Accel World - Volume 16 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

Thank you so much for reading Accel World 16: Snow White’s Slumber. I had a hazy image of the scene in this volume where Snow White, aka Shirayukihime, appears back when I was writing the first volume, Kuroyukihime’s Return. Volume 1 was published in February 2009, but I submitted it for the fifteenth Dengeki Novel Prize with a deadline of April of the previous year, so I actually started writing it in the fall of 2007. In other words (counting on my fingers)…that was more than six years ago at the moment when I am writing this afterword in December 2013, hmm?

When I was writing the manuscript for the first volume, although I imagined where the story would end up, I had neither the will nor the intention to continue writing it up to that point, so I am deeply grateful that I was finally able to make it to that scene after the undeserved honor of the prize, having the book published by Dengeki Bunko, being supported by so many readers, and telling this tale for six years and sixteen volumes. Accel World is truly a blessed work. I cannot begin to express my gratitude to everyone who’s supported me.

…Blah blah blah—I write like it’s the last book, but that is absolutely not the case. (*sweats*) And just when the great Shirayukihime/Snow White finally makes an appearance, she basically shows her face and then immediately leaves. And there’s still tons of mysteries, all kinds of problems that have just piled up…

The truth is, this isn’t the time to get all maudlin, is it? The ISS kit arc that was at last resolved in this volume started in Volume 11, which came out in April 2012, so I’ve had all of you spending a full year and a half with those black eyeballs. Frighteningly, in the calendar in the story, Volume 11 begins on June 23, 2047, and Volume 16 begins on June 30, so time has only advanced a week over six volumes…And Volume 6, when the Armor of Catastrophe arc started, was on the sixteenth of the same month! No wonder it seemed like it was always raining!

That said, I sincerely apologize for the fact that although I announced in the afterword of Volume 14 that the arc would end in the next book, it clearly did not—and that the afterword of Volume 15 ended up being two Accel Lunch comics. We’ve finally reached a place where we can take a breath, but the story will still continue. A brighter story in which there is no Armor or eyeballs…or that’s the plan anyway. At the very least, I think the rainy season will be over!

Thank you to my illustrator, HIMA, who I always cause problems for as my schedule delays become chronic, and my editors, Miki and Tsuchiya! And all you readers, I look forward to our sixth year together!

Reki Kawahara

On a certain day in December 2013