Commentary:
With Mako's situation, this decision of his was inevitable. Before I had started the revamp, my original plans for "Maku" (his original name) were to have him leave right after Usaro got away in chapter 14, which involved him already knowing things that this version of Mako wouldn't have known. I'm glad I had changed it because we would have had significantly less screen time with him, instead of having a whole volume for him to develop a relationship with the characters. This also gave me the opportunity to have things like Orhan and Shoro as characters.
Relevant pages:
15-1, 15-3, 18-27