Polynesia: "Come on, everyone, gather around! I have some special news today."

Chee-Chee: "What is it, Polynesia? Has the Doctor made another new invention?"

Polynesia: "Something even more wonderful! Our adventures have now become a 'gamebook.' Readers can make their own choices and experience different stories."

Gub-Gub: "A gamebook? Can you eat it?"

Dab-Dab: "Oh, you! It's a book, a book! But it's different from ordinary books. Readers can choose the path of the story. How wonderful!"

Too-Too: "Fascinating. So readers can participate in our adventures?"

Polynesia: "Exactly, Too-Too! This book starts from when the Doctor sets sail for Africa. But this time, it's the readers who make the important choices."

Chee-Chee: "For example, what kind of choices?"

Polynesia: "When caught in a storm, which island to seek shelter on; when encountering pirates, how to deal with them; how to treat sick animals... Each choice leads the story down a different path."

Dab-Dab: "That sounds interesting! You can't know the whole story from just one reading."

Gub-Gub: "Are there lots of scenes where I'm active? Especially scenes with food?"

Polynesia: "Of course, Gub-Gub. There are definitely scenes where you play a big role with food. But this time, whether you reach those scenes depends on the reader's choices."

Dab-Dab: "That's right. We'd want people to start their first meeting with us from the Doctor's first adventure."

Too-Too: "Logical. The true value of this gamebook can only be realized with that foundational knowledge."

Polynesia: "And this book has 69 chapters! You can't experience everything in just one reading, so you can enjoy it many times."

Chee-Chee: "The scenes where we monkeys build bridges in Africa are in there too!"

Gub-Gub: "Are there scenes where I find delicious things on pirate ships?"

Dab-Dab: "You should be able to see me being active, flying around as a guide."

Too-Too: "There will probably be scenes where my sharp hearing helps solve mysteries."

Polynesia: "Everyone's activities are properly depicted. But what's most important is that readers can experience their own unique adventure."

All together: "Come on, let's start a new adventure together from Puddleby-on-the-Marsh!"

The Beginning of the Story and Adventure Content

Polynesia: "Now, let's talk about the actual content of the story. This adventure begins with the Doctor learning animal language from me."

Chee-Chee: "I remember that time! The Doctor's surprised face when he first understood our language!"

Polynesia: "Yes! When I said 'Ka-ka oi-ee, fee-fee?' and the Doctor's reaction... It meant 'Is this porridge still hot?'"

Dab-Dab: "The story depicts the Doctor gaining the mysterious ability to talk with animals and learning about this special world through encounters with us various animals."

Gub-Gub: "And the Doctor became a doctor beloved by all kinds of animals! But..."

Too-Too: "Then he fell into economic hardship. Human patients stopped coming."

Polynesia: "That's right. As a result of dedicating himself to treating animals, he became poor. At that time..."

Chee-Chee: "A call for help came from Africa! From my cousin, saying the monkeys were in terrible trouble with disease."

Dab-Dab: "Now, what will Dr. Dolittle and we do... Well, we know the answer, but in the gamebook, it's the readers who make the choice."

The Gamebook's Branching System

Chee-Chee: "But what specific choices can you make?"

Polynesia: "For example, when caught in a storm, which island to seek shelter on; when encountering pirates, how to deal with them; in what order to treat sick animals... Each time you make such choices, the story goes down a different path."

Dab-Dab: "Since you can't know the whole story from just one reading, you can enjoy it many times - that's the charm."

Gub-Gub: "Are there lots of scenes where I'm active? Especially scenes with food?"

Polynesia: "Of course, Gub-Gub. There are definitely scenes where you're delighted in the monkeys' fields. But this time, whether you reach those scenes depends on the reader's choices."

Too-Too: "Looking at the branching diagram, it's clearly a complex structure. It's obvious you can't grasp the whole thing in one go."

Chee-Chee: "So I think it would be fun for interested people to try it several times. There should be different discoveries each time."

Dab-Dab: "So each reader can experience their own unique Dr. Dolittle adventure. How wonderful!"

Behind the Scenes - The Creative Process as Witnessed by the Animals

Dab-Dab: "By the way, we were watching how this book was made. Didn't the creator originally try to make something completely different?"

Polynesia: "That's right! At first, they tried to make something called a 'real-time RPG game.' Where AI would be the game master, and you'd defeat monsters and gain experience..."

Gub-Gub: "Defeating monsters sounds scary! That wouldn't suit me."

Chee-Chee: "But it didn't work out in the end. AI in 2025 was still poor at constructing stories."

Too-Too: "Interesting. So technology had its limitations."

Polynesia: "That's when the creator thought: 'Maybe AI games would be more interesting if we used existing masterpiece stories.' That's when they remembered our tale."

Dab-Dab: "Then they thought of the gamebook format. The idea of making it a paper book was interesting too."

Trial and Error in Story Creation

Chee-Chee: "The initial story creation was tough, wasn't it? We were worried too."

Polynesia: "That's right! At first, they tried to follow the original and have AI automatically create story branches and automatically generate content for each chapter."

Dab-Dab: "But it failed as expected."

Gub-Gub: "What was the problem?"

Polynesia: "The AI tried to make each chapter a 'good story.' All 69 chapters would each be concluded with tales of love and friendship. It was like..."

Too-Too: "Like 'rich garlic, chives, ginger, extra-everything ramen' - overly intense seasoning. A very understandable analogy."

