Shift Comments Thread

[Andromeda]

As you probably expected chapter 371 is available as well. I had to catch up on the writing. This chapter finally starts to explain things about the group. Part of it is the contrast between this group and Hiroshi group. They have benefactors that aid them, but the way that they handle the situations are different. Hiroshi's group fought back against the violence, while this group even though they were actually more experienced in fight have chosen to be defensive. They want a peaceful solution rather than a violent one.

I did intentionally leave the details out of the story. Both for the sake of keeping this brief, since this is not the moment to really get into this and it is something that is better told later. There is a lot of things that this place have to offer and this is only a little taste of it. But like it said before, it is going to be an important piece to the city. The plans that Saki have put into motion with Hiroshi will spread to here as well.

I also didn't want to forget or ignore the fact that Saki did all of this to protect everyone from the wrath of the UN. She's trying to push off a fight that she knows is coming. And everything that she is doing is trying to keep that at bay. Unfortunately, it is going to be a tidal wave that won't be stopped. The slow building will end up coming out through the arcs until it hits a head. But Saki will continue to make plans behind everyone else to keep things forestalled. This group is going to be come important to Saki's efforts.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Chapter 372 is now available, a week later again. Issues came up last week that made it difficult for me to write. So I had to play catch up this weekend. But the progress on the epilogue is moving quickly now. I've wrapped up the matters with Ayano and the Byako Alliance for the time being. Like I said, they'll be back and they're important to the story. That'll become clear later on once I get into the big story arc that's coming.

Saki is finally back with everyone now. I do intentionally not make point to say the what the plan that Saki has for Hiroshi. I've already hinted at the intent before, so I'm leaving it alone for now. It'll be come clear as I progress what Hiroshi is going to be doing if you haven't figured it out. It'll be some very interesting character growth for Hiroshi what he has to do.

The original plan I had was for Yumi to wake up last, but as I was writing things I decided to move things around. There's a really good reason while Yuki is still asleep and so this plans into it that he's still asleep. Because there are very important reasons now for his slow recovery. Given what everyone knows, it should be pretty obvious what those reasons are. So Yumi will be the first topic to be approached.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Chapter 373 is also available now and gets me caught up once again. Providing nothing strange happens, things should be normal again. But with this chapter we're getting close finally to the end of the arc and epilogue, which has gone on much longer than originally planned. But it was not wasted time at least. It was all very important and much needed time. If things play out as I expect there really only should be two chapters left. I have the things to explain what's going on with Yumi's friends and then Yuki waking up. Yuki waking up will mark the end of the arc and the start of a new one.

Yumi waking up and presenting everyone with this dilemma of it not being her finally starts to put some focus no what's been going on with Yumi. Answering the questions to what has been going on with her since the second arc is going to be focus of the future coming arc. She's got a lot of things coming down the road and it's now time to give her face time. This is going to be the first in a series of non-plot related arcs, plot referring to the main storyline that exists with Yuki and his fight against the organization inside Japan and him completing his long dead father's goals of a free Atlantis. Having non-plot related arcs is something very important to me for a number of reasons.

One of the things that always ends up bothering me in Shounen Jump stories is that the main character is always the hero even an in large cast of powerful characters. And the main cast tends not to receive much attention or growth beyond their one introduction arc. This isn't always the true, but it does largely hold true for most. So this is meant to address those issues. Every single main character will receive their own personal arc where they'll be the hero, not Yuki. He'll still be present in some of them, but the main character will be someone else than Yuki. And they will serve as major milestones for the characters growth as a person and with their power. I've naturally continued to grow and develop the characters through the main story arcs and that remains important. But they've all got personal stories and pasts that will need to be addressed. And they'll be given full attention to do so in these. Yumi is the first to receive this treatment and has the possibility of being the longest of the character driven arcs. I do expect it to easily be a 100+ chapter arc consisting of 4 major sub-arcs. It's a very big story for her.

That's going to be the future of Shift for the next year or two. I've got a lot of plans and interesting developments in store for people. So you can all look forward to that starting up very soon.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Chapter 374 is available for reading now! I'm hopefully back on my normal schedule again, at least until next month. But for now the epilogue is coming to an end. Yuki is now awake, which is different from last time. The epilogue started with him waking up, which did not hurt too much in that case since not a lot of things happened that I needed to directly cover. That wasn't the case here. Yuki's use to the plot in the epilogue was nearly non-existent since others were handling things. He served the use for him and I let other characters step forward.

But now that Yuki is awake things will wrap up quickly and I'll push things into the next arc. I only have the one remaining chapter for the third arc before I press on with the fourth arc. Yuki's insertion into the story once more will get things moving since his thoughts and plans will be less conventional in their minds. He has ideas that they won't have considered, which should not end up being too surprising for those reading.

The other big part of this chapter is finally getting an explanation on Katsumi. I had written specifically from the beginning of the arc in a certain way knowing how she was working. The reason for her dead like appearance while she fought Seiji was because of her power. She was dead mentally because she was constantly in that state of being assaulted by mental corruption and horrible things up against their power to resist. As a result of being whole sane and aware the entire time unable to bend to it after the weeks and months, left her in that dead state. It's like wanted to scream, but because you have no voice you can't scream sort of situation. She definitely by far had the worse outcome of all the characters and is broken even though she can't actually be broken.

The absolute darkness of this arc is finally coming to an end though. This is a new and very different tone for the story. But it will be unique to this arc. The rest of the arcs will not be so pitched in darkness. Though it is not to say there won't be dark arcs. I have several planned in the future. But I doubt they'll compare to how depressing this one turned out.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Chapter 375 is now available for reading! This is the last chapter to the third arc, it is finally over. The long dark comes to an end. Unlike the last arc, this does directly cliffhang into the next arc, thanks to Yumi being in trouble. The cast will change again, since those involved this time will be different than those involved in the previous arc. But this is going to be very differently arranged arc thanks to what I'm going to be doing. So it's going to be a bit of a genre shift.

Hiroshi's purpose is being setup now, though it's a long term sort of thing like I said. I'm not going to spend too much time on things in the early stages. It'll be things that I'll touch on in the future once some progress is made. Something that I'll come back to when it is the right time and you'll see how things have changed a lot. Though it is also important that everything is perfectly fine after Takako's death. Yuki isn't magically over it all. Though he's more in the state of mind of having trouble accepting the reality while he is blaming himself. He never hated Hiroshi, he just couldn't agree with the idea of killing people. And that Hiroshi killed again to end Takako's reign of terror only makes things worse for Yuki because he failed to save her like he promised he would. So there is a lot of external shifting while internally blaming.

The new arc, the fourth arc for Yumi will be split up into five sub-arcs. The first one is going to be short with it putting the arc into position fully. The rest will be very meaty arcs with a lot of stuff happening. My current estimates envision this whole arc being about 100 chapters long, about the same length as the Takako arc. Though there is going to be a lot more smaller stories happening this time around, hence sub-arcs being present this time. You'll be getting learn a lot about Yumi and the way she thinks through his arc. And she's the main character don't forget. Yuki's not the main character. He'll start out as the point of view, but it will shift over to Yumi's point of view soon enough. That'll be very important in these character arcs. Yuki will be taking a back seat and won't be saving the day. It'll be on Yumi to do that.

Enjoy!