Nov 05, 2024
Author's Commentary #249:
Time to talk about Chapter 249: Diederich's Arena der Blitzhölle.
First off, Arena der Blitzhölle means "Arena of lightning hell". This is very fitting considering who Diederich is based off of. Speaking of which, let's talk about him and Übel.
ユーベル・ベール (Übel Bähr) is how Übel's name is spelled in katakana. He is based off of Kommandant Ubel from Battalion Wars.
His birthday is September 19th, which is the day Battalion Wars was released. The latter part of his 2505 rating is also a reference to 2005, the year Battalion Wars came out.
His favorite piece is the pawn, mainly because it's the simplest piece.
ディーデリヒ・フォン・リヒトホーフェン (Diederich von Richthofen) is how his name is spelled in katakana. He's the biological grandson of Red Reaper and is heavily based off of Laxus Dreyer from Fairy Tail.
His birthday is October 24th. Since I couldn't find an official birthday for Laxus, I decided to have Diederich's birthday be a combination of both the anime episode, episode 10, and the manga chapter, chapter 24, that Laxus made his debuts in. The later part of his 2706 rating is also a reference to 2006, the year Fairy Tail began serialization.
His favorite piece is the rook. Guy thinks they're big bad bazookas for him to wield.
Believe it or not, I actually had a concept for a "battle chess" chuuni character way back in the early planning stages of this series, thus I'm glad that idea has finally come to fruition in the form of Diederich. Speaking of which, this game was by far one of the more intense ones to write. It was actually the fact that the rooks were so key to Diederich's victory that I decided to make him obsessed with rooks. While I'm not sure how many more on-screen Diederich games there will be in the series as a whole, he will definitely have some during the Chess Olympics. I hope you're looking forward to it.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
