Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 15 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

Good afternoon, good evening, good morning. It’s been two months! I’m Jougi Shiraishi.

I’m going to launch right into it with my impressions of the anime. It was incredible, huh? Led by Director Kubooka, the setting the anime staff drew for Journey of Elaina was a far more beautiful and vibrant world than I had even imagined. Completely enchanted by their setting, which was just brimming over with charm, I watched every week, thinking to myself, I’d sure like to travel through this world! It really was ridiculously pretty. Also, I loved the way Elaina conducted the music with her wand in the opening theme. The ending theme by ChouCho was also amazingly great, right? And the various other songs that added flair to the series, too. My heart leaped for joy when they played during Elaina’s travels.

The Elaina that Azure drew in the original books was cute, and Itsuki Nanao’s Elaina in the comicalizations was cute, too. Elaina is basically always cute, and she was cute in the anime, too, wasn’t she? Personally, my favorite was Elaina in Episode 7, the grape-stomping story, when she was talking to the village head. Because she flipped through a lot of different expressions, and that was funny. I liked that, and in the anime, I always enjoyed listening to the performances of the voice cast, starting with Kaede Hondo of course. Personally, there were way too many things about it that made me happy, and I can’t possibly write them all down, but I’ll just say that even during my busiest, most hectic days, I clearly remember that I always looked forward to work that was related to the anime, if nothing else. It was a great year… Though it was over before I knew it, seriously.

I’m changing the subject here, but due to various circumstances at my main job, from January 2021 onward, I’m going to be living in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Up to now, I’ve had the privilege of visiting my local bookstore in Aichi every time a new volume of Journey of Elaina came out, but from now on I guess it’s going to be a little too far to go. While I’m still here, I think I’d like to visit the bookstore just like I always have. I want to sign a lot of books there. Inside, there’s a part of me that feels like 2020 was a real turning point in my life, so I do feel anxious that taking advantage of this opportunity might change everything, but I also feel excited, like I’m going on a journey to a new place. Well, but it’s not like I’m getting married or starting a relationship or anything. I’m only changing locations for work, so the only things that will change are my address and lifestyle, and I’ll be getting rid of my car. The first thing I’m doing right now is hunting for an apartment that allows pets. Since I’m going through all the effort of moving, I’d like to keep a cat or a dog. I want to get a hedgehog. Hedgehogs are so, so cute…

Now we’re at the end of the year, and the anime work has settled down a little. I’ve gone on at length about everything here, but basically that’s how this year went. Everything was hectic, but there was plenty to be happy about, too.

If next year could bring me days of nothing but that kind of happiness, that would be great.

Well then, from this point on, I’m going to start my commentary on each chapter.

There are probably going to be spoilers as well, so anyone who’s like, “I haven’t read the book yet!” please turn around here!

• Chapter One

I’m so happy to have finally achieved my greatest wish and been able to put out a volume of bonus stories! Hooray! Because of that, we had the strange situation of the publication of Volume 15 suddenly moving up to December, but including the new sections I wrote for it, the page count was just about perfect, so that was a relief. Taking another look at the collected list of bonus stories I’ve put out so far, I was surprised to see that the page count was actually huge. I couldn’t believe I’d written that much…

• Chapter Two

This was an original short story I wrote in the same spirit that I always write my bonus stories. The idea of a doll or some other toy that always comes back to you no matter how many times you throw it away is a standard among ghost stories, right? In fact, it’s too conventional, to where I almost feel like it’s become a stereotype that gets written into comedy pieces.

• Chapter Three

For this chapter, I made a medium-length story out of a bonus story I put out to go with Volume 9. I wrote it thinking that since I was finally getting my long-awaited bonus story volume, it might be interesting to try and write a kind of continuation of one of those bonus stories.

• Chapter Four

This was a story about you-know-who. I wonder if that witch, who set off on her journey yearning to be normal but not knowing what normal was, found her own version of normal after returning to her hometown?

I wrote out the witch’s real name without any hesitation, but I should tell you that there is a goddess who fulfills the same role in both Roman and Greek legends, and it’s a tweaked version of her name from Roman mythology that was the original source for the witch’s true name. The name that comes from Greek mythology was the source for her pen name. Really, I would have been just fine putting her name out there at any point, but I didn’t have a good opportunity, and after I saw that she would make an appearance in the anime, I decided to reveal it in this volume. Volume 15 was almost all bonus stories anyway, so somehow or other I thought it would be nice to have one story that was connected to the main narrative.

And so that was Volume 15 of Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina!

I made The Adventures of Niche five volumes long out of superstition, wishing that Journey of Elaina would make it to five volumes, too, but before I knew it, I had put out three times that many books. Ever since the anime started, we are constantly doing reprints, and I’ve had the pleasure of hearing all sorts of people tell me that they watched the anime, which made me really happy. I got into the spirit of things and contributed anonymously to Wandering Witch WEB Radio (Broadcasting Witch), which resulted in a strange accident where I was totally doxed by Miss Hondo, but even including that incident, I’ve been having a lot of fun.

Somehow, this turned into an afterword that feels like I might be announcing the end of the series itself, but I think the main Journey of Elaina book series is going to continue on, so I would love it if I could depend on your support as always.

I expect that the series will continue on next year, and personally, writing that plus full comedy stories like the ones on the drama CDs means lots of fun for me, so I’ll be happy if the drama CD releases continue to be frequent.

Well then, I’m going to use up all my pages before too long, so I think it’s about time I wrapped things up. I’ll write all my acknowledgments together, as far as the space allows. Regardless of whether you worked on the anime, the original books, or the manga, to everyone who has had a hand in making Journey of Elaina, truly, thank you so much. I would be very glad if we could continue working together in the future.

And to all of you who have come in contact with the world of Journey of Elaina, thank you!

Elaina’s travels are going to keep on going, so I’m counting on you to cheer her on!

Well then, see you in Volume 16!