Hiyori here. I'm the author of this book.
This time's story was born from me noticing that "huh, I haven't been seeing a lot of photo shops around town lately", and from there I started wondering what it might be like in Gensokyo. Being separated from the Outside World by the Great Hakurei Barrier should have left it in the Meiji era, but photography technology had already landed in Japan at the time, so I figured that it'd be fine for the Human Village to have some sort of photo culture. At least, at first.
Since color photography started spreading in the Showa era, I figured that they'd be stuck with monochrome and handheld cameras wouldn't be common either. It sure was fun coming up with all this stuff. Well, Shemaimeru has her camera and Hatate her cell phone for instance, but I decided that those had been made by the kappa with some fancy technique and that the youkai side was a bit different anyway.So, with the stage and background info all set, I had to deal with the actual story. When it comes to the Human Village, the inside of Suzunaan may have gotten a lot of depictions but there's still a lot of little details we don't really know, so again it felt like there was a lot to think and speculate about. It was fun!Then I started work on a plot centered around Reimu and Marisa's relationship, but ended up taking more time than expected. The reason for that is clear: I thought that in order to depict their relationship, stuff like their past conversations and history as main characters were absolutely necessary.
The source material leaves a lot unclear about their relationship, after all, or rather their past. It has to be pieced together from fragmented information in stuff like dialogue from the games and print works. But that's exactly why I thought there might've been all sorts of juicy drama there and started piecing together my very own version of their backstory. This time's story had a touch of it, but I want to draw a story properly focused on their past sometime.For this time, though, I wanted to put together a story hinting at their backgrounds but centered on the feelings going on between them. I'm happy if I managed to capture in my own shape even a bit of their superb relationship that I felt while reading Forbidden Scrollery.But in any case, this was a story about Reimu and Marisa centered on photos. I already have a rough idea about next time's story, so I'm afraid it's going to be another ReiMari book. If only possible, I'd be incredibly happy if you continued to stick with me. I'm also waiting to hear your thoughts.
Well then, I pray we can meet again over my next book!
