And here we have Clash of Hexennacht that I began in parallel with Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon. A straightforward magical girl story is unusual for me, but I must have had a good image of it in my head, because writing it was really easy.

When I think about the old witch girls like Hana no Ko *n*n (not “I” and “ra”) or Magical E* (not “ro”)[1], I can’t help but think they must have been blasting at each other with magical attacks like this. I can really feel the j.a.panese love for big ships and giant guns in that thought process.

Anyway, this project didn’t come about by random chance. It’s actually based on the plot I wrote for the manga version drawn by Tsurugi Yasuyuki-san. Tsurugi-san was burned out after finishing his last long serialization and had gotten married, so I found him at a certain event looking like a corpse and unable to come up with any ideas. I ended up offering to give him a plot to make a manga out of.

Come to think of it, that kind of was by random chance.

If you pick up the manga version, it should help Tsurugi-san raise his kid, so how about giving it a thought? You’ll have a lot more motivation when carrying it up the register if you imagine that one volume might become a clasp on a backpack. And wow, this introduction has gotten heavy.

Anyway, time for the usual chat.

“It doesn’t matter what, so how about we talk about witch girls?”

“Non > Megu.”

“You’re bringing up an anime from forty years ago? But it’s true Non was a good wife who did everything she could behind the scenes and had a manly respect for one’s duty.”

“She was a true rival. But something occurred to me when I was watching the reruns the other day. The family Megu lives with has their memories magically altered to make everything fit, but they get that done three times if you include when she leaves and comes back. If it was a cyberpunk story, she would’ve fried their brains.”

“Witch girl anime from back in the day didn’t hold back, did they?”

After that, we continued discussing why Non is so great.

Anyway, I was putting plenty of work into this, but my usual background music for that work was Kanno Yoko’s Cyberbird. I love the sense of flight it gives you.

And this time I was wondering who the biggest fool was. Next time will be another battle against a higher ranker, but that will probably be after Horizon and GT. Please wait a little longer.

April 2015. A morning of continuing rain.

-Kawakami Minoru