Mar 31, 2025
Author's Commentary #395:
Time to talk about Chapter 395: Outclassed.
Team Japan is back in action, and what a way to start out. Poor Maila didn't stand a chance against Mimoko, but her getting nervous and forgetting it was a classical time control instead of a blitz one, really did her in. While Mimoko morally doesn't enjoy taking advantage of opponents like this, she feels that as a chess player, she often must be cruel at times both as a sign of respect, and to teach her opponents how to become better players.
As for the game, it was originally a 42-move game, but I decided that a resignation was more appropriate, simply because after move 14, Maila's position was completely losing. Whenever I play the bots in order to get these great games, the only way to beat them is to mate them, which can sometimes lead to long drawn out games where a human opponent would have long since resigned after a certain point. For games that end in resignations, I always include the full game, with the exception of the Daria vs Xiao Lin game from round 6, but that's a special exception. While I was considering going a few moves past move 14 before Maila resigned, I felt that the demoralizing effect of her losing her queen and realizing her position was completely busted, thanks in no small part to her own nerves getting the better of her, would lead to her just wanting to go back to her room to cry. Perhaps if Mimoko was closer in skill to her, she'd have pressed on, but these two are simply on different levels, thus, Maila resigned.
Japan now leads the match, but before we see the conclusion of the next game of the match, some fools are about to cause a ruckus. That's right, I managed to somehow squeeze in a chapter that can be considered appropriate for April Fool's Day, which is the day after this chapter was published. April 1st is also Iori's birthday as well as Jester's and the Canadian DSPCM, Gwen's. This means you can expect to see more of Iori's game in the next chapter as well. Speaking of Gwen, I do have plans for her to properly appear in the story in the upcoming chapters. See if you can theorize what her role will be in the story.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
