Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 7 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

I believe that people’s reasons for falling for each other are, generally speaking, ambiguous and entirely unclear, making it all but impossible for an outside observer to truly understand them. Sometimes, not even the person who fell in love themself can understand their reasons. This isn’t just confined to romantic relationships—I don’t think anyone would be able to provide a clear and definite timing for when they began to grow fond of their family or friends either.

You could ask them what they like about the person in question, and they’d probably be able to pull out some sort of answer, of course...but I’ve always felt that those reasons are invariably defined in retrospect. It’s never a matter of thinking “I like this and that about this person, so I want to be with them”; it’s a matter of thinking “Why am I with this person?” and then catching on to the reasoning behind it—or, perhaps, it’s less about catching on to the reason and more about deciding what your reason was.

Fiction’s full of foreshadowing for future romances and friendships, but needless to say, foreshadowing isn’t a thing in reality. Sure, you can look back, pick out some random something-or-other and think, “Oh, that was totally a sign that this was going to happen,” but in my book, that’s just us imposing our perspective on reality.

So, anyway, this is Kota Nozomi! This volume was a series of pool-themed short stories. I really enjoyed the chance to let each of the series’ heroines express her feelings and beliefs at her leisure. It, umm, also serves to finally tie off an especially important plot thread that’s been dangling since the end of volume four. That sure took a while, didn’t it? I really went off the rails for volume five’s and volume six’s plots, after all!

Also, man...nobody used their powers at all in this volume, again. It sort of feels like this series’ initial concept went completely out the window somewhere along the way. Next volume will be the cultural festival arc (probably), and I’m set on having some powers get used somewhere in there!

With that, it’s time for the acknowledgments.

To my editor, Nakamizo: thank you once again for your help on this volume. I get the sense that your schedule’s been sort of insane recently, so good luck with that! Next, to 029: thank you, now and forever, for always drawing such wonderful illustrations. When I first saw the cover of this volume, something about it struck me as vaguely incongruous, but I just couldn’t figure out why until I realized that this was the first volume in the series to feature one of the heroines wearing something other than a school uniform on its cover. Finally, I’d like to offer my greatest of thanks to all the readers who’ve stuck with this series through its seventh volume.

That’s all for now! May we meet again, if the fates allow it!

Kota Nozomi

Bonus Translation Notes: On Anime the Author

My initial premise for this pre-TL note essay was to point out that this was the final volume to be published as of the anime adaptation of Supernatural Battles’ release, discuss the differences between the anime and the novels, and summarize the anime-original content for any readers who’ve either never watched the show or have forgotten it in the (oh god) decade-plus since it aired. Upon sitting down to actually write that section, however, I came to two important revelations: first, ninety-five percent of our readers have seen the anime already and would find a section like that hideously tedious whether they remembered it well or not, and second, I just don’t really have that much to say about the anime adaptation that I haven’t already touched on in previous essays. It’s very good! It trims many of the pop culture references in favor of classic Trigger-style visual humor! The voice actors do a great job! ...Aaand, that’s pretty much all I’ve got.

As such, I’ve decided to take a new approach for this volume’s essay: I’ll be doing a quick digest-version of my original concept, then spend the rest of the section digging into another relatively small secondary topic: the man, the myth, Kota Nozomi himself. While deep-diving into the author’s personal life for an entire section would be something of a breach of privacy (especially given how private many light novel authors tend to be), I imagine that many of our readers would be interested in at least hearing what’s publicly known about the author, and that’s precisely what I’ll endeavor to report! Be forewarned: it’s not much.

First off, my original plan: the anime! The animated adaptation of When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace aired for twelve episodes from October to December of 2014. It was the second work of Studio Trigger, a studio founded by former Studio Gainax employees, and as of the writing of this section, it remains their only light novel adaptation to date. The anime adapts a piecemeal mishmash of elements from all of the first seven volumes in the series, picking, choosing, and rearranging plot elements to bring the story together into a cohesive whole in spite of the fact that large chunks of it were cut out.

Particularly notable omissions include the better part of volume five, with Fallen Black’s various adventures only being touched upon in a single episode, and Tamaki, who gets a single-frame cameo in the show’s final credits sequence but is otherwise cut entirely. Sagami’s screen time is drastically reduced as well, with his backstory with Andou being almost entirely unaddressed (and with all of the truly horrifying innuendos he spouts at all times significantly toned down, because you just can’t get away with most of that nonsense on TV). In fact, the only scene from the entirety of volume six that made it into the show was the one where Andou and Tomoyo meet in the park.

