Oct 31, 2024
Author's Commentary #131:
Time to talk about Chapter 131: Emergency meeting.
Originally the intro chapter for Season 5, I decided to swap things around and have this chapter occur in Season 4 as I felt it made more sense plot-wise. Many important long-term characters are introduced here. First up is Amelia Stavanger, the maestro of Norway.
アメリア・スタヴァンゲル (Amelia Stavanger) is how Amelia's name is spelled in katakana. There's actually an interesting story behind her, as she was the character I decided would be one of the first players would meet if this series ever got a video game adaptation.
Her birthday is September 23rd.
Her favorite piece is the queen, though she refuses to elaborate why.
As a brief aside, if this series ever got a video game adaptation, Amelia would actually be one of the first characters the player would encounter as they're getting set up. In the game. My idea is that for a tutorial, Amelia will ask the player how good they are at chess. If they answer, "new player" they'd get a brief overview of the game and play Himitsudono with assistance. If they answer "experienced" they skip the tutorial and jump straight into the tutorial match against Himitsudono with no help given. But if they answer "I'm a grandmaster" they are prompted with one final chance to reconsider before being forced to play Amelia, who's ai would secretly be rated 2700 for this match alone. Losing or drawing would result in a loss and the player being forced to go through both the beginner tutorial and the tutorial battle against Himitsudono as punishment. Brief aside over, lets talk about the other maestro, Ian Kimovich of Russia.
イアン・キモビッチ (Ian Kimovich) is how his name is spelled in katakana. Йен Кимович is how I believe his name would be spelled in Russian.
(If I made any mistakes with the translations, feel free to correct me).
His birthday is April 13th which he shares with 13th chess world champion, as well as one of the greatest chess players of all time, Garry Kasparov. His name is also a nod to Kasparov as Kimovich is actually Kasparov's middle name.
His favorite piece is the queen, as that is the piece that has helped him win so many victories.
With this, 5 of the 7 secret chess maestros have now been revealed. I will say that one of the two yet to be revealed was present at the meeting, but did not get a spotlight. Thus, their proper reveal will come much later in the story.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
