Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Afterword
Afterword[edit]
If you picked them up one at a time, welcome back. If you bought them all at once, welcome.
This is Kamachi Kazuma.
This is the ending. This was determined all the way back when he first met her. I think Alice’s threat level grew with each volume, which may have made you readers curious about what she had said in the past. Everything that had been building up was released in this volume. The karma of an easy decision came back to bite him. If you read it all from the beginning with that in mind, it should change the overall impression you get.
I have already placed an emphasis on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in several of my series like the Simple Series and Blood-Sign. You can find some frightening imagery when looking into the original versions of Cinderella and Snow White, but Alice is a little different. Is Alice the truly strange one for adjusting to everything happening in Wonderland so quickly? I like how you can’t quite tell which side is making the rules.
I had trouble deciding how to depict Alice’s world. One idea was to have her create a physical Wonderland and another was to focus more on childlike logic and image association. Especially when depicting Alice’s “internal conflict”, I thought it would be good if reading the text left you puzzled. There should have been some parts where you found yourself reading through the dialogue and narrative without really questioning it, but I tried to structure it like a children’s story. The part where Transcendents from both sides strangely gathered on the bridge would be the most obvious example, but the way Kamijou and the rest of the characters were being dragged along by invisible rails was another part of them being bound by Wonderland logic after entering Wonderland.
Then there was Anna Sprengel. If you look at the foundation of Modern Western Magic, you will quickly learn that she was a mystery young lady involved in the founding of the Golden cabal. The term “irregular Transcendent” has been used all over the place in the Genesis Testament Series, but did you expect it to have such an important role? The most likely theory is that she was a completely fictional person who Westcott based on Kingsford while tweaking some of the details, but my story is fiction. While considering what it meant for a fictional person to be walking around, it reminded me of identity fraud. That then led me to create the framework of the Transcendents. There is also otaku-friendly magic where people prepare the handmade costumes and a stage to cosplay as gods, so I made use of that too.
On that note, let’s talk about Anna Kingsford. She isn’t quite as well-known as Aleister Crowley, but since the occult world tries to remain hidden, being “well-known” isn’t exactly a good thing for them. If you’re curious, you can start with Mathers and work back from there and find a lot of (complimentary) information on her. Just like with Mina Mathers and Annie Horniman, there were far too many highly unique and charming women around that man… Mathers, the eccentric and arrogant genius who caused trouble for everyone around him, including Crowley, asked her to teach him. She laid the foundation of the ideologies for the great occult leaders of the 19th century like Westcott and Mathers, and she led to the creation of a magic cabal that allowed female members when banning women was still standard practice. Her various legends show just how incredible a person she was.
This battle was a clash between the two greatest illusions created in the 19th century and then breaking them down with Modern Western Magic, which had converted even Wonderland’s nonsense into logic, but I think it made for a nice twist that both Anna and Alice were fighting for the illusion killer boy.
Last time in GT9 all the scientific and magical firepower in Academy City gathered together to attack Human Kaiju Rosencreutz, but here in GT10 everything was focused on just those two illusions. Pure and frightening Alice vs. villainous and kind Anna. Neither are your average heroine, but that’s why I hope you saw something you could identify with in those two polar opposites who both make reassuring allies and terrifying enemies.
Maybe they weren’t your standard heroines, but with a standard heroine who can just ask for help, your standard person living in a standard world can save them.
It was because they took a step beyond that which allowed Kamijou Touma to reach his right hand where not even the top espers and magicians could reach.
He is the illusion killer boy, but that is why he can’t save himself after he returns bloody from the realm of illusion to reality. He knew that and was made to recognize it, but what was it he wanted to do in the very end?
I hope you give some thought to that.
I give my thanks to my illustrators Haimura-san and Itou Tateki-san and my editors Miki-san, Anan-san, Nakajima-san, and Hamamura-san. Transcendents all over the place, plenty of named characters among the cosplayers, and Alice going full-on psychedelic. This one had to have been a lot of work. Thanks so much.
And I give my thanks to the readers. Kamijou Touma is not a clever person. He is no more than a foolish and powerless Level 0 who can’t recover well from what’s already happened. But if he returned to GT5 when it all began and again faced Alice as she offered to distort reality and create a false culprit to create a happy ending where everyone was smiling, he would choose the same thing again every single time. I trust that you will accept that foolish boy for who he is. Thank you so much.
It is time to close the pages for now while praying that the pages of the next book will be opened.
And I lay my pen down for now.
What was he thinking in the very end?
-Kamachi Kazuma
