Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!? - Volume 20 - Chapter Aft

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Afterword

Long time no see everyone. It’s the author, Takehaya. This marks the release of volume 20. Strictly speaking, it’s the twenty-third volume if you include all the side stories and extra content from the DVD release and whatnot. Anyway, thank you very much everyone.

Half of this volume consists of short stories from Invaders of the Rokujouma?! Hercules!, and the other half is all-new material. Unlike recent entries in the series, this volume is especially peaceful.

Truth be told, there’s always something on my mind when I’m working with this series. I’m constantly worried that the readers might get bored along the way, so I gradually change up the contents as the volumes progress. I use Doraemon as a reference for this. You get your standard fun in with the main character early, then you might have some heartfelt segments with grandma, and once everyone’s used to the characters, there’s the long dramatic piece. This looks like a proper composition at first glance, but there’s actually one really big potential problem with it. Depending on which part of the story a reader falls in love with, it might end up taking a not-so-desirable turn.

Specifically, since we’ll be entering the endgame of the main story soon, there are going to be a lot of serious developments. There’s also going to be lots of fighting. I know there are those of you who enjoy those elements, but it’s not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea. I’m sure that the readers who have supported the series from the beginning are still looking forward to the Doraemon-esque lightheartedness, but I’m also sure there are some readers who figured the story would ultimately end up developing in this direction.

So in short, I would like to write fun volumes like this every now and then, but that creates a new problem... which is maintaining consistency between the Folsaria arc and the Forthorthe arc. As you may remember from the end of volume 19, Koutarou and company already have their next big set of problems on the horizon, so it’s hard to imagine they have any downtime at this point.

So, rather than trying to incorporate volumes like these into the main story, I wanted to squeeze them in between various parts of the main story. That’s where the idea for the “Read it! HJ Bunko” stories came from. That site works well with the short stories that I wanted to write, and now they can be released like this.

So from now on, as we advance into the Forthorthe arc, volumes like this—a few shorter stories from Hercules! and some meatier original content—will be wedged in here and there. I’ll work hard to make sure everyone’s still getting the parts of the story they’re currently enjoying, so please continue to support me.

Now, in the next volume, volume 21, the Forthorthe arc will finally kick off. I’m actually wondering if I should add a subtitle to this or not. If I do, it would be called “The Golden Princess and the Blue Knight.” The Golden Princess who played a supporting role two thousand years ago would be taking the lead this time around. As the situation develops into something similar to what happened millennia in the past, a new adventure unfolds. I hope you’re looking forward to it.

That’s about all the room I have, so I’ll finish things off with my usual acknowledgements. I would like warmly thank everyone at the editorial department for their hard work in publishing this many volumes; Poco-san for always drawing me cute illustrations; and last but not least, you readers who have supported me for all this time.