May 03, 2024
Author's Commentary #22:
Time to talk about Chapter 22: The underworld banquet.
There's a lot to discuss here, mainly all the attendees. Though first, I'd like to touch on one major difference between this and the original. That difference being, Jester is no longer in the chapter. As for why, I needed to narrow down the word count in order to submit this to a contest. He still does appear in the story though, but he won't become a major player until Season 2 of the remake.
Now let's talk about the attendees and first up is Krokow. His name is obviously inspired by the city of Krakow in Poland. As for why, I just like how it sounds. He hails from Canterbury, and is a cannibal. He even ate his own hand after getting hungry, which is why he now has a cybernetic one. The crazy thing is he's even eaten his cybernetic hand a few times and had to get it replaced because of that.
Next up is Chef P. LaFleur. He's actually a homage to Chef Pierre from Cheetos. To give some context, back in 2006, Cheetos ran a Chester Cheetah undercover campaign where Pierre, after losing to baked Cheetos in a cooking contest, steals the Cheetos secret recipe. Since I have fond memories of playing the flash games that were apart of the Chester Cheetah undercover campaign, I decided to pay homage to it by basing a character off the main antagonist of the campaign, Chef Pierre. While many might assume the P in P. LaFleur's name stands for Pierre, it simply is just P. Maybe I'll decide on a proper name later, but as of this commentary, the P simply stands for P.
Now onto the demon queen cult. Originally, these hairless ladies were going to be much darker, but I decided to tone them down in the remake. While the original offers glimpses at how dark the cult was going to be, the main reason I decided to tone them down was simply because I decided not to make them major antagonists.
To give better context, I'll have to talk about Mystery ghost foresight. When I first finalized the concept for the cult, I decided that I'd tell the story of it's origin in Mystery ghost foresight. However, that never came to be, so I decided to rewrite the cult and tone them down a bit. Originally, they were going to be a cult on drug-like lollipops and have a shadow-leader which would pose as a cultist and secretly control the entire cult, including Ruka. However, I decided to abandon that idea and simply make Ruka the leader. I also changed the drugged lollipops to nanomachine lollipops, both because I wanted to make the cult less dark, and because I felt nanomachines were a better and more logical explanation for how Ruka could control her cult like a hive mind.
As for Ruka herself, she was loosely based of of Megumin from Konosuba. She was actually far more chuuni-like before forming the cult.
Now onto the taboo chef himself, Monsieur Mondeau. Ironically, he ended up being the most underdeveloped of all the attendees despite being the head of Noveau Neo. As for why he's the taboo chef, he cooked people as well as cooked other taboo dishes.
As for the banquet itself, it was largely inspired by a story arc from Hareluya II Boy. This is actually where I got the idea to have Noveau Neo request that some chefs have a nude woman serve as a food platter. I won't spoil the arc, but I will say that said arc is really dark.
I would also like to confirm that the two people Rika recruited for the mission were Helga and Dastard. The real Sundae is back at her restaurant completely unaware of what's going on. As such, the Sundae that was arguing with Himawari last chapter, was actually Dastard the whole time. Dastard is a true master of disguise, and was even able to disguise Rika as Helga. As such, the Helga fighting Krokow is actually Rika.
Finally, I would like to point out that the officers that are busting the banquet are actually Escape Witch characters. I'll elaborate a bit more on them once more is revealed about them.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
![Spice of life [Remake] cover](https://honeyfeed-novel-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/novel_image/file/14558/cover_thumb_e0f19edc-753a-4f65-bd0e-b68dc349af99.jpg)
![Escape Witch [Remake] cover](https://honeyfeed-novel-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/novel_image/file/14560/cover_thumb_9f88f94f-2a73-4d00-b518-6f20b53f9811.jpg)