Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 5 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

Back when I first started working on this series, my concept for the story was “an enormous chuuni is wrapped up in real-world supernatural battles and gets to go on a rampage using all the powers and skills he’d dreamed up in his wildest fantasies.” When I talked with my editor about the idea, though, they proposed that it would actually be funnier if the main character didn’t get wrapped up in any battles at all, and so the premise for When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace was born.

That initial, nixed idea, however, would live on in the form of this volume’s protagonist, Kiryuu Hajime, and it would come to form the backbone of his character. Kiryuu Hajime and Andou Jurai are two sides of the same coin, in a sense. They walk deeply contrasting paths throughout their tales, but back in the planning stage, they were actually almost the same person.

In a meta sense, Kiryuu Hajime is the man who couldn’t become the protagonist, and the fact that I was able to write a story in which he managed to be one in the end is honestly rather moving to me. When the first volume of this series was published and my editor brought up the idea of running short stories in a digital magazine format, I asked if I could make them about Kiryuu because I figured it couldn’t hurt to try, and I’m now very happy I took that shot in the dark. It never hurts to ask!

With all that said, hello! This is Kota Nozomi, and this volume was a compilation of side stories that ran for a year or so in the GA Bunko Magazine. They were serialized under the title The Commonplace Exists for Supernatural Battles, and I’m incredibly pleased that I was able to put them out in the form of a single volume. I’d started out writing the stories with the intention of making Kiryuu Hajime the protagonist, but by the time I was finished, it sort of felt like that duty had shifted over to the woman who was hopelessly charmed by our favorite fallen angel: Saitou Hitomi. Then again, the readers are the ones who get to decide who the real protagonist is in the end, so I’ll leave that judgment up to them.

And now, it’s time for thanks and acknowledgments! First, to my editor Nakamizo: as always, thank you for all your help! Thank you in particular for granting me permission to take the outrageous step of featuring a guy as the main focus of the volume’s cover.

Next, to 029: thank you for continuing to draw such incredible illustrations! The cover in particular was just perfect this time around. The first time I saw it, I thought that one glance might be enough to make me pregnant—and I’m a guy!

Finally, I’d like to offer my greatest of thanks to all the readers who’ve stuck with me through five volumes so far.

With that said, may we meet again, if the fates allow it!

Kota Nozomi