Chee-Chee: "Even when they asked 'don't make every chapter a good story,' it didn't get through at all. They say that nuance still remains a bit in some of the earlier chapter endings."

Dab-Dab: "I hope readers will laugh and forgive if they find such passages."

The Innovation of Dividing Long Stories

Polynesia: "So they changed direction. They had AI create somewhat long stories first - about 8,000 words - then divided them into four parts to create branches."

Chee-Chee: "That worked well!"

Too-Too: "But new problems arose, didn't they?"

Polynesia: "Sharp as always, Too-Too. Since AI only remembers the current conversation, humans had to check the consistency between chapters created first and those created later."

Dab-Dab: "Contradictions even occurred within the same chapter. Like having 'the ship proceeds through the middle of the sea' followed a few lines later by 'the ship departed from port.'"

Gub-Gub: "That's definitely strange. Where is the ship?"

Chee-Chee: "Fixing all those errors was tough, so the creator says they hope readers will laugh and forgive if they find any."

Story Branches and Endings

Dab-Dab: "There was quite a bit of debate about how to handle the final endings."

Polynesia: "That's right. Whether to have multiple endings or converge to one. There was even consideration of having bad endings."

Gub-Gub: "Bad endings? Where we become unhappy? I don't like that!"

Chee-Chee: "But in the end, since this book is 'for people who love Dr. Dolittle's stories to immerse themselves more in that world,' they prioritized not making anyone feel bad."

Too-Too: "A wise decision. So only the middle processes can be experienced in multiple ways, with everyone getting a happy ending in the end."

Dab-Dab: "It might lack narrative breadth, but multiple endings would be too complicated to wrap up properly."

Polynesia: "The mechanism where actions in early chapters affect later chapters, like in proper gamebooks, is a gimmick they'd like to try if there's a sequel."

Struggles with Illustration Creation

Chee-Chee: "The illustration work after the text was done was tough too."

Polynesia: "The prompts were really difficult. Instructions like '1800s English countryside port town, portly gentleman with bland face, clean lines in ○○ style' would go on for about 20 lines."

Dab-Dab: "But it didn't result in consistent pictures."

Too-Too: "There was also a major AI version update midway through, which completely changed the art style."

Gub-Gub: "So as a last resort, they had us say 'animals don't remember human faces anyway,' right?"

Polynesia: "That's right, Gub-Gub! Especially having me explain the differences in facial depictions. I think it was quite a clever solution, don't you?"

Web Application Development

Dab-Dab: "Alongside the story, they were also creating a web app for preview reading."

Chee-Chee: "This was troublesome too. There was the problem of 'AI messing up parts that were working well when nearing completion.'"

Too-Too: "When complexity exceeds a certain level, AI tends to become unable to process it properly."

Polynesia: "That's right. So leaving everything to AI doesn't work, and the process became 'humans create the app's operating logic and commission parts to AI.'"

Dab-Dab: "In the first half of 2025, AI is good at 'simple structure with large amounts of work' but still often fails at 'complex apps pioneering new fields.'"

Automatic Illustration Insertion

Polynesia: "Initially, they planned to create a Kindle e-book version too."

Chee-Chee: "So they put all the text including choices into Word, and created a program to automatically insert hyperlinks from choices to corresponding chapters and illustrations."

Too-Too: "It was a complex process where Mac VBA couldn't do it but Windows VBA could, Google Docs GAS was only good at this particular thing, and so on."

Dab-Dab: "In the end, they used Mac VBA, GAS, Python, JavaScript, and more."

Gub-Gub: "Sounds complicated, but they were doing amazing things."

Polynesia: "PDF and Word hyperlinks are invisible, so handling things like 'links disappear just by moving chapters but the change is invisible' was very difficult."

Dab-Dab: "They also set up illustrations to wrap text around them, but it didn't work in Kindle display and looked bad, which became one reason to abandon the e-book version."

Amazon Application

Chee-Chee: "And finally came the time to apply to Amazon."

Polynesia: "Based on the English original with expired copyright, it should be fine, but they worried it might get rejected."

Too-Too: "But it passed after about two days of review."

Dab-Dab: "As a specific issue with our story, the original had racist expressions, so avoiding those in the narrative might have been important."

Gub-Gub: "They made considerations so everyone could read comfortably. That's good."

Reflecting on the Production

Polynesia: "Since AI did all the story and illustrations, the creator was doing the work of an editor, SE, and producer."

Dab-Dab: "Paper book profits are really low apparently, but there's great satisfaction in having an actual 'thing' made."

Chee-Chee: "Now they're planning an English version, constantly checking what AI translated into English. English checking seems tough."

Too-Too: "And if this book sells well in both Japanese and English, they're considering making a side story for 'The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle' too."

Polynesia: "For the next work, they want to expand our daily life and animal-to-animal conversations more. Though that's a future that can't be seen unless the first work sells."

Gub-Gub: "We could read more of our everyday conversations? That sounds fun!"

Dab-Dab: "Through this book, there were great discoveries in both the desire to re-enter the story world one was passionate about as a child, and the process of trying to create something with AI, this 'unknown tool.'"

Chee-Chee: "This book was made hoping that some small discovery would occur in readers' hearts too."

Too-Too: "It's also an experimental work testing how far one could 'play' using the world of the classic 'Doctor Dolittle' in 2025, when AI began rapidly spreading."

Polynesia: "That's right. The creator said they don't even know if the finished product is 'interesting.' But the process itself had value."