The World of Otome Games is Tough For Mobs - Volume 13 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

IT’S ME, YOMU MISHIMA, feeling deeply emotional now that Trapped in a Dating Sim has finally concluded. So many people helped make this happen, and I’m really grateful for all my readers’ support as well.

When I first began posting this story on the web, it never seriously crossed my mind that it might be made into an anime someday, but now it has. I’d debuted as an author prior to this title, so of course one of my goals was for a series of mine to be made into an anime eventually. I even wondered how one would go about writing the kind of series that got an anime adaptation. I started testing ideas, and one of those was Trapped in a Dating Sim.

Before I started writing this, I kept seeing a specific genre pop up in the popularity rankings on Let’s Be Novelists: villainess stories. Those are romance fantasies with a female target audience that take place in an alternate world. The genre has become immensely popular since it first picked up traction, dominating the rankings completely.

Those stories usually begin with the villainess’s fiancé breaking off their engagement. Honestly, even as a guy, I found them really entertaining and impactful, so I thought it’d be fun to take the same premise and write a story for a male audience. I immediately began plotting it out. 

Initially, it was going to line up with every other villainess story. Luxion didn’t exist. Angelica was the villainess, and Marie was the heroine. The male protagonist was a guy reincarnated as one of the heroine’s love interests, and the female protagonist (Angelica) was a woman reincarnated as the villainess.

Angelica was dead set against becoming a villainess, but her circumstances didn’t let her escape the role. She was forced into a hostile relationship with Marie whether she liked it or not. The story was pretty simple from there. Although she didn’t want to, Angelica had to oppose and fight Marie, growing more and more isolated as the story progressed, and the male protagonist swept in to save her all by himself.

Basically, I didn’t set out intending for this story to have a harem at all.

You’re probably wondering by this point how the current version of Trapped in a Dating Sim came about, if that was my original idea.

Well, that was because villainesses basically don’t exist in actual otome games. See, when I came up with that plot, I did a bunch of research on otome games, and I thought I should play one in advance. I subsequently made that shocking discovery. Villainesses are insanely popular in web novels, and I never imagined that they weren’t derived from real otome games at all; they were a completely original concept.

That threw a real wrench into my plans. I was already busy with another series that was being published as a light novel, as well as my day job, so I didn’t have a whole lot of free time. I didn’t know anything about otome games, but I knew I had to write this story. It was then or never.

Feeling backed into a corner, I threw a bunch more elements into my plot. I pulled together ideas I’d come up with for other stories, and they culminated in Trapped in a Dating Sim. I told myself this would be a practice piece. If it didn’t get that popular, I’d just find a good place to cut it short.

All that is to say, although the title has “otome game” in it, the contents of the story itself are more in line with Let’s Be Novelists-style isekai harem stories, with a role-reversed villainess concept.

I love isekai harem stories, but Let’s Be Novelists was oversaturated with them, so I wanted to write something kind of poking fun at that. As you can probably guess from this story, that came back to bite me in the ass. After all, Trapped in a Dating Sim ended the same way any harem story does.

I was fortunate that Trapped in a Dating Sim got so popular that I could continue it. By the time I’d finished the equivalent of Volume One, GC Novels had reached out to me, offering to publish it. That’s how it became the series you know today. 

I suspect some of you readers already realize that, at its core, the series was basically about Leon and Luxion’s friendship. I started writing this intending it as an isekai harem story, but once I finished the web version and looked back through it, I realized that too. The story began with their first meeting and ended with their goodbye to each other.

Leon inherited my plans for the original plot’s male protagonist, being jaded and cynical but simultaneously kind, though his emotions could be difficult for the reader to identify. Luxion was a necessary addition, both to support Leon and to act as the straight man who said what readers were probably thinking.

The most accurate comment I ever got called Luxion a prime example of the “wise elder character who has no faith in the hero” trope, and said Leon is like the fool who even lies to himself. Leon does like to dig into other people verbally and criticize them, but most of what he says applies to him too. He’s a hypocrite who does no self-reflection, and a liar as well, but he’s also kind and complex.

Anyway, Luxion was meant to support Leon and increase his appeal. Before I realized what was happening, though, their relationship became the center of the entire story. That’s why Luxion was the start of it and the end of it too.

I do feel like the harem aspect wound up pretty sparse, but this series was ultimately a huge blessing to me, since completing it helped me realize what I really want to write.

To celebrate the ending of the main story, I wrote a bonus story. All you have to do is add two keywords to the website request form and you’ll be able to read it. You’ll find the first keyword in Otome Games Are Tough For Us, Too!, Volume Three. The keyword from this volume is “Luxion.”

There you have it: the end of Trapped in a Dating Sim’s main series. Thanks for reading this up to its conclusion. I hope you continue to enjoy the stories I write!