It’s time for another chapter look back, and today I’m reflecting back on chapter 14. Chapter 14 marked a major turning point in the story. Up until this point, Kalwa’s adventures had been mostly small and moved in a simple way, Kalwa and occasionally Reko traveling to some distant era and dealing with whatever peril came about them, they would go home and do it all over again.

With Chapter 14, it all changed as this issue brought a whole lot of new to the plate. This was the first time in the entire series that Kalwa’s happy demeanor is ultimately broken and she sheds tears for the first time in the entire story. The ultimate theme of this two part story was “fun and games” illustrated as now Kalwa faces an even greater danger than just her own life… her brother’s.

The bond between Kalwa and Zack was actually based off of the bonds I had seen amongst the siblings of my friends in high school, in which the two siblings tend to share a great deal of common interest and treat each other like best friends. More importantly this type of bond would probably be most valuable to Kalwa given that she didn’t have very many friends herself having just moved in from America. Thus this chapter allowed us to give Kalwa an even greater challenge of not only having get home, but to clean up a mess that SHE HERSELF created.

Zack himself went through a notable change since the first chapter. In the first chapter Zack was shown to be somewhat of a “typical” younger brother, notably being bit snarky to his sister and vise versa (though this is ultimately revealed to be a simple interaction) in the first chapter. This was changed in this chapter to so that Zack is much more cowardly and fragile, this was done to set him on a character arch that will be further carried throughout the story, which we will once again talk about as it progresses.

Possibly my favorite part of writing this chapter aside from the emotional moments featuring Kalwa and Zack are Zack’s interactions with Alexander. When writing these scenes I based them off interactions between “special needs” students and instructors. As an aspie myself, I know first hand how hard it might be to connect with people with special needs and that brute force and toughness doesn’t solve the issue. Every time I was drawing Zack and Alexander’s scenes I nearly cried myself, plus it was also a great way for people from the past to learn about the future and it played a roll in the overall search, see the pages below. As for the antagonists… we will get to them when we discuss chapter 15.

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