Afterword
I, Kota Nozomi, the author of this book, have a typical structure that I use for my afterwords. I open them with a sort of mini-column consisting of logically questionable philosophical ramblings that may or may not have any sort of point, then I say something to the tune of “With all that said, hi! This is Kota Nozomi speaking” before moving into a section in which I discuss the contents of the volume, then I finally wrap things up with a thanks section. This time, however, I’m afraid to say that I’ll be ignoring that format entirely.
Sorry! And while I’m at it, sorry for releasing a volume that will be almost totally incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t seen the anime!
I imagine some of my readers are already aware of this—and in fact, if you’ve already read the volume you’ll have been aware of this since the first few pages—but this volume is a compilation of short stories that were originally included in the Blu-Ray and DVD releases of When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace (plus an original side story featuring Umeko). I went into those bonus stories with an “All right! It’s time to write a bunch of stuff that I could never get away with in the main series!” sort of attitude, completely forgetting the possibility that they might be released in volume form in the future. That was a terrible mistake. When it came time to put the volume together, I considered altering its contents to make the stories easier to understand for someone who hasn’t seen the anime...but doing that would’ve more or less required me to rewrite the whole volume from the ground up, so I reluctantly abandoned the idea. There are a few gags that were subtly altered to work better in the novel format, but I didn’t make any truly major revisions. And so, I offer this message to any readers who have been following the novels but have yet to watch the anime: I am deeply, deeply sorry for putting out a volume full of ultra-meta gags that assume you’ve seen the show and numbering it like it’s part of the main series. I sincerely hope that you’ll approach the volume with an open mind and enjoy it as well as you can, given the circumstances.
Now then: some background information on each story!
First up, the Tomoyo chapter. To start, I should establish that I absolutely hadn’t had these short stories planned out from the beginning. I’d wanted to give them a real sense of in-the-moment development, so I’d just started writing without a plan for how they’d conclude, figuring out where their plots would go as I wrote them. The stories were commissioned at a fairly early stage in the anime’s production, but tragically, I’ve always been a “procrastinate until you have to do all of your homework on the last day of summer vacation” sort of writer, so I ended up having to run my deadlines down to the wire, fighting for my life to finish them all in time. That’s not to say that I cut corners, of course—that’s a very different thing. I believe that a sense of in-the-moment development is born from works that are created within a limited time span...probably.
So anyway, my broad plan was to make the stories a series of prologue chapters detailing how each of the literary club’s members’ powers got their names...but when I actually started writing, I realized that the details that had already been established about that time frame were surprisingly hard to balance with a story of that nature. I tried paying careful attention to continuity at first, taking great care to consider what each character would know at any given point in time, but eventually that turned into too huge of a pain—or rather, I realized that nobody would even want that sort of fussy continuity checking from this series in the first place! That’s how everything took a meta turn, and from that point onward, writing the stories was a blast.
Being the first of the bonus stories, Tomoyo’s was written before I’d developed a good grasp of how writing them would really play out, and I ended up going way over the length limits that’d been imposed on me. Painful though it was, I had no choice but to cut a few aspects of the story. I considered bringing them back for the novel-form release, but when I went back to reread those sections, I found myself thinking that the story was actually better without them anyway, so I left them on the cutting room floor.
Next, the second story: Chifuyu’s. Now that I’d gone meta, there was no turning back. I found myself leaning into meta humor more and more heavily, and I also found myself burning through all my good name-related material surprisingly quickly. I almost panicked, but then Chifuyu herself saved the day, carrying me along to the end of the story by way of her capricious nature. Now that’s in-the-moment storytelling!
Story three: Sayumi’s. It felt like the meta humor really peaked with this one. As a side note, I only went to one of the anime recording sessions—one for the first episode—and a discussion came up about the intonation of Route of Origin, specifically in regard to whether the “o” or the “ri” should be more emphasized. Seeing as I was the original author, they asked me for my input, and I wanted to say “Huh? How am I supposed to know? And anyway, I grew up in the bumpkin backwaters of Tohoku, so I’m nowhere near confident that my intonation would be correct anyway!” In the end, though, we decided that emphasizing the “ri” was the way to go. Making anime’s tough.
Story four: Hatoko’s. Hmm. I mean, I think it turned out well and all, but I still found myself thinking that it would’ve been better if we could’ve stuck with the Tomoyo, Hatoko, Chifuyu, Sayumi order. Something about that order just feels really structurally right, I guess, whereas having Hatoko come after Sayumi just feels wrong in a way I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s like following up your after-meal coffee with a fish entrée. The change did help me get a better grasp of my feelings for that order, though, so in a sense, it might be a good thing to shuffle things around a little every once in a while.
Story five: Kiryuu’s. To tell the truth, I’d actually been requested to make the fifth story be about Kudou initially. A bunch of stuff happened, though, and in the end, they asked me to scrap that plan and make it be about Kiryuu instead. My editor felt really guilty about the whole thing and talked about being really sorry if I’d already written it as a Kudou story, to which I responded with a friendly smile and an “Oh, don’t worry. I haven’t even written a single word yet!” The terrifying part is that I wasn’t just saying that to make my editor feel better—I genuinely hadn’t even started writing the story. I’d also actually wanted to write about the power names on Kiryuu’s side of the story anyway, deep down, so it all worked out for the best in the end.
Story six: Andou’s. To be brutally honest, when these bonus stories were first proposed, a part of me could only think “More work? What a drag.” By the time I’d finished writing Andou’s story, however, part of me had started wanting to write even more of them. I have every intention of continuing to write professionally, of course, but I really do think that I’ll never have another chance to pen this meta of a story with characters this capable of carrying meta content.
The side story: Umeko’s. I had a feeling that not including any totally original content would be a bad move, so I wrote about certain events surrounding Umeko that were sort of brushed past in the previous volume. Talking about them too much would probably be in poor taste, though, so I’ll just give this story a “no comment” and move on.
And now, some thanks. To my editor and 029: thank you both so much for your hard work, as always. Next, to Ishige Rie, Hasegawa Tetsuya, and Yamaguchi Satoshi: I’m profoundly thankful that you not only worked on the anime, but contributed to the novels as well. And finally, I offer my greatest of thanks to all the readers who have stuck with this series all the way to volume 12.
Last but not least...I would like to deeply apologize one last time. Rest assured that the next volume will actually move the story forward.
And with that, may we meet again, if the fates allow it!
Kota Nozomi
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