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Afterword from Zun Nice to meet you, Zun here. Compiled from several serial publications, changed into an internet serialization, and somehow continuing through the jumps from publisher to publisher, the mysterious short story collection known as "Curiosities of Lotus Asia" has finally reached book format. It even includes the story I contributed to a doujinshi. This is Kourindou's first novel. I wrote this story to progress with the main plot of the games, but there may have been parts that were difficult to understand while it was being serialized. Even if it never crossed the readers' minds, I greatly enjoyed writing this story. While re-reading CoLA's first story, I noticed I set up a lot of ideas. I guess it's best for me to deal with the finer details of the world through short stories. The individual stories don't particularly feel like they're part of one big, overarching plot, and likewise, the final chapter doesn't particularly have a feeling of definitive closure; at the heart of CoLA is how the humans of Gensokyo handle their surroundings, and it could continue even now just the same. It was written as though it could be picked up again at any time, and it seems like I would if given the chance. The fact is that having a character who is bad at (physical) combat is annoying, and having a great number of characters in the same place is troublesome. It begins to be like making fun of argumentative people. It's hard to like that kind of story, but people can relate to a character like Rinnosuke, so writing the stories becomes more enjoyable. This is because it's Rinnosuke's character not to think about other people. Rinnosuke started writing a book in the 17th chapter, "The Price of Paper in Luoyang." At the exact time, talks about a standalone book were looking favorable, and a first volume was actually planned. Those with keen senses might have picked up on hints of Rinnosuke's book being included with the first volume. However, just before it was released, the publisher went bankrupt, but Ascii Mediaworks picked up the series, and I was somehow able to continue on. But because of that, we were back to square one as far as a book went. This naturally delayed the release quite a bit. Well, it was a miracle that I was able to continue the story regardless, so I'm fairly certain a book will happen sooner or later. By the way, Rinnosuke's supposed vast storage of knowledge comes almost entirely out of thin air; indeed, he doesn't know nearly as much as he thinks he does. If you read closely, you'll notice a lot of wild, meta ideas, but I think that's supposed to be the joke. - Zun, Team Shanghai Alice (I get the feeling there are a lot of winter scenes in CoLA for some reason.) |