Afterword

Afterword

 

HI, TSUCHISE HERE. Now that we’ve got the introductions out of the way, let me explain why I wrote this little novel.

I started writing because of The Lord of the Rings, so as you can imagine, I wanted to write classic fantasy. And so, after doing some digging into what fantasy fiction meant to me, I realized that the most recent thing I’d seen that gave me that “classic fantasy” feel was the SR outfit of a certain idol who likes to dig holes for herself.

And so I made said idol’s item the shovel, the main theme of my novel.

Next up was the main protagonist. A true hero fit for a classic fantasy yarn. The first person to come to mind was a hero from my hometown of Kobe, Ichiro. He’s the truest hero I know, and his existence in and of itself feels like pure fantasy.

This led me to making the protagonist a superhuman who could probably score five points just by pumping his fist into the air.

Next, of course, came the heroine.

To make a likeable heroine, I looked into what made female characters attractive in a fantasy setting. In one certain massive RPG series, that quality is represented via “charisma.” I thought about what it means for someone to have lots of charisma, and after doing some research, landed on ecclesiastical figures. In other words, the best fantasy heroines are people with passionate religious beliefs.

Once I had the theme, protagonist, and heroine set, the last thing left to do was figure out a special move for my hero. While watching the Koshien baseball tournament that summer, I noticed some fans in the Alps seats were belting out a parody of the Space Battleship Yamato theme. You can’t have the Yamato without the Wave Motion Blast, and you can’t get more fantastical than a Wave Motion Blast that can obliterate anything and everything. Besides, we now live in an era where even holy blades can fire off beams. It made total sense that, since the shovel was stronger than a holy blade, it could fire off a stronger beam in the form of the Wave Motion Shovel Blast.

And so I made my protagonist a superhuman who wields a shovel, my heroine the priestess of a new faith, and the Wave Motion Shovel Blast the special weapon of choice in my old-school fantasy novel.

I’m sure it’s rather difficult for you, my readers, to really think of this as old-school fantasy. But to me, it is. So if this book resonates with you even slightly, I’ll be so very glad.

 

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Last but not least, I’d like to express a few words of gratitude. First and foremost, to my head editor who has taken great care of me. To Hagure Yuuki for drawing my shoveltastic heroine and protagonist. And of course, to all the readers who gave me the encouragement and motivation to keep writing back in my web novel days. I’m eternally grateful to you all.

Catch you later, folks. Yasohachi Tsuchise, signing off.