That World of Otome Games is Tough for Us - Volume 1 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

THANK YOU SO MUCH for picking up this volume of Trapped in a Dating Sim: Otome Games Are Tough for Us, Too! I’m the author, Yomu Mishima. I’ve been writing so many series with big robots lately that I’ve started mistakenly thinking I might actually be good at them. And yes, I mean it when I say mistakenly. Writing in the mecha genre is tough (sobs).

Normally, I suck when it comes to writing afterwords, but I actually have something to say this time around, so it’s not so bad. First, why don’t I tell you how this series was picked up for publication. I figure many readers won’t know where this spin-off originated, so I thought I’d explain here.

The basis for this spin-off was an online bonus story for the main series, Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs. The short story was a reward for filling out a questionnaire, and there were no constraints on page or character count.

That’s when I got a brilliant idea: if there’re no limits, then I can write as much as I please. When I started thinking about what kind of story I wanted, I figured it would be most interesting to explore ways the main series didn’t go. That was how I arrived at my decision to take the story down a different path, so the reader could enjoy an alternate version of the story. As in, what if Leon made different decisions this time around? What if Marie and Leon met at the very beginning, without discovering each other’s true identities? Wouldn’t that be fun?

To put it in game terms, it’s basically a different character route. That’s why fans of the story took to calling it “Marie’s Route.”

Anyway, that’s how I ended up writing such a substantially long and detailed extra. It seemed a waste to leave it as just some bonus though, which is why my publisher came to me with an offer of official publication.

I started writing this short story from about the time of the third volume release, and it was long enough to fill three whole volumes itself. I was excited to have it published, but there was a major issue—I’d skipped most of the intro content. I’d also written it with the assumption that readers would already know everything about the main series. If it went to publication like that, though, I figured readers coming in fresh would be confused. To fix that, I needed to add more info to the opening. I couldn’t just copy and paste everything from the main series, however, which is why I rewrote everything. As such, you may notice it’s a little different this time around.

And that’s when it hit me: Why not rewrite it all?

See, originally, I was only going to add enough to make it cohesive and coherent, but instead, I wound up using Marie’s Route as the foundation of a much longer and far-reaching spin-off. I basically feel like I wrote a whole new volume from scratch. It was tough, but as a writer, I really enjoyed myself (lol).

Now that Leon and Marie encounter each other at the very beginning of the game, how will their relationship develop? What kind of relationships will they have with the rest of the cast from the main series?

I hope those who read the original story—and those who’ve never even touched it—can enjoy this spin-off. The title has changed as well, but I hope you’ll support this revised version of Marie’s Route!