Monogatari Series - Volume 18 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

I’ve written a good number of books up to this point, and not just those in the MONOGATARI series, but when I went back to read my old work the other day, I started to wonder. What I noticed is that your author here seems to have an unusual attachment to guy-girl buddy stories that never turn into romantic relationships─maybe you’d think that after reading just one of my books, but hear me out. Guy-girl pairings are a story pattern about as universal as boy-meets-girl, but it’s just that we’re so liable to assume that opposite-sex combinations will turn into romances, or rather, that it feels fated for them to turn out that way before the story even begins to develop. I do of course like those kinds of stories too, and I do write them…I…think…? Have I? Anyway, whatever an author’s preferences may be, the characters’ lives and relationships ultimately depend on the characters themselves, and, what I wanted you to hear from me is that I got to depict the buddies Koyomi Araragi and Suruga Kanbaru from lots of different angles this time around while knowing their relationship would never turn romantic, and that I had a blast doing it.

Anyway, a middle volume of a three-part series. Can you believe it? Well, maybe you can, but I’d feel very fortunate as an author if you were at least a little surprised by it. Actually, now that the MONOGATARI series is already up to eighteen volumes, any readers who have made it to this point might not be surprised by anything, but maybe you’d be surprised if I told you this story was originally supposed to be settled within the pages of ONIMONOGATARI and KABUKIMONOGATARI? In other words, this isn’t the middle volume of OWARIMONOGATARI as much as it was part of a trilogy with “Mayoi Jiangshi” and “Shinobu Time,” structurally speaking. I’m selfishly filled with emotion as an author to be able to finish this volume that I’d fully given up on after more than three years. And so, this has been OWARIMONOGATARI Part 02 “Chapter Four: Shinobu Mail.”

Thank you very much, VOFAN, for drawing the illustration of Miss Gaen, her first appearance on a front cover. You might be able to call Koyomi Araragi and Ogi Oshino another pair of buddies whose relationship will never turn romantic, but guess what’s coming next? The final part of OWARIMONOGATARI, “Ogi Dark.” I’m going to have so much fun writing about them as a duo too! Anyway, while the MONOGATARI series is wrapping up with the next volume, ZOKU- OWARIMONOGATARI will still be coming out after that, so don’t let that one catch you by surprise. It’s not Ogi’s fault.

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