Toaru Majutsu no Index no Subete/Dialogue:Kamachi Kazuma with Fuyukawa Motoi

This article records the translated dialogue between the original creator of the Toaru Majutsu no Index light novels, Kamachi Kazuma, and the illustrator of the Toaru Kagaku no Railgun manga series, Fuyukawa Motoi, found in Toaru Majutsu no Index no Subete.

Illustration and images from the franchise occasionally appear with tidbits of trivia as seen from the original book. Moreover, at the end of the dialogue are short profiles for both participants. The subsections that contain questions for Fuyukawa Motoi that originally appeared in conjunction with the images are moved into its own separate article.

Dialogue Proper
'——Tell us how it all began. What led to the creation of Railgun?'

Ogino (Railgun’s editor): Just like with [Shakugan no] Shana, it started with a request I made to Miki-san. I asked him to let us do an Index manga in Daioh. He said we couldn’t because Gangan was already doing one, so I asked him to let Dengeki Daioh do one for the science side...specifically Misaka Mikoto.

Kamachi: What?

Miki: I thought the idea of a manga in Daioh was great, so we discussed how it should be done. Once we had a general idea of how it would work, we asked Kamachi-san to write the original concept.

Fuyukawa: I didn’t know about all of that. That was before I was brought in.

Kamachi: At that point, I had simply been told it would be a manga using Academy City as its primary stage, so I wrote my original draft with Shirai Kuroko as the protagonist.

Fuyukawa: Eh? Why Shirai Kuroko?

Kamachi: At first, I was worried Misaka Mikoto was too powerful a character to make an entertaining manga out of.

Fuyukawa: So you had an original draft using Shirai Kuroko?

Kamachi: I wrote quite a bit before I was corrected. Of course, that version had a completely different story and setting. Afterwards I was asked to use Misaka Mikoto, so I remember having to rethink everything from the ground up to use her properly.

Fuyukawa: That must have been tough. This was your first time writing for a manga, right?

Kamachi: Yes, it was. At the time, I had only written stories centered on Kamijou Touma, a boy, so it was a new feeling creating the Index world so it was centered on Misaka Mikoto, a girl.

Fuyukawa: Hearing that makes me feel more responsibility with my art...

Kamachi: Doing what you have been doing is plenty.

Fuyukawa: This manga came with a lot of passionate fans already attached, so I was—and still am—quite nervous about it. My goal is to be accepted at least a little bit by those fans. I also want to make the manga so people who know nothing of Index can still read it. Not that I’m saying I have a perfect understanding of it myself...

Kamachi: Thank you for your work. I was actually worried whether you would be able to accept the story as I had written it.

Fuyukawa: I know I keep saying these timid things, but I could not understand why you chose me to do it. I was incredibly thankful and surprised, so to be honest, I never thought that much about it.

Miki: At first, we had you draw character designs and some impressive scenes for Mikoto and Shirai. You even told us we could scrap this project if it was no good, but it turned out great and we began working on the serialization.

Kamachi: I think I remember talking with the editor about Shirai likely being the most popular character.

Fuyukawa: I had wanted to draw the magic side characters too, but they ended up not appearing.

Ogino: I think that was because we had not yet decided to keep it science side only at the rough stage. If I remember, it was originally offered to you as a Toaru Majutsu no Index manga.

Fuyukawa: That was quite a bit ahead of time.

Ogino: We have illustrations for almost all the characters thanks to that.

Fuyukawa: Come to think of it, I remember being told there were a few other candidates at that time. I never thought I would be chosen. I just had a vague idea that there was a competition. But as time went on, I got to meet with Kamachi-san and Miki-san.

Kamachi: Was that when it started seeming real? (laugh)

Fuyukawa: Yes. It felt like the project had really begun to move. And I gradually realized I might actually be a part of it.

Kamachi: You’re at the very center of the project. (laugh) You’re like the eye of the hurricane. (laugh)

Fuyukawa: Yes, something like that.

Kamachi: When the serialization began, did anyone you know react to it?

Fuyukawa: Yes! My parents finally found out about a week beforehand. (laugh)

Kamachi: You make that sound so full of despair. (laugh)

Fuyukawa: I was of course really thankful to have an official release, but things can be a bit awkward with your parents. My parents suddenly began buying Dengeki Daioh and reading it in secret so I had to take the magazine away and tell them not to read it. (laugh)

Kamachi: How did they find out?

Fuyukawa: It seems my little brother did some research. All of a sudden, they all knew.

Kamachi: I guess that’s the modern reaction. (laugh)

Fuyukawa: The only other thing was my friends reading it I guess...

