Let's make a summery book, they said, with fireworks and fluff and stuff, they said. That's how this started out, but after we chose Bon as the main focus, this is how it ended up. Where did we go astray!? So, here's a summery ReiMari book. I'm Hisaka, the writer for StrangeChameleon.

At one point, this story was only about Marisa celebrating Bon on her own and commemorating Reimu after she passed away. However, as we discussed it with Hiyori, we started worrying if we could really go with such a completely death-centric story. So I ended up adding the part about Marisa becoming a youkai magician and living a long time, at which point the plot was more or less in its final form. You might think that this story was based on the idea of her becoming a youkai, but that was not the case. I only really remembered this myself in the middle of writing this afterword. Man, the human memory sure is hazy.

Speaking of changes, the young shrine maiden also went through a bunch of 'em as this book developed. She started out as a typical mob character, drawn without eyes and so on with only a single spoken line, but we ended up giving her a decent bit of personality. We wanted someone to present an outsider's view on Marisa, so it was half inevitable. By the way, in the original script, her anger was a lot more comical in nature, and there was even a scene where Marisa hands her the flowers she was bringing for Reimu's grave and she thinks they're actually for her. That kind of obscured the main point, though, so we removed it. It just stood out too much, y'know? Well, then again, she's 100% an original character, so maybe it was for the better that we didn't focus on her too much.

We also left the backstory (the time between the original games and this book) vague on purpose. How Marisa became a youkai and how she feels about it, how Reimu died, and so on. You'd need to make a whole other book if you decided to draw all that, so no way around it. The theme would get blurry as well.

However, even if it wasn't illustrated, I did decide on a lot of things inside my own head and kept those in mind while writing the script, so the story is actually packed with headcanons. - How Marisa became a magician, and Reimu's response to it. - How Reimu died, and how old. - How Marisa felt and what she did after Reimu's death. - What the Gensokyo Chronicle says about Marisa as she is now. - Marisa's relationship with the shrine maidens after Reimu. - What the youkai close to Reimu have been up to. - Why Marisa didn't use her hakkero at all in this book. - What Kourin is doing. - Whether this young maiden's clothes were made by Kourin too. - How Bon is doing in the Outside World. (Whether it's even more of a formality than today, I mean.) and so on. "I won't be able to talk about all of this, but just know that I've thought about it." Pretty cryptic, am I right?

And so, a short story with a lot of thought put into it. The unusual style has me a bit worried, but I'm simply glad if you enjoyed it even just a little. There's still a lot of stories we want to tell, both ReiMari and in general. I'm even thinking of a sequel for this one. And that's the note I'll end this on. I hope we'll meet again over the next book!!