The anime also introduced a few plot elements, and covered one major revelation that the novels had not yet gotten around to addressing! Whether those plot elements and the nature of that revelation are canon as far as the novels are concerned was, of course, unclear at the time, and it remains to be seen for those of you following along with the English releases. Nevertheless, if you’d rather not get maybe-spoiled on a plot point that was set up way back in volume one and has yet to be resolved, I recommend skipping past the following paragraph!

In short: the anime adds on a climactic final plot arc to serve as the series’s conclusion! Said arc takes place mostly in the final episode, and involves a Player—specifically, a member of F who escaped Fallen Black’s purge—using her power to take control of Kudou Mirei’s body, then attempting to steal the powers of the literary club’s members. She comes quite close to succeeding, but is thwarted in the end by Andou’s use of Dark and Dark of the End, the second stage of Andou’s power that hasn’t been referenced in any capacity since way back in volume two! Per the anime’s continuity, of the End has the effect of making Andou’s dark flame actually burn...and rendering him unable to put it out. He tricks not-Kudou into stealing the power, Kudou’s arm ends up on fire with not-Kudou still inside, not-Kudou returns to her own body and returns Kudou to normal, not-Kudou gets crushed by Kiryuu once she wakes up in her own body, and Andou and Kudou are saved by Chifuyu chopping off their arms and Sayumi bringing said arms back again. Then everyone lives happily ever after—aside from all the trauma!

...And with that summary out of the way, there’s not all that much left to be said about the anime! Oh, aside from one conspiracy theory of mine that’s been driving me insane since way back in volume one: I am absolutely convinced that Leatia was not, in fact, originally intended to be fairy-sized, as she’s portrayed in the anime. The first seven novels make no specific reference to her size at all, and she only ever appears on her own without anything to lend a sense of scale in illustrations, but a few sequences—most appallingly the one in which Sagami mimes groping her chest near the end of volume five—certainly seem to imply that she’s meant to be regular human sized. One has to assume the choice to make her pocket-sized was made with Kota Nozomi’s approval, of course, so I’ll be very interested to see whether or not her size is specifically addressed at any time in the remaining six volumes.

That seems as good of a segue as any to move into the second topic of the day: the author! Kota Nozomi is a rather prolific light novel writer whose first series, Boku wa Yappari Kizukanai, began in 2011. Supernatural Battles was his third series, beginning in 2012, and since then, he’s published over a dozen different novels. Supernatural Battles isn’t the only work of his that’s been translated into English either—You like me, don’t you? So, wanna go out with me? was licensed by Tentai Books in 2022, Are You Okay With a Slightly Older Girlfriend? is licensed by J-Novel Club and has been fully translated, and You Like Me, Not My Daughter?!’s license (by JNC as well) was announced the very same day I’m writing this section!

(Which is a shame, since I was planning on mentioning its license here before it was officially announced, just to see if I could get away with playing chicken with the announcement date vs. the date of this volume’s publication. That’s one perfect opportunity to mess with my editor—who also edited Slightly Older Girlfriend and is now editing the mom one as well—down the drain.) [Editor’s note— >:( ]

Lest you assume that Kota Nozomi just has a thing for series involving age-gap relationships—which, to be clear, I’m also not ruling out—his novels cover a pretty wild range of topics! His first series, Boku wa Yappari Kizukanai, is a rom-com revolving around a protagonist who fails, or perhaps refuses, to notice the intensely supernatural characters and events around him. His second series, Happy Death Day, stars a suicidal protagonist who hires someone to engineer his ideal death. Then, in Isekai Tennis Musou, he writes about a protagonist who’s summoned to another world to be a hero...and he carries out his heroic duties by playing tennis well enough to slay dragons and obliterate armies with the might of his racket. So, yeah—while the English-language Kota Nozomi library might lead you to believe he likes to stay in a certain thematic comfort zone, the truth is that he really varies things up quite a lot!

So, what do we know about Kota Nozomi himself? Frankly, not all that much, which isn’t actually all that much of a surprise! It’s very common for authors in the light novel scene to write under pen names and keep their personal lives under wraps. Kota Nozomi is, in fact, almost certainly a pen name itself, and to the best of my knowledge, he’s never revealed his actual name (which, again, is quite common in the light novel industry). Japanese Wikipedia claims that his pen name is derived from a kanji spelling of one of the names for Jiang Ziya, a Chinese nobleman from the eleventh century (Kota Nozomi is written as 望公太 and one of Jiang Ziya’s names is 太公望—so, the same characters, but backwards), but that factoid also has a “citation needed” label, so I assume it’s an inference rather than something that Kota Nozomi has stated.

