Dec 31, 2025
Author's Commentary #30:
Time to talk about Chapter 30: The kaiser's quarry.
We've got another new chapter here, and as a result, some characters that were originally introduced much later in the series are debuting early. Let's talk about them along with Ina.
ハンス・ウルリッヒ・ミュラー (Hans-Ulrich Müller) is how Hans-Ulrich's name is written in katakana. His character is loosely inspired by the Medic from Team Fortress 2.
His birthday is April 7th, which is the day Team Fortress Classic released.
His favorite piece is the bishop as he likes making use of both of them.
シビル・ウィズナー (Sibylle Wizner) is how Sibylle's name is spelled in katakana.
Her birthday is December 9th, which she shares with Sibylla from Spy Kyoushitsu, who she is very loosely based off of. The birthday is also shared with Saloni Madhock, Indian International master Divya Deshmukh, and American grandmaster, Hikaru Nakamura, but that's more of a coincidental thing.
Her favorite piece is the queen.
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 Diederich's 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.
切川 衣那 (Kirikawa Ina) is how Ina's name is written in kanji. 衣那 means "to perform" and "contradiction", while 切川 means "to cut" and "river".
(If I made any mistakes with the translations, feel free to correct me).
If you've read some of my other novels, notably Escape Witch and Spice of life, you'll know that the Kirikawa clan is pretty important as many key characters hail from it. This means Ina is a distant relative to all those characters.
Her birthday is December 16th. I chose the date at random so there's no greater significance behind why this date is her birthday.
Her favorite piece is the knight, mainly due to it's ninja-like movement. Speaking of chess, she was actually that grunt Azenira beat this whole time, meaning her rating is actually 1800. She's fairly decent at the game, but still far from being a master at it.
As for her character, she actually came to be after I designed a character and decided it would be her. However, there was also a character I had designed a while back for something different, that fit Ina's character much more than the newly designed character, so I decided to use said design for Ina. Her design is based off of Oboro Kasumi from the manga, Machi and Oboro.
Now while I am introducing the Prussians earlier than before, they aren't really going to play much of a role in this volume, aside from Red Reaper himself. That being said, they will be major players in the future so any chance I can get to introduce characters like that earlier than before will be taken.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
