Monogatari Series - Volume 11 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

What to say in a space like the afterword is, more than anything else, up to an author’s personality, but putting that aside, when you’re reading novels and comics and such, you do get a sense of “the author’s assertions” from the narrative itself and not just in his or her explicit remarks. Calling them assertions is a bit of an overstatement, but my point is that there are types of narratives out there where you can begin to see what the author “thinks of as right” when you read them. It’s not as if these creators appear directly in the story to talk about what they think is right or wrong or what it is that they like or dislike, but as you’re reading, you can begin to read the story in that vein… It’s really just a matter of interpretation, of course, and readers are never going to know for sure unless they ask (even if they do ask?) the author point-blank. Still, well, I feel like this phenomenon occurs specifically with novels and comics, or at least more easily with them. Since the creator being an “individual” is clearer, in other words. That makes it so that philosophies don’t, or at least are less likely to, get mixed in. When the scale of production gets big, like in movies or dramas, and maybe even in music, which is to say when there are multiple authors, their philosophies get mixed in from their various standpoints, and it tempers each individual’s assertions and brings forth a “work” that’s independent from any one person’s humanity, while it doesn’t seem to go that way as much for smaller-scale creations like novels and comics. I want to say there’s an advantage in that since you’re able to enjoy an “individual,” and that’s part of what I like about books, but our age is unmistakably moving in a direction that doesn’t find value in the individual, and I feel like the true crisis facing the publishing industry might lie there. Personally.

That being said, you probably won’t sense any philosophy or assertions to speak of from this book, which is just a novel where Nadeko Sengoku is as cute as can be. If you really wanted to, you could call it a story that tries to ask what cuteness is. But anyway, this volume marks the start of the sprint toward the end of the MONOGATARI series’ second season. The next title, ONIMONOGATARI, will likely depict the somewhat non-chronological burning of the abandoned cram school, while the final title, KOIMONOGATARI, will likely be about our characters graduating. I suspect that I’ll end up writing a third season, but I do feel a bit emotional knowing that at last I’ll be placing a period on this long tale. You could say I’m in high spirits. All according to plan! And so that was “Chapter Chaos: Nadeko Medusa,” OTORIMONOGATARI, a novel written hundred-percent well from head to tail.

This is the first time we’re seeing Nadeko in color, isn’t it?* She looks wonderful. Thank you, VOFAN.

May we meet again in the last two installments.

* Editor’s Note: BAKEMONOGATARI was originally published in two halves in Japan, and Sengoku did not appear on the cover of either volume.

NISIOISIN