Log Horizon - Volume 8 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD 
To those I haven’t seen in a while, welcome back. To those I’ve never met, it’s great to meet you. This is Mamare Touno. 
The book you’re holding is the September release, which went pretty much the way we initially planned—I think. I’d like to put out one more volume before the year’s over. The first season of the Log Horizon anime was still going strong when it ended its run, and as your messages of support echoed like the sound of the surf, I serialized the material equivalent to Volume 8. 
Did you check out the anime? Cool (?) Shiroe, cute Akatsuki, dependable Naotsugu, and the dashing Captain! The staff drew each character with a lot of love, and I’m really grateful. The younger group—Minori, Touya, Isuzu, Rundelhaus, and Serara—was especially adorable. 
Thank you very much for buying Log Horizon, Vol. 8: The Larks Take Flight. The five members of the younger group play an active role in the main story, and they’re joined by that shady lady from Minami and the new character Roe2. It’s a road movie with all sorts of participating characters. I’d decided that Log Horizon, Vol. 8 would be a story about the younger group quite a while back, but the story took this shape and ended the way it did thanks to the love from the members of the anime staff. 
Setting that aside, let’s go to the second-term heroine. This is a story about Ms. F?ta, and no matter how firmly she denies it, I intend to keep backing that hisssss. 
As a matter of fact, Ms. F?ta has been looking limp these days. Ms. F?ta, who’s always cheerful and peppy, is limp. She’s working too much, you see. Well, she’s got two or three properties that are being turned into anime, so there’s no help for that. No matter how capable she is, she can’t create shadow clones of herself. There are anime script meetings almost every week, plus postrecording sessions once a week; if she goes to all of them, that’s four anime-related jobs a week, and then there’re the writers and illustrators and designers and editor meetings and sales meetings, so she’s going to die. She’ll die. Editorzania death work. 
That’s how things are for us at the moment, and when we get together, there’s only one subject we talk about: 
“I want a vacation.” 
“I want a vacation.” 
“I want to go to a hot spring.” 
“I want to go to Okinawa.” 
“The beach is pretty nice.” (*Hara joins in.) 
“It is, huh?” 
“Everyone’s dumb. That ’n’ half-naked.” 
“I want to sleep.” 
All three of us seem like something out of Hamburger Hill, so when we meet, we drink tea and shoot the breeze for half a day (all the while doing our very best to ignore the words “Get to work”). 
Come to think of it, I was talking with Ms. F?ta the other day: “Time goes by so quickly lately, and I just can’t seem to remember things.” “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.” So I asked her, “By the way, Ms. F?ta, what did you do over the past six months?” and she said, “I went to America! (*for a work-related event).” 
“Anywhere else, besides America?” 
“……I went to America!” 

“Did you do any other work?” 
“Hissss…? Hissss!” (Jumps.) 
She ducked the question. 
All my young readers are sensible people, so I doubt you have any real expectations for adults, but as you suspected, this is about all grown-ups are. On the other hand, even if you’re this half-baked, apparently you can still get by. A life lived at a full sprint will easily get you slapped with a “bad work practices” certification, so it’s important to take little breaks. That’s the secret to holding on to your humanity. Parenthetically, I personally have almost no memories of the past six months. Hissss. 
And with that report on recent events, this has been Log Horizon, Vol. 8. 
I’m getting on in years, so my student days are in the distant past, but even so, I did spend them in a peaceful district far from the heart of the city. I wasn’t a great student, but I do remember hanging out in the club room after school with my friends and telling really dumb tall tales for hours on end. 
Volume 6 was a story about women’s friendship, while Volume 7 was about men’s friendship. This one, Volume 8, is a story about coed friendship. I want the people living through that now to think, “Oh, right, that’s right, that’s how it is. Dumb stuff,” and I’d like readers for whom those days are past to smile in nostalgia. 
I think youth is a time when you’re either frustrated by your own helplessness—worried about what you’re going to become, and are crushed by that pain and unease—or you don’t think at all and just get through it on enthusiasm and momentum. 
