That World of Otome Games is Tough for Us - Volume 3 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

DID YOU ENJOY THIS VOLUME of Marie’s Route, aka Trapped in a Dating Sim: Otome Games Are Tough For Us, Too!? I’m the author, Yomu Mishima. I’m particularly delighted to have been able to publish so many volumes already. Each time the afterword comes around, I waffle about what to write. Since this series is a spin-off, though, I thought it’d be good to talk about differences between it and the main series.

In the main series (Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs) Leon and Luxion get involved with Olivia and Angelica as the story progresses. Marie serves as a mysterious figure who reincarnated into the world, like Leon, and becomes an obstacle in their path. The main difference in the spin-off is that Leon and Marie join up at the start this time.

I should note, just in case, that I’m writing all this with the idea that some readers may not yet have read the main story. If you’re one of those people, let me just simplify this by saying that Leon and Marie are on opposite sides in that series, whereas they’re allies here in the spin-off. In the main story, Olivia and Angelica also serve as the main heroines. 

Personally, as the author, I’ve found the spin-off easier to write. There are several reasons for that, but the biggest one is that I can throw all kinds of crazy stuff at Marie. No matter what the circumstances are, or how bad things get for her, I always feel like This girl can overcome it. She’s especially easy to write when she interacts with Leon. But I’ll admit, part of what makes it so easy may be that she’s the only heroine in this series.

A surprising realization I came to recently is that I’m not great with writing harems. When I read back through my past works, the parts I remember having the most fun writing weren’t those that involved romance but rather situations where the protagonist and other male characters were doing stupid stuff. For instance, in the main story, scenes with the idiot brigade are just really fun to work on.

Honestly, when you get down to it, the main story is more a male-friendship series about Leon and Luxion. I started it wanting to create a harem series, but after I finished it and read back over it, I was shocked by how much more enthusiastic I’d been about Leon and Luxion’s friendship.

Well, with that out of the way, I hope you’ll continue to support me and this spin-off series!

I’ve also written an extra story for everyone to commemorate this milestone. To read it, you need to input two keywords. The first is “hagurumanoomamori.” You can find the second one in the afterword of the main series’s final volume.