And so a project I began 4 years ago has come to an end. It is with both great satisfaction and abject sorrow that I release Accel World – Carbide Wolf on behalf of a mysterious translation group, and with it will be the end of any further translation of Accel World from me.

It’s not a decision made lightly.

First of all, Yen Press has finally caught up with our glacial pace. It was expected, but still a bitter pill to swallow. As always, I encourage everyone visiting my site to support them by purchasing the official LN.

Second, it was with passion that I persisted in this project, but I’ve run low on that passion. After ensuring family crisis, university stress, and an attempt to find love, I find that I’m no longer the same person I was 4 years ago. I feel much older now and with it comes the determination to follow this decision through. I no longer enjoy keeping up with news and developments related to Accel World, not after the release of Volume 9 was completed, and certainly not after the horrendous release of Infinite Burst.

To quote what I wrote in a personal message:

Who the fuck cares about Kuroyukihime hiding her name for twenty volumes, pixies being mind-controlled and revealing themselves as intelligent AI, or even motherfucking game hackers with a doctorate in percussive engineering and a contract at Aperture Science? I want to know why is Takumu afraid of thrusts to the throat. I want to feel the chills that Chiyuri feels whenever she rings Citron Call. I want to understand the contradiction Kuroyukihime feels whenever she reaches out to Haruyuki and fights the urge to off his head. Accel World never did that, and it is the worse for it.

The appeal that Accel World had for me was pretty much all contained in its first volume. It was a short, simple story about a boy who faced difficulties, met with a challenge, suffered when the stakes were raised, but successfully endured through it and emerged with a better understanding of himself. It was easy to grasp and did not have more characters than necessary – or less clothing than it could do with.

Which brings me to the third and final point – for the promise and quality in storytelling it had, Accel World is one of those books you’d have a very difficult time explaining the dissonance between the story in the pages and the art on the cover. Calling it ‘art’ is probably the bare minimum respect I will afford for the series as a whole. I do not wish to spoil readers about events in later volumes, but the irrelevance of the nudity of many characters – whether in coloured illustrations or in monochromatic inserts – to the story is plaintively telling of the depths that Dengeki Bunko is willing to sink to in order to sell a book. And I for one am not willing to dive that deep no matter how much I love Accel World’s world.

I am extremely grateful to everyone I have worked with on translating this long and difficult project. In no particular order: Defan752, yuuka_miya, UniAdrian, extremewirehead, Mttblue2, Arknarok, CJ, NSSpaser, thommy, and many others who have contributed their valuable input – arigatou gozaimasu.

In the meantime, while I might occasionally go over some of the colour illustrations – doing the colour wheel in Illustrator is a great exercise, after all! – I will continue with my pet projects and a certain ‘fanfiction’. It is time to let go of this labour of love.

Burst Out.

-Destination