(That said, it’s not as if you “become somebody” when you’re an adult. You think, “It doesn’t matter how far I go; there’s no finish line for ‘becoming somebody.’ In other words, the only thing to do is do the work that’s in front of me,” and give up—or accept it—and that state is called being an adult.) 
I think it’s a tough time to have dreams. If you set the wrong goal and fail to reach it, it’s embarrassing, and there’s no telling what other people will say to you. It’s also a time when just having a huge dream is enough to get people telling you, “You really think you can do a thing like that? That’s the sort of thing that a handful of people with talent are supposed to aim for.” Still, although the world is a harsh place, on the other hand, it’s also a pretty random one. The fact that I’m managing to get by is proof. As I wrote The Larks Take Flight, I was thinking, I can’t irresponsibly glorify dreams, but I don’t want to run down the people who are getting ready to take that first step right now, either. 
When they’re acknowledging boys and girls, adults are generally tepid. You can’t openly praise them, but I’ve done awkward stuff like that myself and there’s no help for it. It’s when you’re thinking, You can do it! and sneaking glances at them, even as you pretend to ignore them that things are good… So I think it’s fine for boys and girls to sponge meals off middle-aged men and women. It’s a fair transfer of income. 
I don’t ordinarily do these, but I’m including acknowledgments this time. 
I had the story in Log Horizon, Vol. 8—a story about having a fixed number of songs—planned when I began the serial, but it’s thanks to the anime that it ended up with the structure it has now. In part, I was influenced by the brightness and optimism of the voice actors for the younger group. Ms. Matsui’s Isuzu is bound to be a font of girlish emotions on the screen. Mr. Kakihara’s Rundelhaus will watch over her warmly. In that case, Ms. Tamura’s Minori, Mr. Yamashita’s Touya and Ms. Kuno’s Serara are sure to use their innate power to create the story. Because I believed that, I was able to really come to grips with this story as I wrote it. 
I’d also like to thank one other person: Yasuharu Takanashi, the composer. I used him as a model for Isuzu’s dad, who appears in the story. His passion for music, his stoicism, his cheerfulness. On the pretext of interviewing him, I pestered him for all sorts of stories, and he taught me about the difficulties and joys of making music, not as a hobby or a job, but as a way of life. 
Mr. Takanashi’s team created forty-two pieces of music for season one of the Log Horizon anime. Since season two is beginning, they’re making even more music for us. The world of Log Horizon has been given new music. That’s world-class magic, and I’m sure the readers of Log Horizon will recognize it for what it is! Thank you very much. 
This time as well, the items listed on the character status screens at the beginning of each chapter were collected on Twitter. I used items from @5_case, @aiirorakko, @az_val, @Dateryu, @dharma0430, @dok_0015, @gubei_muho, @hidukikou, @hige_mg, @hpsuke, @iron007dd22, @kazamasa504, @kaze_syuki, @makiwasabi, @nyamato299, @root4253, @shisei_ssi, @ssyamono, @telutelute, @touya1818, @usui_takao, and @yutask. Thank you very much!! I can’t list all your names here, but I’m grateful to everyone who submitted entries. I actually got submissions from overseas, too. Lately, people are watching Log Horizon in Taiwan, France, and all sorts of other countries. Anime is mighty! 
For details, and for the latest news, visit http://lhrpg.com/. You’ll find information about Mamare Touno that isn’t Log Horizon–related there as well. There’s also information on the anime. The TRPG that was released in April is really jumping. 
Finally, Shoji Masuda, who produced this volume (OreShika 2 now on sale); Kazuhiro Hara, the illustrator (I’ll come over to hang out again); Tsubakiya Design, who handled the design work; little F?ta of the editorial department! Oha, I’m in your debt yet again! And Tosho Printing! Thank you very much! 
Now all that’s left is for you to savor this book. Bon appétit! 
Mamare “Once summer’s over, I’m taking a trip” Touno