I’d originally planned Volume 3 to star Mena in her role, but Volume 2 seemed a bit lacking, so I moved Mena up a volume—and the gulf was filled with Kikyou. She plays dumb when she needs to, a variation on Mena.
I had her penciled in as a classmate to Choline and Rol. All Rokujou Sorcery Academy graduates and friends. Traveling together, Kikyou yells at the sea as Choline comforts her. Kikyou envies Choline’s thing with Merthophan. When Rol sneers at her, she snaps, “Maybe you should try making your own friends.” Critical hit.
I did have ideas along those lines, but sorry, they never came to fruition.
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Former head of the royal guards, current hotel owner. That suggests he’s the most successful cast member! Just invented for the hotel skits, but definitely a character I wish I’d used more.
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Wasn’t originally Allan’s father but a Jiou Empire minister.
I was thinking of having an enemy minister take a liking to Lloyd, allowing him to act as a mediator despite being a cadet, but my editor wisely pointed out it was weird to have an arranged marriage without any of Allan’s family present, so his background changed fast.
I kept the same personality, and he proved a weirdly great match with Allan’s, so in hindsight, brilliant (snerk) move.
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His name comes from hemoglobin. He and Selen make for an iron-like family. Originally, he was an unnamed background character but wound up playing a pretty major part to balance Allan out.
Since I had ideas for both fathers, the story itself became a dad arc, then also a Selen arc. He’s that classic “dotes on his daughter but doesn’t know how to deal with girls her age” trope.
Incidentally, while I’ve got no notes on Allan’s mother, Selen’s mother is off somewhere leading the resistance.
“You need strength to remove the cursed belt? Cool, then I’d better become a country-saving hero!” She’s a legend in merc circles. When she found out her daughter was free, she lost the motivation to lead that resistance and started thinking up ways to have Lloyd save the place for her—but I never wound up using that idea. Selen gets her hustle from her mom.
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He didn’t get a name in the original novel; he was just the secretary. But he needed a name for the anime, so I grabbed this from hair loss treatment products.
Just between us, the reason there were many bald characters in Volume 3 was because I’d lost hair from stress, and I wanted to write off the hair growth products as a business expense. I had this silly idea I would wedge in a scene of them testing different gels to justify that. (See also Zanoff in the spin-off.)
But the times being what they are, that ran afoul of rules and regulations, I abandoned the idea of getting nitty-gritty, and we just wound up with loads of baldies.
Fusemachi’s manga made him seem like a pretty swell guy and made me want to give him another shot, so he got to strut his stuff in Volume 13. Feats I never expected from him—betraying the author’s expectations in a good way.
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She became a sub-regular on me, showing up nearly every time since her intro.
Since she was the only character who didn’t like Lloyd, that made her real easy to use; add that to her freak show side, and she proved unstoppable.
And nobody felt sorry for her if she met with a little pain, which was fun.
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Lloyd’s fan 1.
My editor said it would be cool if there was a villainous Kunlun villager, and he’s the result—but I struggled to think of a motivation and wound up with a handsome dude who loved Lloyd so much, he did exactly what Lloyd didn’t want him to. Not really the plan, and I have regrets, but it largely worked out.
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Lloyd’s fan 2.
An ancient hero unable to vanish, trying to make Lloyd into a new hero to free himself. Originally the last boss of this series. He wound up being an old man who dotes on Lloyd. He started out as a sinister figure asking, “Who do you see me as?” like some kind of urban legend, and wound up with a camera in hand, chasing his bias around. What went wrong?
The Sou-Alka-Lloyd narrative disintegrated. He got dragged off the last boss throne, but I feel like this role fit him better.
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After the big changes in Volume 5, I thought it would be fun to pull a One Piece and have all the world powers meet up. This swordswoman was born just to fill out that crowd.
I just happen to really like Asian big-sister-type sword girls, but when she took a lead role in Volume 7, I found myself short on characters who would react to things, and she became a bit of a disaster. Never imagined she’d wind up playing a critical role in the climax (albeit one entirely improvised). That’s the fun of writing.
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Somehow, she turned into the last boss. I just threw in a mystery mascot character to fill out the crowd, no plans for her at all, but since she was a blank slate, there was room to work with, and I ended up giving her the heel turn. Didn’t have any clue what was inside her until the back half of the story.
The idea that she had animal minions went nowhere, and in my mind, she turned into a hedonist who lied and tricked her way through life.
She became an old woman on the brink of death, obsessed with life and her regrets, who attained immortality just as she reached peak panic—and that twisted her permanently. She knew what she lacked was companionship but had lived her whole life using everyone and couldn’t find a way to stop. Her own conflicts led her to extremes—quite a tragic history for our main villain.
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Sucks up to everyone, can’t be read, acts like an idiot, holds all the power, but actually—one of those characters.
He played the dumb dandy a bit too much, and my own worst impulses left him being a dumbass most of the time.