Gakusen Toshi Asterisk - Volume 15 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD 
Hello there, Yuu Miyazaki here. 
I know it took a while to complete, but I’m glad to have finally been able to get the fifteenth volume of The Asterisk War out to you all. There will be spoilers below, so if you haven’t finished reading, you’ve been warned! 
I should start with a bit of an apology. Kirin is featured on the cover, but she doesn’t appear very much in this volume. I know we could have kept the illustration of her for later or put it somewhere else, but since okiura produced such wonderful artwork, I really wanted to work it in somehow… In the end, that proved difficult, though. The next volume is going to showcase everyone who didn’t play a big role this time around, Claudia and the others included, so please look forward to it! 
Now then, the Lindvolus has progressed, and we’ve finally reached the semifinals. Personally, I really enjoyed Saya’s match with Lenaty. When I first designed her character, these were the kinds of ridiculously overpowered Luxes I had in mind, so I was really happy to finally be able to show them off. 
Ayato and Julis’s decisive battle was another event that I had planned from the very beginning of the story. I suppose it’s an archetypal narrative arc to have the hero and heroine confront each other, so many readers may have expected this encounter, but even so, as the author, I’m relieved to have finally cleared this turning point. 
On the other hand, characters like Elliot have developed beyond what I had originally planned for them. Reading back on what I’ve written, it seems like bad things keep happening to Elliot one after the other, but I like to think he got some form of recognition for all his efforts this time. 
Orphelia and Sylvia’s match begins with a short story that I originally wrote as a bonus packaged alongside the anime release, but I actually really like it. I was careful not to just simply rehash battles for this volume, as I wanted to weave everything together—Ursula’s relationship with Sylvia, Julis’s relationship with Orphelia, Sylvia’s match with Neithnefer, and more—in a way that worked with the main story line. 

Since I have a few extra pages for the afterword this time around, let me touch on the match between Ayato and Fuyuka. My concept for her during development was that she would effectively participate as a team during the individual tournament, with her and her teammates each being particularly confident and powerful. I actually wanted to include more scenes to show off her martial arts techniques, but we decided to leave them out. 
I’m always worried that in a work with so many characters, there won’t be enough pages to give each of them the attention they all deserve or else the story won’t keep moving forward. But even so, I love them all and wanted to feature as much of the cast as possible…although I ended up having to tearfully cut the majority of them. 
In any event, the next volume will feature the championship match of the Lindvolus and our heroes’ full-scale confrontation with the Golden Bough Alliance. The story of Asterisk is finally reaching its climax, so please stick with us until the end. 
I’d like to thank okiura for the wonderful illustrations, from the beautiful cover art of Kirin to all the rest. The one depicting Ayato and Julis’s battle is especially impressive. 
Last but not least, I’d like to acknowledge the great help that I’ve received from so many people. 
To my editor, O, who has shouldered so much extra work; to S, for the continued help working with Fuyuka’s Kyoto dialect; to everyone in the editorial department for their help even when I drew so close to my deadlines; to all my proofreaders; and most of all, to the readers who have supported me throughout it all, I would like to express my most heartfelt thanks. I hope to see you again in the next volume. 
Yuu Miyazaki 
November 2019