Afterword
This is the eighteenth volume, and without that escape ability, the chariot would have taken the last pieces on the board.
Allow me to say my thanks first.
To Editor-in-Chief Kitamura, who no longer works at GA Bunko, thank you for everything. I am truly grateful. I will never forget what we did, creating the DanMachi series up to this eighteenth volume. To my new editor Usami, I look forward to working with you going forward. Also, I’m sorry for being so bad at letting go of the manuscript again. Thank you to the illustrator Suzuhito Yasuda, who gave this work such beautiful illustrations again. The rush I got from opening up the color pages almost knocked me off my feet. Thank you. A humble thank-you as well to everyone involved with the creation and publication of this book.
And an apology to the readers. I am truly sorry for taking over a year and a half since the release of Volume 17. The blame lies entirely with me. It is Fujino Omori’s fault that the page count more than doubled from the original estimate and that this book has gotten so thick and heavy. I really kept you all waiting.
Writing this afterword now, I can’t really remember what I was thinking while writing this book. Maybe I just don’t want to remember. Trying to think harder, wondering why I had such painful thoughts, ah, that’s right. I remembered that I always wanted to arrive at the goddess’s field of flowers. And so, I would like to remark a little on the Goddess Freya.
When I first considered writing this series, the first thing I did was research every myth I could, trying to learn more about the deities.
However, as I researched, things grew more and more chaotic.
The stories in this book are different from the ones in that book!
It was all over the place! Full of inconsistencies!
The scholars suggest that the differences in the legends passed down through various sources is due to different historical backgrounds of various peoples or religious circumstances. I didn’t understand that at the time, so I kept reading and searching the net until I could make sense of it, but even as I didn’t understand, there were certain deities who left a deep impression on me. And among them, the Goddess Freya was particularly special.
The peerless beauty targeted by friend and foe alike, licentious and uninhibited, and also a scary queen who gathered the souls of brave warriors who fell in battle. In my eyes, she seemed proud and possessed of the sort of mental fortitude to do whatever she pleased, and if anyone got mad at her, she’d just say, “So what? I’m Freya.”
However, legends also said this goddess was known to cry.
When her husband Odr left her side, she traveled far and wide searching for him, and when she couldn’t find him, she wept.
At the time, I immediately latched onto that. That had to be a lie, I thought. There was no way she was that sort of character. And so I grew more and more interested in this goddess.
A goddess of love who didn’t understand love? Or had she made light of love precisely because she was the goddess of love, because she forgot how precious love was? Or was it that what she felt toward Odr wasn’t just love, but a maiden-like infatuation?
As I thought about all that, I placed the Goddess Freya, together with the girl Syr, in a key place within this story.
There was a story from the legends involving her that I particularly liked.
On the long road back after she reunited with Odr, a great number of flowers bloomed from the earth.
I think that must surely have been a truly beautiful field of flowers.
Wanting to find that field of flowers myself, I wrote this story.
And I think I also sketched a little bit of what lay on the other side of that field of flowers.
The myths and legends are jumbled and full of inconsistencies, and there is no correct interpretation. The deities are truly outrageous and unkind. But that is precisely what makes them so interesting. There are times when they might cry like children, too—because they’re deities. That’s what I believe, at least.
With this volume, the fourth arc that began at Volume 12, the long arc that I have been calling the Fertility arc to myself, is finally at an end.
Next time we meet will be the beginning of a new chapter, the School District arc.
It will most likely be the shortest chapter in the entire series. And whatever follows will surely be a sprint.
That being said, I am sure that the volume will probably be hefty in its own right. I hope you will still pick it up when it comes out.
Thank you very much for reading this far.
Good-bye until next time.
Fujino Omori
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login