Heavy Object

Volume 19, Afterword

Now Heavy Object has reached 19 volumes.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

When researching some exciting technology to use in this series full of colossal weapons and crazy technology, I came across the research of fear. Instead of working on the power of warheads or precision of missiles, that devilish research directly targets the inside of people’s minds. I focused on amplifying fear in the story, but there is also research into alleviating your own people’s fear. War and military actions have been trending more compact and easily controlled since the development of drones and cyber attacks, but this field is probably the exact opposite. After all, the research starts at driving people mad with external stimuli, intentionally making them lose control to give yourself an advantage.

An unseen effect causes a specific target displeasure.

And that creates an advantage for the person behind it.

Would the mosquito alarms, that you don’t hear much about anymore, count as a close-to-home version of that? I believe the intention was to keep delinquents from loitering at stores by playing an unpleasant sound that older people can’t hear, but the effects differed a lot between individuals and it’s hard to predict how exactly people will react to such things. What if it irritated someone to the point that they lashed out and robbed the place? And what about the high school or college students working there part time?

This one started with Mariydi from the Capitalist Corporations, moved on to an Information Alliance weapon attacking Quenser and the others from the Legitimacy Kingdom, and ended with an attack on the Faith Organization. The fact that it ended with the Faith Organization is somewhat important. They’re the ones who place the most emphasis on people’s state of mind, so I made Rome the final stage for this novel about the research of fear! Although anyone who has read this far knows the Faith Organization has enough internal strife already.

A smaller thing I want to draw you attention to is the one-person vehicles. With more and more IT companies getting involved in electric cars, I wonder if we’re going to see more models that don’t look much like traditional cars. I think one-person convertibles or ones that look more like snowmobiles or bobsleds would be cool, but what did you all think? Seriously though, I think people who aren’t as attached to the traditional shape of cars would have an easier time inventing a flying car (even if people don’t really talk about those much anymore).

It was fun getting to write another Putana Highball car chase after so long. I enjoy those as much as Mariydi’s dogfights. Maybe I’m drawn to the gap of such a serious person fighting as an outlaw. And like you saw in the story, her scopophobia let’s her engage in close combat on super easy mode!! She might outdo Mariydi and Catherine on the list of girls I definitely don’t want as an enemy. I’m also pretty impressed with Klarheit for surviving to the end after being hit by a tank gun’s blast and shrapnel and flying a bomber through an area without air superiority. Now, could Mariydi defeat him if he was uninjured and flying a cutting-edge fighter?

I give my thanks to my illustrator Nagi Ryou-san and my editors Miki-san, Anan-san, Nakajima-san, and Hamamura-san. From a ghost to a great disaster, this one had a lot of events that don’t fall into the military and war categories, so the illustrations must have been difficult. Thank you so much for sticking with me yet again.

And I give my thanks to the readers. This series has always made a joke out of the ugly and dirty side of humanity, but I hope you can enjoy the goodness and idealism that grows from that ruined world like small flowers blossoming from the cracks.

And I will leave it at that.

Happy new world.

-Kamachi Kazuma