Strike the Blood - Volume 15 - Chapter Aft

Afterword 

So there you have it, Strike the Blood , Vol. 15 has finally hit store shelves. 

As the final chapter of Part One, this volume is a bit long. Honestly, I was rather relieved to have stuffed it all in a single volume. Because of this, writing it was rather rough (as far as endurance goes), but if that made it more fun, I’m glad. 

This volume finally allowed me to provide an answer to the question from the final episode of the Strike the Blood anime, “Why does Itogami Island look different?” It’s a little thing, but personally, it always bugged me. Now I feel a sense of liberation, like a burden has been lifted from my shoulders. 

Besides that, there are plenty of things I’d like to talk about, but destroying all these good feelings is kind of meh , so I’ll save the insider stories and so forth for another time. Also, as for what was happening with the characters not addressed during this volume, I think some special attention in the next volumes should make up for it. 

So this series has reached the fifteenth installment. Looking back on it all, it feels like it happened in the blink of an eye, and there were plenty of times when I felt like I wasn’t writing enough. Reflecting upon the pace of my writing, I’d love to have pumped out the pages a little faster, and there are still numerous scenes I drew up that are waiting to be used. I don’t know what form they’ll take, but if the opportunity should arise, I think I’d like to actively write extra events that take place outside the main story. 

Just as I said in the previous volume’s afterword, this volume ends Part One of the Dengeki Bunko version of Strike the Blood . To everyone who stuck with me all this way, I truly, truly thank you very much. 

Happily, projects related to Strike the Blood are still ongoing, so I believe you will be seeing new adventures for Kojou and Yukina in a variety of forms going forward. 

In turn, I want to prepare for new developments on the novel side of things, but nothing has been scheduled for this as of yet. I’ll try to make sure it isn’t too long of a wait. 

By all means, please give me your best regards from here on. 

To Manyako, the illustrator, thank you very much once again. The fifteenth volume was quite long, and even under these harsh conditions, you whipped up yet another superb cover illustration—Yukina by herself, bound by blue ribbon—for which I am truly grateful. To TATE, who’s handling the comic version, let me borrow this space to offer you my thanks. The heroines were cute, and the combat scenes were terrific, and in every volume I was awestruck by how complete everything felt. Finally, to everyone involved in the publication of this book, and to all of you who have read it, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. 

I hope to see you all again. 

Gakuto Mikumo