His pen name aside, Wikipedia also notes that he was born in 1989 in Fukushima Prefecture, went to college at Yokohama National University, and...that’s really about it. He’s apparently associated with Straight Edge Inc., an entertainment company founded by a former Dengeki Bunko editor, but his page on their website is just his name and the words “NO IMAGE” on a plain white background. Given the lack of any other real information about him, I feel safe in assuming that his relative anonymity is intentional, and at this point in my research I decided not to go scraping around the internet for any personal details that may have slipped out over the years, out of respect for his privacy.

There is, however, one remaining source of information about the author: his Twitter account! Kota Nozomi is an active Twitter user, and glancing through his feed reveals a few fun little tidbits. First off is the fact that he shares one trait with Andou: a love of tokusatsu shows that has carried on well into his adulthood! The bulk of his posts are about his work, posting preview images and art from his various books, and when he does post something personal, it’s almost invariably about his family or a tokusatsu show (or, on occasion, his children posing with Tokusatsu merch). Given that his currently running novel series are, err, rather racy, this makes for an extremely amusing juxtaposition of very cute family photos and drawings of anime girls with...well, I’ll let your imagination finish that sentence for me.

So, to sum up: Kota Nozomi is something of an enigma, but since he works in one of the rare industries that actually makes a fairly consistent point of respecting creators’ privacy when it’s desired, that doesn’t really make him a particularly exceptional case! The one big takeaway from this that feels relevant to you readers is that he’s written many, many more books in a much wider variety of genres than one might assume from looking at the relatively few available in English. I can only hope that some of those earlier works of his will get to see the light of day outside of Japan eventually!

Now then, I think it’s time to get to the notes part of this TL notes section! This volume was a little more restrained than volume six’s unending torrent of pop-culture shoutouts, but there’s still a lot for us to go over, so let’s get right to it!

Prologue

? ...and battering my old body pillow like a sandbag as I unleashed a full Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms taijutsu on it.

This is a special move from Naruto that involves sixty-four open palm strikes! You may recall it from volume 3, in which Andou mentions spraining his finger during an attempt to pull the technique off.

? I made it all the way to the Eight Trigrams Three-Hundred Sixty-One Style—a game-original move...

The game in question is Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3, a PS2 exclusive that came out in 2005! In other words, this was a pretty deep cut even at the time this novel was originally published.

? ...in two years, at the Sabaody Archipelago.

Andou’s referencing an iconic moment from One Piece in this line! In its original context, the line refers to a promise that the main cast of the series makes to reunite after they go their separate ways to train.

Chapter 1

? That said, I was a little confused by how he kept shouting stuff like “Devil Laser Bullet!” and “Ultimate Dragon Pitch!” and “Ignite Pass: Kai!”

All three of these are special moves from various sports manga! The Devil Laser Bullet is from Eyeshield 21, an American football manga written by Inagaki Riichiro and illustrated by Murata Yusuke (who would go on to illustrate the mega-popular series One Punch Man, incidentally). The Ultimate Dragon Pitch, meanwhile, is from Mr. Fullswing, a baseball manga by Suzuki Shinya, and Ignite Pass: Kai is from Kuroko’s Basketball, a manga by Fujimaki Tadatoshi about...well, you can probably guess. All three of these manga, by the way, were serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump.

? Y’know, there’s that one game show where they do the chant? ‘Pajero, Pajero!’

The game show in question is Tokyo Friend Park 2! It was on the air from 1994 to 2011, and it involved participants playing games, many of them quite silly, for a variety of prizes. The final game in each episode had players throwing darts they’d earned in previous games at a spinning dart board, and if they happened to land a dart in one very small wedge of the board, they would win a Pajero—hence why the audience would chant the name of the car as the participants threw their darts. One sort of has to assume there was a sponsorship deal between the show and the car’s manufacturer.

? Was the zookeeper Hayami Mocomichi? Is this just Moco’s Kitchen?!

Moco’s Kitchen is a TV show that features Hayami Mocomichi, a prominent actor, teaching the audience how to cook. Apparently, one of the distinguishing characteristics of his cooking style is an appreciation—and, perhaps, overuse—of olive oil. It seems that Mocomichi and olive oil was something of a meme, especially around 2011 when his show had just started, and you can find videos of Mocomichi impersonators cooking dishes using comically gratuitous amounts of olive oil that date back to right around when this volume was published. As such, it seems likely that Andou’s shouting out the meme as much as he is the actual person in this line.

? She’s like the TV version of Detective Galileo, seriously...

Detective Galileo is the titular main character of the Detective Galileo series of mystery novels, written by Higashino Keigo. The novels received a TV adaptation in 2007, simply titled Galileo, which is the one that Andou’s referring to here. In the series, Detective Galileo is the nickname of Yukawa Manabu, a physicist who helps the police solve particularly difficult mysteries.

