Afterword
Afterword
Kazuma Kamachi here.
The main theme of this work was that of an “exceedingly dirty game of financial deals.” Insider trading, tricks, coercion, price fixing, anything goes! In that sense, Tokonatsu City was a kind of thought experiment to explore what would happen if we took away all the rules we have now.
I also injected a number of other elements into the mix for variety, from online games, to virtual or cryptocurrencies, to a society run by AI, to the pseudo-magical Legacies, to the Magistelli, who served many roles such as navigator, love interest, partner, and antagonist.
The concept of bringing in AI to cut down on labor costs is something we are already seeing in real life. It’s something people have previously seen or read in the news. And even before the term AI became widespread, it was common practice to have computer programs execute this kind of high-frequency trading automatically.
From this, I picked out two ideas: one of a world that could eliminate human work if it wanted to but where people still wondered if that was the right thing to do, and one of a global economy where just under half the transactions are machine-to-machine, edging ever closer to dominating more than 50 percent of the market.
Incidentally, even this idea of machine-to-machine trading, with no humans involved, is not rare by any means among the businesses and investment firms of today.
Like big data, which has quickly become a part of our daily lives, these terms are fun to look up, but at the same time, one can’t help but feel it’s not something to laugh about.
Anyway, let’s stop focusing on the gloomy and depressing stuff and look at each chapter in turn.
Chapter 1
I had already explored a typical day-in-the-life adventure in the prologue, so for the first chapter, I decided to get right to it and have the main character be betrayed by his allies. Also, by strictly defining the “Magic” of the Legacies, I hoped to create a slightly different kind of feeling from your typical shoot-out. For the auction, maybe it would have been more emotional if it hadn’t been the Legacy up for sale but Midori Hekireki herself, perhaps because she had information on the whereabouts of Criminal AO?
Speaking of Midori, for this story I didn’t want to have a female character who was 100 percent always on Kaname’s side. Lily-Kiska, Midori, Ayame, Tselika… Each of them fights alongside him and against him, depending on the scene. Are they friends or enemies? I think that’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself. But I think there’s some beauty in the single delicate thread uniting the characters that could be severed at any time. You can’t get that with a character who’s always a safe haven for the protagonist.
Chapter 2
This is the part of the story that felt the most like a video game: the fight where they were jumping from rooftop to rooftop. I think the important thing to note in this chapter is the fact that Kaname, who has always been about protecting Ayame and Midori, shows no mercy toward Lily-Kiska, someone he recognized as an enemy from the very beginning. You’ll probably notice if you go back and read it, but even in the very first chapter where her buttons fly off, he pretty much doesn’t react to her at all.
This is also where we start to see our first glances of the real world outside the game. I made a few efforts here and there to paint a very hollow, empty world that contrasted with the lively and fulfilling world of Money (Game) Master. For example, by not using Kaname’s and Ayame’s real names after they returned to the real world, I hoped to give the impression that they were quite unsociable and very plain.
Chapter 3
And now, we get to the identity of the true antagonist. This was quite a dynamic chapter, with focus shifting first from Ayame to Tselika and finally to the game world itself. In order to overturn the feeling of the game world, I kept the revelations coming, from the truth of the virtual-reality technology to the existence of demons.
I suppose some people might end the story right after the “Now choose” part, giving no closure at all. But I wanted to follow up on that thread, to see what happened to Criminal AO, and I wanted to see Tselika saved, so that’s why the epilogue ended up the way it did.
There were many experimental aspects to this book as well, most of which were the company names. As you can probably tell, I am trapped in the vocabulary of my other works. Initially, I thought it would be fun to have financial data like numbers and graphs appear on the vehicles and Magistelli’s clothing like sponsors at a racing event. Then I thought, if I was basing the appearance off company logos, why not actually have them advertise businesses there? That was how the final design came about in my mind. It was just a little bit of fun that turned out to actually be functional.
And then there’s the word Magistellus, a pretty pivotal term in this work. I tried to make them the perfect partners to have in the virtual finance world, a means of communicating with the automated trading program, with a pretty face, who can carry out all sorts of miscellaneous tasks.
The name was originally given to a succubus (or incubus) who made a deal with a human and could control them at will to some extent. While they weren’t that powerful, it might turn out that they’re more well-known than those guys from the Seven Deadly Sins (come to think of it, I’m not sure I could remember the demons’ names off the top of my head without resorting to books or using the internet). Anyway, I thought that was an interesting little tidbit, so I stole the idea.
Perhaps familiar is a more common name for a demon under a contract, but while that refers to any kind of demon, Magistellus applies only to incubi and succubi. Besides, my mind was set on these Magistelli. I think this stellus part reminds me of “stealth,” which isn’t quite the same thing, but it really struck a chord with me.
Succubus comes from a word meaning to lie beneath, and I think this adds a bit of spice to the mix. It gives a glimpse into what Tselika is really like when she’s not her usual hyperactive self. I wanted to portray her as someone who tempts, guides, and influences the protagonist to act how she wishes. I hope I brought that across.
I’d like to thank Mahaya, who did the illustrations, and my colleagues Miki, Onodera, Anan, Nakajima, Yamamoto, and Mitera. Thank you all as always! …Those people are insane; they went and made full designs not only for Ag Wolves, who already were little more than names on a page, but even all their Magistelli! I imagine it’s quite hard to illustrate a car-chase gunfight on a single page, so I want to thank everybody who helped.
And last but not least, thank you to all my readers. I hope you enjoyed the ride, even if the humble protagonist this time was somewhat untraditional.
I think I’ll leave it here for now.
Perhaps I could have had Kaname, Midori, Criminal AO, and Ayame all team up?
Kazuma Kamachi
