Another book finished...
Compared with the sense of accomplishment and reluctance to let go I felt when finishing my previous books, all I felt upon finishing this one was relief and regret.
I'm a fairly single-track person, and when too many things pile up, my brain starts to fog over. So writing this last stretch of the story was painful even with an outline, and in order to finish as soon as possible, I never got to write a lot of what was in that outline, or some of the little scenes I'd originally envisioned.
For example, in the original plan, Imu wasn't supposed to die in such a rushed fashion. I'd wanted to settle everything right at Saint Mary Geoise, taking on Imu and "Uranus" together and wiping out the entire Celestial Dragons group, something along the lines of "treading over the bones of nobles all along the imperial avenue."
The original plan also wasn't for Xie Wen to finish Imu off, but for Cat Princess, who would be summoned last, to do it. I'd actually decided on that before starting the book, wanting to further cement Xie Wen's identity as a "Cat Tree." And back then, the character I'd planned to have steamroll everyone was still Beerus.
Although I hadn't properly planned out how difficult the cats would be to obtain or how many there would be early on, I did intend to design a separate storyline for every feline at the end. For example, Sanji Meow would fight a crazed Judge and those three out-of-control red, blue, and green guys; Meow Jūshirō would defeat Hawk-Eye to become the greatest swordsman; Shalmeow and Kizaru would settle their contest once and for all, and so on...
Even for Shirahoshi, I'd originally wanted to write an offensive and defensive battle