And on that bombshell, we reach the end of our third volume of Magistellus.
Hi, Kazuma Kamachi here.
This time I did everything in my power to break Kaname. He tries to act like the perfect human in the game, so I wanted to see if he could be pressured into showing his true colors—the real-life Kaname Suou, if you will. I enjoyed writing a more out-of-control version of him than we usually get to see, beating up Frey(a), lying forlorn in Tselika’s lap, and disturbing Mother Loose’s bath time… He probably quarrels quite a bit with his sister in real life, don’t you think?
(Incidentally, did you all predict in Volume 2 when Mother Loose first appeared that the way to defeat her was to catch her in the nude? There are many other characters like her, who seem invincible at first glance, but for whom a weakness can eventually be found. I was trying to convey the feeling of how, in a contract, you can usually find loopholes if you look hard enough…)
The story so far has centered around the Hekireki siblings, Midori and Takamasa. While the centerpiece was this large game of cat-and-mouse over the warship-class laser weapon #flash.err, it was the final scenes where most of the development occurred. Kaname finally gets to see just how much his hero has changed, and he finds out who he was trying to protect, and from whom.
Helping people is not about bragging rights or getting anything in return.
This was a man who gave his life to teach Kaname that lesson. I trust you all realized early on there was more to it than I let on at the time.
After Kaname declared he could never shoot Takamasa in Volume 2, it was quite a challenge for me to figure out how exactly their battle would unfold. I finally hit on the idea of calling upon Smash Daughter’s expertise in nonlethal combat, but I suspect there were other paths I could have chosen. I could imagine a lot of fun strategies involving Mother Loose as another ally, if Kaname had managed to recruit her, for example.
Thanks to the battle with Bloody Dancer in Volume 2, Kaname has grown to the point where he no longer feels burdened by despair and can crack jokes with his old friend even as they fight to the death. My favorite part was the line where Midori says to her brother, “You disgust me.” I hope you can imagine the sorts of conversations that went down back when it was just Kaname, Tselika, Ayame, Cindy, and Takamasa and his partner in Called Game.
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Speaking of disgusting (now this is an odd segue, if I do say so myself), in Chapter 9, I finally crossed the line with Midori and had her get caught unclothed. However, I think the more important thing to focus on here was the heartwarming conversation on the other side of the curtain, between Smash Daughter and Other Dimensional Printer. A single person can have a lot of faces, don’t you think? I hope Kaname’s line “If only she could talk to Mother Loose like that” served to demonstrate the complexity of human relationships and how things are much easier said than done.
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As for Claire Kaizuka, I figured that since all the Dealers we had met so far had been rich eccentrics, it was high time we took a look at the flip side. Claire took on debts without knowing or caring where they came from, and she ruined her own life so many times she grew accustomed to it. She had accepted that she could never be happy, and instead she hoped to help other people by freeing them from their burdens. The Life-Seller. And knowing she was denying herself her own happiness, she kept on trying to create meaning in her life. An act of economic self-harm… But I couldn’t very well leave her like that, and so I decided to promote her from background character to leading lady for a chapter. I thought it was important that Easy Option gave the final speech this time instead of Kaname. It just didn’t seem right for an outsider to come in and chastise Claire for what she did, instead of someone who was personally affected by her.
This is obvious if you read Blood-Sign, but I think I have a real soft spot for fights where the hero cleans house flawlessly and then leaves without saying a single word, like in a samurai movie or a western. Because of that, it was very useful to have a character like Easy Option, who could take care of the aftermath.
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…Now, this might be a digression, but I can’t help feeling like Cindy the dark elf quickly spiraled out of control. I had always expected that the characters from Called Game would regain their old personalities the more they spoke with Kaname, but Cindy basically has a mind of her own at this point. I’m not quite sure how this happened. Finding meaning in death and loss was supposed to be Claire’s role, and yet somehow Cindy ended up becoming the punching bag instead… By forcing a whip into the hand of someone with no sadistic qualities whatsoever, she makes it unclear whether she is submissive or dominating. This is rather uncharted territory for me, I must say. What did you all think of this freak-in-the-sheets dark elf who frequently fogs up her own glasses? …By the way, if you think back to Cindy from Volume 2—the obedient, vacant-eyed doll under the control of Bloody Dancer—knowing what we know now about the man and his love for his own Magistellus, you can see just how she inverts the traditional sub/dom roles. As ridiculous as this line of investigation sounds, I can’t help but think there is much of interest to unpack there…
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And so in this one volume I sought to cover all there was to see in Money (Game) Master, from the poorest slums to the upper echelons of high society, across all forms of transportation, earth, sea, and sky. When the setting is an open-world game in modern times, the only limit is your imagination.
The kit that turned any vehicle into a flying car was something I always wanted to try. I thought it would be interesting to imagine what it might be like to have conversion kits for cars, just like there were for television when the country crossed over to digital. (Was that really in 2011? How time flies…)
Now for a more lowbrow take: I quite liked the strip bar that Takamasa frequented (and used as the location for a camera lens deal) as a symbol of the freedom afforded by the game… And here we met the doppelgänger girls, whom I picked out of the many designs submitted by Mahaya and promoted to fully fledged characters. Congratulations, cuties. By now, M-Scope and Zaurus have evolved into some sort of murder power couple, but Futashika Layer is a bit more subdued. I presume she made a comeback by distancing herself from the Ag Wolves, becoming an independent information broker and suing for peace with the other Dealers. Her character is founded on the economic principle that if you are needed by others, they will not be able to do away with you. I think it’s good to have both those who obsess over their old team and those who forge a new path forward.
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To my illustrator, Mahaya, and my editor, Anan, I extend my warmest thanks. I am very grateful for the patience they showed this time around, especially considering the array of vehicles I introduced along with the characters.
And of course, I must thank you, my readers. I hope you enjoyed the final battle, with Takamasa summoning dragons, dodging bullets head-on, and lifting a car like it was nothing. A true master can make things look so easy. That is what I wanted you all to feel when reading about his fight. I hope I accomplished my goal. In any case, I thank you for making it this far.
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That shall be all for now, I think.
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…Hmm. I wonder if dark elves are becoming a trend with me?
Kazuma Kamachi