So, when I happened to run across a Bon dance venue, I e-mailed my little sister Touno a photo of yakisoba, and she replied, “Now I’m mad.” I had no idea what she was talking about, so I sent her a photo of grilled squid, and got a “You’re annoying.” Since there was no help for it, I sent a photo of a chocolate-covered banana, and her response was, “Curl up and die.” When I got carried away and sent a photo of roasted corn, I got a phone call.

If she wanted to eat some, she could have just said so.

Come to think of it, when we were kids, I told my sister, “The Bon dance food stalls are run by guys from the neighborhood association. They’re volunteering for the sole purpose of making kids happy, so every time a food stall sells something, they run a huge deficit.” Maybe because our family was in business, Young Touno was an unpleasant kid who talked about profit and loss starting in elementary school.

In connection with that, I seem to remember Little Sister Touno making a terribly sad face when she bought yakisoba that year.

Of course, that’s all in the past now.

I brought her some, and we scarfed it down messily.

It’s not that I really want to eat like a pig, but with festival fast food, the image of devouring it greedily is important. Eating that way makes you feel like you’re spending extravagantly.

After Sister Touno had eaten for a while and had a full belly, I started telling her the “Bon dance food stalls are run by guys from the neighborhood association” story, and she got super mad at me. Apparently she remembers. Tch.

Since there was no help for it, I made up random stuff: “These days, food stalls are becoming standardized, and they’re run by franchises. Food stall placement is increasingly being done electronically, and a group based in eastern Japan sends ingredients out to food stall proprietors from a central kitchen, so their gross margin ratio is several times that of regular restaurants.”

I told her this while handing her a convenience store ice cream (the expensive kind), so she was terribly impressed, and I felt kinda guilty.

Little sister, don’t say, “If I get a lot of money, maybe I’ll invest in Bon dance food stalls.” No such financial product exists.

A group run by the Charlatan Family manages franchisees? What kind of cyberpunk worldview is that? Is this Neo-Saitama? I’ll buy you as much roasted corn as you want, so spare me the business about ethanol futures.

You’re won over by things like frozen yogurt, and your big brother’s really worried that you’ll buy some silk screen thing in Akiba or somewhere and come home looking terribly pleased with yourself.

Even so, seeing her get that worked up over ice cream made me think that Little Sister Touno is really eas… I mean, really something. Although she’s dumb.

And now for the sequel.

When it happened to cross my mind and I looked into it, I discovered that the business about standardizing festival stalls and the central kitchen and IT and gross margin ratios was actually pretty close to the truth, and I’m not sure how that makes me feel. If this keeps up, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did introduce a financial product. The world’s a scary place!

(Let’s call the fact that—Would you believe it?!—the Log Horizon manga project is moving forward proof that the world is indeed a scary place.)

All right. Regardless of the modern Bon Dance economy, Log Horizon is being published in both August and September. The twins, Touya and Minori, and Serara of the Crescent Moon League appear in this volume, as do new characters like Isuzu and Rundelhaus. A party made up of these newbies works to capture a dungeon without Shiroe and the other veterans.

“The best laid plans…” In other words, the world is full of things that don’t go the way you want them to. The majority of what happens in this world doesn’t go at all the way you’d like. Since that’s true, at the very least, I’d like to make myself go the way I want me to, but there are lots of times when even my own attitude and growth and efforts don’t go as planned. I’d like people who are going through times like that, and people who’ve been through times like that, to read this. That’s the sort of hard, desperate battle Minori and the others fight in this volume.

The items listed on the character status screens at the beginning of each chapter in this volume were collected on Twitter again, in June 2011. I used items from 545454248, FroisL, IGM_masamune, Mrtyin, RyosukeKadoh, ebius1, gontan_, hige_mg, hpsuke, makiwasabi, roki_a, sig_cat and x_unizou_x. Thank you very much!! I can’t list all your names here, but I’m grateful to everyone who submitted entries. Maybe I’ll find some kind of opportunity to use this item data…

For details and the latest news, visit http://www.mamare.net. You’ll find all sorts of other non–Log Horizon Mamare Touno information there, too, as well as info on the comic version!

Finally, let me thank Shoji Masuda, who produced this book, too; Kazuhiro Hara, who drew Marielle’s swimsuit (crucial!); Mochichi Hashimoto, who designed the monsters; Tsubakiya Design, who handled the design work (and we even had them make the map!); little F_ta of the editorial department! And Ohasama, whom Touno practically considers his master when it comes to text! Thank you very much!

Now all that’s left is for you to savor this book. Bon appétit!

Mamare “Squid legs are way better than the bodies, don’t you think?” Touno

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

AUTHOR: MAMARE TOUNO

A STRANGE LIFE-FORM THAT INHABITS THE TOKYO BOKUTOU SHITAMACHI AREA. IT’S BEEN TOSSING HALF-BAKED TEXT INTO A CORNER OF THE INTERNET SINCE THE YEAR 2000 OR SO. IT’S A FULLY AUTOMATIC, TEXT-LOVING MACRO THAT EATS AND DISCHARGES TEXT. IT DEBUTED AT THE END OF 2010 WITH MAOYUU: MAOU YUUSHA (MAOYUU: DEMON KING AND HERO). LOG HORIZON IS A RESTRUCTURED VERSION OF A NOVEL THAT RAN ON THE WEBSITE SHOUSETSUKA NI NAROU (SO YOU WANT TO BE A NOVELIST).

WEBSITE: HTTP://WWW.MAMARE.NET

SUPERVISION: SHOJI MASUDA

AS A GAME DESIGNER, HE’S WORKED ON RINDA KYUUBU (RINDA CUBE) AND ORE NO SHIKABANE WO KOETE YUKE (STEP OVER MY DEAD BODY), AMONG OTHERS. ALSO ACTIVE AS A NOVELIST, HE’S RELEASED THE ONIGIRI NUEKO (ONI KILLER NUEKO) SERIES, THE HARUKA SERIES, JOHN & MARY: FUTARI HA SHOUKIN KASEGI (JOHN & MARY: BOUNTY HUNTERS), KIZUDARAKE NO BIINA (BEENA, COVERED IN WOUNDS), AND MORE. HIS LATEST EFFORT IS HIS FIRST CHILDREN’S BOOK, TOUMEI NO NEKO TO TOSHI UE NO IMOUTO (THE TRANSPARENT CAT AND THE OLDER LITTLE SISTER). HE HAS ALSO WRITTEN GEEMU DEZAIN NOU MASUDA SHINJI NO HASSOU TO WAZA (GAME DESIGN BRAIN: SHINJI MASUDA’S IDEAS AND TECHNIQUES).

TWITTER ACCOUNT: SHOJIMASUDA

ILLUSTRATION: KAZUHIRO HARA

AN ILLUSTRATOR WHO LIVES IN ZUSHI. ORIGINALLY A HOME GAME DEVELOPER. IN ADDITION TO ILLUSTRATING BOOKS, HE’S ALSO ACTIVE IN MANGA AND DESIGN. LATELY, HE’S BEEN HAVING FUN FLYING A BIOKITE WHEN HE GOES ON WALKS.

WEBSITE: HTTP://WWW.NINEFIVE95.COM/IG/