Dec 16, 2025
Author's Commentary #655:
Time to talk about Chapter 655: A quandary.
This chapter introduces another story beat that might be pursued this arc, that being Numakawa. With Volume 3 adapting Season 5, it's natural Numakawa would be on my mind. Considering he didn't get much spotlight, or at least, not good spotlight, I feel like now might be a good time to try and flesh him out a bit more.
Maida did raise a good point about his attitude changing following the Knightlife classic, meaning the key to said change probably lies there. When you think about it, things do seem a bit odd that an honors student like him would not only be a complete idiot at chess, but also degrade into acting like a complete idiot. Now full disclaimer, the behind the scenes reason for his personality change is me wanting to designate him as an idiot, but now that I'm sitting down and thinking about what to do with his character, I feel like I can now give some very clever and canonical reasons for his change.
As for the club, I'm glad I'm able to show what a day might be like for them. In terms of the tidbits with Troitsky, I'm mainly going off of internet sources for my research, so if I make a mistake on something that is common historical knowledge in regards to the game, feel free to point it out to me.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
