Full Metal Panic! - Volume SS09 - Unavoidable Nine-Day Wonder? - Chapter Aft

Afterword

This short story collection contains edited versions of stories that ran in the November 2003 through January 2004 and March 2010 editions of Monthly Dragon Magazine, plus one bonus story.

Wait, 2003?! That’s eight years ago! How slow is this series? I’m really sorry it’s so late (sweats).

I was really at my wits’ end at the time. I’d continuously written over forty short stories, and I was reaching my limit in many ways. I felt like I just couldn’t do it anymore! That’s when I switched over to serializing the novels. I know it’s caused a lot of trouble, so I’m sorry.

The reason it felt so impossible is mainly because of the time frame compared to the novel series. Sousuke is only at Jindai High School for a nine-month period. If you just add up the number of short stories I’ve written, it means some kind of crazy nonsense is happening once a week. I just couldn’t fit it all together.

Of course, I could adopt the “Sazae-san dimension” philosophy, wherein the same yearly events keep happening over and over, but I thought that would detract from the tension of the novels. And there were things I absolutely couldn’t cover because of the novels’ timeline, like Valentine’s Day and flower viewing. And the idea of that much chaos taking place at the school... I felt my inner President Hayashimizu patting me on the shoulder and saying, “I think you’ve done enough.”

At the same time, the person I am now thinks maybe I could’ve set that all aside and gone on a little longer. So for the sake of this collection, I read excitedly back over those eight-year-old drafts, and... Hey, they’re not bad. You did a pretty good job, eight-years-ago me. I had those silly kinds of feelings.

Anyway, let’s get to the commentary for each story.

“The Hooligans’ Rule”

A survival game story. Real-life players might find this depiction a bit rude, but I hope you’ll allow it for fiction (prostrating myself).

Incidentally, it’s a common misconception, but I don’t actually own many airsoft guns. I own two pistols, a shotgun, and an AEG: four in total. I don’t have any fatigues or boots or tactical vests either. I’ve only played survival games a few times.

When you reach a certain age, even if you buy an AEG, you don’t get many chances to fire it. You buy one for X0,000 yen, pull it out of the box and admire it, charge it up, and shoot some old manga magazines in your room. That lasts about ten minutes. Then you collect all the BBs and put the gun back in the box. It’s not like you can fire it around in the park without getting reported.

So I can’t really work up the enthusiasm to buy any new guns. Sigh.

“The Local Surveyor”

In the apartment I lived in at the time, there was a cleaning lady who would say hi to me in the mornings. She worked hard to cart our trash around through the wind and the rain. It was watching her that made me think of this story. It was a building filled, for some reason, with young and beautiful women, yet they couldn’t respect basic trash etiquette. The cleaning lady seemed to have a really hard time.

The women would have men over for Christmas Eve, so I’d get annoyed and spend all night blaring Black Hawk Down or Saving Private Ryan at high volume while working. I’m not even that sorry about it.

By the way, in front of the house I live in now, when I work hard to put out my books and magazines for recycling day, there’s always a group of homeless-looking guys who ride by on bicycles and steal them before the trash collector comes. I’m not sure what to do about it. I’m positive they’re selling them to B**k-Off (sweats).

“The Adorable Thermopylae”

This is a pretty recent story, published a year ago to commemorate Dragon Magazine’s 300th issue. Apparently, the Dragon Magazine editorial staff had a slightly stupid moment where they realized the 300th issue was coming just a little while in advance. You guys must have too much on your plates! Since it was the 300th issue, I decided to go full SPAAARTAAA! with a parody of the movie 300. It seems way too many authors had the same idea, though, and reading the issue became kind of awkward.

It had been so long since I’d last written a silly short story, so it gave me a lot of time to think. I feel this kind of thing really is important. It helped me to loosen up my overly realistic way of thinking about things.

Thanks, Bonta-kun.

B: “Fumoffu!”

“Tessa’s Visit to the Grave”

This is an odyssey undertaken by Tessa and Al after the events of the novels. Thinking about it, this is Tessa’s third visit to a grave. She can be kind of an old lady sometimes.

I struggled a lot with writing an epilogue to the novels, but I thought this might do the job nicely. It’s not a story you could write a hundred pages about, but it reassures the audience that everyone’s okay.

It’s pretty easy to write ever afters for the other characters, but it’s hard to follow up with Sousuke and Kaname and the like. I can imagine what happens in the three days after the end, but there’s no way I can write that kind of drippy sweet lovey-dovey stuff. Damn. It would tick Tessa off, too.

Now, if you’re reading this book in a bookstore, you may have seen another book with Shikidouji cover art of an unfamiliar FMP-looking girl holding a submachine gun with a scowl on her face and an unfamiliar Ebikawa AS behind her. I believe the title is something like Full Metal Panic! Another.

This beautiful blonde is Adelina-san. She works as something like an AS instructor for a PMC called DOMS headquartered in California, eleven years after the events of the FMP novels—2011. What could that blue machine be?

That’s right, it’s a side story.

It’s modern day, in an FMP! world in which the Soviet Union has collapsed and the Cold War has ended, bringing things a little more in line with our own history. How have the weapons known as ASes changed in the ten years since the series? What kind of new machines have been developed? It’s kind of an “I want to play around in this sandbox” sort of thing. I think it could be really fun! There was a little foreshadowing for it in the Tessa story, too.

Now, given the title format for this short story collection, I think this will be the final one. (I’m glad I didn’t have to go to ten!) If I want to publish more short story collections, it’ll be under another scheme, like maybe “Side Arms”? At any rate, this doesn’t feel like a tearful farewell, so I hope we can all meet up, class reunion-style, soon enough.

And I plan to have a new series out at the end of the year aside from FMP! It’s chill and silly and romcom-ish. It’s being published by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko, just like these. The tentative title right now is Amagi Brilliant Park. If you happen to catch it, please read it.

See you.