Apr 09, 2025
Author's Commentary #14:
It's time to discuss Chapter 14: Bughouse brawl.
Now is the time to talk about both the principal and Nagi, whom were both introduced in chapter 1. First off, both are actually named Nagi Enoki, however, the kanji for their names is different. The principal's name is 渚, which translates to "anxiety", while Nagi's name, 梛, means "evergreen tall tree". Their names were chosen in reference to Nagi Umino from A couple of cuckoos.
(If I made any mistakes with the translations, feel free to correct me).
Nagi's birthday is April 6th, which is shared with Nagi Umino of A couple of cuckoos. The principal's is November 13th, which is shared with Mami Namai from Rent a girlfriend.
As for Nagi, he's the president of the shogi club as well as a 5-dan in shogi. Nagi is actually a twin and has an older brother named Kazuya. Originally, their names were flipped, but changed after Nagi was shown to be more skilled at shogi than Kazuya. The principal also gave Kazuya a scar to better distinguish the two, and treated him much like he did Utami until his political talents came to bloom.
The principal, believe it or not is a 1-dan in shogi despite his poor chess skills. He is also very wealthy, but seeks to gain more wealth and power.
The bughouse game against the shogi club was actually one of the first major events I had planned for the story. It was originally goin to take place before the Cypress and Zanni confrontation, but I felt jumping in the bughouse before the confrontation wouldn't flow as well, so I pushed it back, which ended up working out real well. Another reason I wanted to do a bughouse game was because I wanted to have the punishment for the losers be getting zapped with a giant bug zapper. For some reason, I always think of a giant bug zapper whenever I hear the term "bughouse", thus I felt it was fitting to have the room turn into a giant bug zapper and for the losers to be electrocuted to death.
Now let's discuss what bughouse is. Bughouse a two player variation of chess that allows you to use pieces captured by your teammate. You are allowed to drop a piece that can check or mate, and unlike in shogi you can drop a pawn on the same file that contains a pawn of the same color, and drop a pawn to checkmate. You can't however, drop a pawn on the 1st or 8th ranks. Conversing with your teammate is also permitted, making this more of a strategy game.
The game itself was by far one of the harder ones I had to write as I essentially had to create everything from scratch and get the piece drops right. However, the effort was worth it. This is by far one of my favorite games in the series.
"Despite that, I doubt I'll ever do a bughouse game again, but I might consider doing a Crazyhouse game, which is a single player variant of Bughouse, in the future." were my words when I originally wrote this commentary out back in April of last year, but now I can confirm that there not only are more bughouse games in the series, but more are planned. They just won't show up again until well into Season 7 of the series.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
