First, I want to give my apologies to everyone involved in the creation of this novel for having turned so abstruse. You always dared to get close to me even at the very end. Maybe it's that the more abstruse we are, the better our works turn out to be?
That's why I tried to put in the spotlight the society that supports the existence of the [Ar tonelico] world for this light novel.
Whenever we go to a convenience store, we pick and buy a lot of things as if we were living in an RPG-ish world, but what supports it is an infrastructure so subtle and enormous we can't even believe it ourselves. If something like that also existed in the game world and we could seriously grasp it, we would be able to even fabricate our own view for the fundamental reality of the characters that appear on it. That was the kind of feelings that allowed me to keep on writing this novel.
Now, my role in the [Ar tonelico] world has come to an end for the time being, but this doesn't mean at all that the world itself has ended. The original creator of this world, Mr. Tsuchiya, still has a lot of things he wants to talk about it, so it also means that Aurica's and Misha's journey is not going just to end like this.
I also received a tremendous amount of cooperation for the plot of this novel from Mr. Kaori Igusa, who became a sworn friend of mine after "The Second Police Squad". Therefore, beginning with him and going through everyone who supported me in all sorts of ways, I'd like to express my gratitude to them all.
Supervisor's Postscript
When I created the work we know as Ar tonelico, there were a few things I decided. Among them, I think the most important one would be preserving the level of its world building. That's why all of the Ar tonelico-related products that have been released so far have been made under my full supervision.
In fact, I personally reviewed the writing of this novel a total of three times, which also caused us several problems due to the publishing deadlines. However, given that people buying it would have dedicated that same amount of time to reading it in full, making a compromise on this matter was something we couldn't bring ourselves to do.
And for this light novel, the "new experiment" we decided to attempt was discussing more in-depth the nature of the Binary Field and the Soulspaces of the Reyvateils, as well as trying to depict in a more detailed way the feelings, ways of thinking and relationships of the party members.
For the former, we explained further some things about the Binary Field and the Soulspaces we couldn't in the game proper, and we used the destruction of the Singing Angel world as the pivotal point for making it easier to understand. And based from that, we arrived at the conclusion that the feelings of all the Reyvateils are connected in a very deep level, so if a lot of people wish for happiness, that world will overflow with happiness too... that's what I wanted to convey. This was one of the themes we conveyed in the Ar tonelico game too, but for this light novel, I think we went even deeper into it than we managed to in the game. Additionally, for those that read in the game's setting encyclopedia book should be familiar with the "Reyvateil Rebellion that Caused the End of the Second Era". You might know already which were the causes, but we decided to try exploring the reality of what happened back then with the events of this light novel too.
For both points, I think that by using the light novel media and having an expert on them use their talents for writing it; we could be able to give an extra layer of depth to the Ar tonelico world.
If you can still continue looking at the new things in the Ar tonelico world as they are released and you continued lending me your hands in support, nothing could ever make me any happier. I also intend to continue putting in more surprises that will pull your heartstrings in all of these products we put out for sale, so I wish for us to continue being related through this world and continue having adventures in it, because if we can continue making the world of Ar tonelico even deeper and greater together, nothing else could make me happier than it.
Atsunori Kawachi (Banpresto)
Banpresto Co., Ltd. is the company that makes the jewel of the crown in character crossover games: the "Super Robot Wars series".
These two companies, so different from each other, collaborated for the release of a game, and once this deed was done, they began thinking about what other kinds of projects they could work in together. This was how the story of "Ar tonelico", which has become such a large-scale project now, began.
GUST... or better said, GUST's Mr. Tsuchiya had during a long time this story about a "wondrous Tower" swirling and coiling inside his head until he was allowed to let it out in what seemed an explosive blast in front of all of us.
During my career as a developer, I proposed up to that point that we’d only borrow previously existing characters from all sorts of publishers and added my own kind of flavor to them, so we could bring out their own "charm as characters" in a way that would only work out in the specific game in which they appeared. However, I was quite troubled about what kind of flavor I would add to the characters this time around.
Because of the several desires we had, we caused a lot of trouble to all the people that helped us with structuring several points of the Ar tonelico world.
With every piece of work we release, all of the characters, beginning with Lyner and then Aurica and Misha, begin feeling more and more real.
And as long as it continues expanding, I wish we can continue always counting on each other forever, both users and developers.