? That’s not living on hard mode, it’s living on Sunfish Must Die mode!

This line’s a pretty direct shoutout to the Dante Must Die mode in the Devil May Cry series of video games—typically the hardest difficulty in each of the series’ games.

? ...and he’s also got this really great skill that fills up a bar of the Musou Gauge!

It’s only at this point in Andou’s explanation that it becomes clear that he hasn’t been describing Honda Tadakatsu, the historical general, but has rather been describing Honda Tadakatsu, a playable character in the Samurai Warriors series of video games. Samurai Warriors is a spinoff of the Dynasty Warriors series, which centers around Chinese rather than Japanese history, and both series feature a Musou Gauge, which allows you to use powerful special moves when it’s sufficiently filled up.

Chapter 2

? Some famous lines like that that actually made it into print include “I’ll wrap this up in a two-page spread!” “I win! Part Three is over!” and “Wow, Nobita, you never sound that cool in our normal-length chapters!”

These lines come from YuYu Hakusho, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and Doraemon, respectively! The YuYu line is said by the main character of the series, Urameshi Yusuke, shortly before he beats the snot out of another character in a fight (that does, in fact, get wrapped up in a two-page spread). The JoJo line occurs when an enemy stand user seems to have bested Part 3’s JoJo, though it turns out his celebration was premature in the end, and the Doraemon line was said during a special extra-long chapter (which was eventually adapted into the film Doraemon: Nobita and the Galaxy Super-express), immediately after Nobita delivers a speech that’s unusually heroic for his character.

? I’d been planning on cleansing the grudge that had built up within me by shouting “Sand Burial!” while I piled sand on top of her...

Sand Burial is a rather brutal technique used by Gaara in Naruto that involves encasing his foes in sand and subsequently crushing them. That’s not the only reference in this line, though—the “cleansing the grudge that had built up within me” part also fairly directly apes the catchphrase of Urami Matarou, the central character of Fujiko Fujio Ⓐ’s Matarou ga Kuru, a comedic horror manga about a middle schooler who gets even with those who harass him (usually bullies) by way of spooky magic, curses, and the like.

? Iggy’s a dog, so he’s out, and Sandman didn’t actually have anything to do with sand at all in the end!

Iggy the dog is a character who appears in JoJo Part 3, and he uses a Stand called The Fool (back during the era of the manga when stands were named after tarot cards rather than whatever band Araki Hirohiko happened to be into at the time) which allowed him to manipulate sand in a variety of helpful ways. Sandman, meanwhile, is a minor character in Part 7 whose Stand lets him do weird stuff with sound that’s esoteric in a lethal way, as most late-series JoJo powers tend to be.

? I guess Kite Eishirou threw sand in someone’s face that one time, but he’s still just a tennis player, even if they did call him The Hitman.

Kite Eishirou is a character from Prince of Tennis who gets nicknamed The Hitman due to his aggressive playstyle.

? If she was trying to do Pinoko’s oh-my-goodness pose, she was nailing it.

Pinoko is a character from Tezuka Osamu’s Black Jack! The oh-my-goodness pose, meanwhile, is a pose that she makes whenever she says her catchphrase, which is famous enough that the original text of this scene simply referred to it as “the oh-my-goodness pose” without specifying a source. This was an instance of a reference that was obscure enough for most non-Japanese audiences that it felt like extra clarity was necessary, especially considering that there are a number of different ways in which her catchphrase has been translated over the years.

? Have you lost all emotions other than your sense of inner peace, or something?

Andou’s quoting Rurouni Kenshin in this line! Specifically, he’s quoting the manner in which Seta Soujirou, an assassin who smiles at all times, is described.

? I thought you were trying to hit me with a tetsuzanko for a hot second.

The tetsuzanko is a special move that features in a remarkably wide variety of media, especially fighting games—prominent users include Yuuki Akira from Virtua Fighter and Yun from Street Fighter. The move itself is essentially an elaborate shoulder check.

? Or, what, is that supposed to be Nishikawa Akihiro’s signature pose?!

Nishikawa Akihiro is a member of a comedy duo called Regular, performing alongside Matsumoto Kouta! The reference here calls back to one of the duo’s most well-known routines, which involves Nishikawa raising an arm over his head and rolling his eyes back in much the same way Hatoko ends up doing here.

Chapter 3

? I suppose you could say that I’d clung to the proverbial spider’s thread, or chased the bluebird of happiness...