Fuyukawa: Kamachi-san, you give me the story several chapters in advance.

Kamachi: Yes.

Fuyukawa: I feel bad about the parts I change a bit. Sometimes it makes the story take more chapters than the version in your plot...

Kamachi: Well, I send you the framework of the plot rather than a novel. When it comes back to me as a proper manga, I’m always grinning at the various scenes added or the way you handled something.

Fuyukawa: I’m glad to hear it.

Kamachi: You could call it a wonderful miscalculation.

Fuyukawa: As I said before, what I give the most thought to is how to get everything across to readers of this side story manga who have never read Index. If there are any difficult parts to the plot, I add or remove aspects of the plot to make it easier to understand. Kamijou in Chapter 3 is probably the biggest example of that.

Kamachi: Yes, that was not in my original plot.

Fuyukawa: I added in the Kamijou and Mikoto scenes from Volume 1 of the novels. In the original plot, Kamijou first showed up in Chapter 4, but I added in an introduction so those who had not read Index could know who Kamijou Touma is.

Kamachi: There is a lot you have to do for the manga format and I gladly welcome things like that.

Fuyukawa: I just thought it would be difficult to explain Mikoto and Kamijou’s relationship all at once in the clothes shop scene in Chapter 4.

Kamachi: That clothes shop scene did increase in volume about threefold between the plot and the manga.

Fuyukawa: When I drew up the storyboards from the plot, Ogino-san and Miki-san gave me some guidance. Even if I ultimately just resolved it myself, the process was a sort of team effort. And of course, the biggest element was the original plot as the foundation.

Miki: On Kamachi-san and my end, we will give Fuyukawa-san some suggestions at the storyboard phase, but then he will reject some of the suggestions in the final product. (laugh) Those rejections actually feel quite good. It makes me want to give even better suggestions next time! (laugh)

Ogino: Are you a masochist!?

Fuyukawa: Sometimes it can be hard to fit everything into the limited number of panels.

Kamachi: Arranging things so that the readers cannot tell what was intended or meant is the worst thing for something like this, so I have no problem with those rejections in and of themselves.

'——This may be sudden, but there is an interesting story about Fuyukawa-san during the recording of the radio drama. It took place in Daikanyama and when he was heading home he was found staring intently into the show window of a boutique that had already closed. What were you doing? (laugh)'

Fuyukawa: I was taking photos of the interior of the clothes shop. (laugh)

Kamachi: That was a ladies’ shop, right? Oh, was it reference material!?

Fuyukawa: Yes, for the manga...

Kamachi: Thank you for all your hard work.

Fuyukawa: I was taking photos at a department store the other day, but I can’t bring myself to do it blatantly. It makes me feel really suspicious. An employee got really mad at me when I was taking pictures in an arcade for Chapter 4.

Kamachi: Going the extra mile like that really pays off.

Fuyukawa: Speaking of reference material, I still haven’t really shown the high-tech side of Academy City. Part of that is due to my lack of imagination, but the wind turbines and drum-shaped security robots that are the symbols of the science side are kind of had to draw. I do want to show that kind of thing more, though. Music players and cell phones are hard too.

Kamachi: And the look of high-tech devices is already starting to change.

Fuyukawa: I can’t change them to the point that the readers do not recognize them as music players or cell phones, so it can be difficult to make any changes.

Kamachi: Then go to an electronics store and photograph the latest model. (laugh)

Fuyukawa: My phone is a model from over a decade ago, so maybe I should. (laugh)

Kamachi: We have mostly seen Academy City from Kamijou’s point of view so far. But there are other daily life cycles centered on other characters in the city. If you look at the center from two different points of view, you will start to see the living city that is Academy City. I want to show this in the novels as well.

Fuyukawa: That’s right. I may have said I wanted to put Kamijou in, but other than the novel prologue scene in Chapter 6, maybe it would be better to keep him out.

Kamachi: That can’t really be helped because main idea of this story is that something completely different to Kamijou’s experiences in Volume 1 was happening around Mikoto.

Fuyukawa: I guess it would be best to keep it at the level of having a bit of fun by giving an actual reason for the delinquents chasing after Kamijou in Volume 1.

Ogino: As the manga’s editor, I started the project because I wanted to do Volume 3 of the novels. But to get there, we have to get through Volume 1, what was going on in the background related to “that secret”, and her relationship with Kamijou.

Fuyukawa: That’s right. (laugh)

Ogino: I just have to pray it does not end before we get to Volume 3.

——Thank you very much.