Afterword

Hullo! Light novelist Sakaki here, presenting you with Volume 6 of Outbreak Company: The Power of Moe.

Most of you who have picked up this book will probably have noticed this from the “obi,” but it’s been announced (as of May 2013) that following the manga adaptation, there’s going to be an Outbreak Company anime!

Myusel! Petralka! Minori! Elvia! And also, I guess (What do you mean, you guess?!) Shinichi, Brooke, Matoba, the LAV, and more will all move and talk for real! Well, the LAV won’t talk.

Actually, this is the seventh anime I’m going to be involved in, and the fifth to be adapted from one of my works. Yet every time, I’m so deeply moved by it. This is the second time I was present at the announcement of one of these anime, and combined with the fact that this is going to be the first show based on something from the Kodansha Lanobe line, I admit to being a little anxious about how it’s going to go.

On that note, I’m going to keep my hands off the scripting and such this time and just focus on writing the novels. I think they’ll have my head if I don’t. The schedule this year is really tight... (What, just this year?)

The upshot is, while I might get to watch the episodes a little earlier than my readers, I’ll be just as excited as all of you to see the finished product.

Okay, but what about this book?

Just as I teased in the afterword to the last volume, I’ve introduced Hikaru as a sort of rival (?) for Shinichi.

At first there were a lot of things about him that I found somewhat difficult to write, but when I got to work with him a second time (I mean when I did the revisions), I found I had managed to connect with him. I’ll leave it to you to read the book and see exactly what kind of character he is—but from the perspective of the work, he’s in something of a precarious position, so I’ll be curious to see how readers respond to him.

In this volume, I did a somewhat extreme take on trading cards and ero games, but I promise there’s no malice behind it. I think going overboard on anything, not just cards or X-rated games, can lead to arguments and problems; this book just happened to focus on those two things.

All right, then. If everything goes as planned, you should see the next volume in two or three months, where we’ll be taking a brief break from the main story for a collection of vignettes. I think the cover will finally feature you-know-who. Maybe.

I’ll see you next time!

Ichiro Sakaki

31 March 2013