The Spider’s Thread is a short story by Akutagawa Ryunosuke in which a criminal, doomed to eternal torture in a Buddhist rendition of hell, is given a single chance to climb up to paradise on a spider’s thread. He gets a good ways up, but the thread snaps and sends him falling back into hell after he proves his own selfishness by trying to ward away other sinners who try to climb up after him. The bluebird of happiness, meanwhile, is in reference to the play The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck, which largely centers itself around a theme of seeking happiness in all the wrong places.

? Sagami held its stock pressed to his shoulder, posing like a world-famous assassin as illustrated by someone who had heard of proper shooting technique, at best. Truly, it was a stance worthy of the phrase “I’ll blow a hole through that pretty face of yours!”

This one’s another deep cut reference to a Japanese internet meme! Specifically, it refers to a series of panels from Shinjo Mayu’s Haou Airen, a shoujo manga about mobsters in love. At one point in the series a bit character—supposedly the most dangerous assassin in the world—is introduced, and he attempts to snipe the main character’s primary love interest.

As a side note, if mocking an artist’s earnest attempt/failure to draw a serious assassination scene leaves a bad taste in your mouth, it bears mentioning that the artist herself seems to have embraced the meme (albeit in a humorously self-deprecating manner) in recent years, having promoted a T-shirt featuring the infamous panel on her Twitter as recently as 2022.

? You’re making a face like Golgo 13 and Jigen Daisuke both have you in their sights at the same time.

Golgo 13 is the name of the main character of, well, Golgo 13, a long-running manga by Saito Takao. Golgo is an assassin, and is particularly known for his skill as a sniper. Jigen Daisuke, meanwhile, is a gunman from Monkey Punch’s Lupin III who is also an accomplished sniper.

? Water Style: Water Dragon Missile!

This one’s another Naruto jutsu! It creates a dragon-shaped burst of water that crushes the user’s foes.

? It could hardly be considered an attack at all, assuming the person using it wasn’t named Arlong...

Arlong is a One Piece character! Specifically, he’s an incredibly strong fish-man who sometimes fights by throwing water at lethal speeds.

? It felt like I’d left sound behind me in my wake.

This phrase is used in Hunter x Hunter to describe the sheer speed that a character named Isaac Netero attains after training by going into the mountains and doing ten thousand punches a day for four years straight.

? Shunpo? Sonído? Or was it Hirenkyaku? Did you use Fullbring to pull that off, or what?!

These are all techniques from Bleach! Shunpo, Sonído, and Hirenkyaku are all movement techniques that allow the user to travel at speeds faster than the eye can follow, used by the Shinigami, the Hollows, and the Arrancar, respectively. Fullbring, meanwhile, is a power that allows its users to manipulate the souls of physical objects, enabling a whole host of powers including rapid movement.

? I had truly attained the Selfless State.

The Selfless State is a concept in Prince of Tennis! Essentially, it’s a state of being in which a tennis player exceeds their limits.

? If I’d known I was gonna go ‘gouf’ when I got hit, I would’ve tried to be ready to go ‘z’gok’ when I landed...

The Gouf and the Z’Gok are both models of mobile suit from the original Mobile Suit Gundam! The Gouf bears a distinct resemblance to the iconic Zaku II, only blue and spikier, while the Z’Gok has distinctively stubby arms with sets of three claws at their ends.

Chapter 4

? I got a star sign that played a major role in Saint Seiya and Gransazer.

Saint Seiya is a manga by Kurumada Masami. It ran in Shonen Jump from 1986 to 1990 and has inspired a number of adaptations, including a live-action film called Knights of the Zodiac that came out just a week prior to the writing of this section! As that film’s title implies, the story involves characters with powers based on constellations and Greek mythology. Chouseishin Gransazer, on the other hand, is a tokusatsu series with a very similar premise, revolving around constellation-themed superheroes.

? Y’know, like how Judgment works in D.gray-man.

Judgment is one of Cross Marian’s powers in Hoshino Katsura’s D.gray-Man. It takes the form of a gun, and more or less works as Andou describes it.

? ...it’s because I’m not pulling the trigger with my little finger!

This is in reference to Death the Kid, a character from Ohkubo Atsushi’s Soul Eater. Death the Kid is obsessed with symmetry and wields two pistols, held upside-down, the triggers of which he pulls with his little fingers.

? Yeah, and I bet your real name’s Kudou Shinichi, huh?

Kudou Shinichi is the main character of Aoyama Gosho’s Detective Conan. Shinichi is a genius detective, and his backstory involves his father taking him to firing ranges, giving him a familiarity with firearms.

And, that’s it for the notes this time around! See you again in volume eight!

-Tristan Hill