Monogatari Series - Volume 24 - Chapter Aft

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Afterword

Failure is an inevitability in life, but the opportunities to patch things up are few and far between. Once one fails, there’s nothing one can do to salvage it; even if something similar, or, more to the point, the exact same situation arises, it is, in the end, a different occurrence; restarts don’t exist in real life. Sayings such as my past failures are what made me, irresponsible as they are, do carry truth to them, so if a restart is possible, it may result in some sort of time paradox. If one ends up forgoing restarts for the sake of restarting, that’d be putting the cart before the horse. However, while it is impossible to patch things up, it isn’t impossible for something to go back to where it was before, and therefore it’s also impossible to act as if the idea and the prospect of restoration doesn’t exist at all. The human brain prioritises rationality, so instead of overcoming past failures, one would think ‘if what didn’t work worked now, that would make less sense’ out of respect for consistency; to put it bluntly, coherence of the whole is prioritised over success; upon repeated failures, one’s heart may even find solace in the repeated result. In manga terms, it’d be like thinking how strange it’d be if the protagonist said something different between the first volume and the fiftieth; conversely, if a plot ends with the same line as it started, one would be ecstatic at the presence of what is perceived as a masterfully-executed bookend, but upon closer thought, it would also be nice if – regardless of sensibility or contradictions, regardless of logical leaps_– the present can be cleanly severed from the past. Wouldn’t that be the prerequisite of any ambitious leap towards the future? If the future isn’t much connected to the present, that wouldn’t be much of a difficulty – if problems shall arise, then let them arise; the future will still come either way.

Araragi Koyomi’s repeated failures during his high school years need little further reiteration by this point, though in this volume and the last that is Monster Season, there are passages where he is trying to ‘do what he couldn’t have done at high school’, which does lead one to question if this was done out of optimism or pessimism, but in a sense, perhaps he, too, is on his path towards restoration. What is perhaps more surprising is that Sengoku Nadeko has completed that path of restoration, and looks poised to take on the next challenge…? And with that, here is the twenty-fourth volume of the Monogatari Series, Yoimonogatari, Chapter Two – Mayoi Snail, and Chapter Three – Mayoi Snake. Volume twenty-four…? Seriously…?

For the second time, Hachikuji Mayoi graces the front cover. My heartfelt gratitude goes to VOFAN-san. The next volume, Amarimonogatari, will see Ononoki Yotsugi’s secret finally revealed…as much as that direction isn’t set in stone, I hope you will look forward to it all the same.

NISIOISIN

Translator’s afterword

There’s something that irks me about the term ‘fan translation’: the inference that any amateur attempt to make a certain work reach a wider audience has to be a fan of said work, someone who views it positively, if not uncritically so. The other term, ‘unofficial translation’, has an element of dastardliness to it, like an unwanted, undesirable bootleg that’s been sitting in the dump, though the real reason why everybody uses ‘fan’ is probably because ‘unofficial’ is over three times as long. Whilst it is undeniable that many fan translations exist out of the translator’s love for the original, my relationship with translating a small portion of the Monogatari books (which I may as well clarify I wouldn’t call myself a ‘fan’ of) is purely transactional: if there is demand, and if nobody else wants to do it, and if I find translating it worthwhile, then I shall supply. For all I said about the fallaciousness surrounding the word ‘fan’, I admit one has to be a fan of translation to pump out fan translations; either that, or one’s first attempt would also be their last.

If anything, the preceding volume, Shinobumonogatari, was a disappointment: a mediocre detective story and coming-of-age story, a story with a twist for the sake of a twist, cyphers with contrivances the ‘Half-Life 3 confirmed’ crowd would drool over, an arc with a hasty, inconclusive ending that ruins Musubimonogatari’s, a book where plot and character development were sacrificed for token, questionable humour and jokes more worn than a seventy-year-old prostitute from Hamburg – and the prostitute would still be better value for money. Perhaps Kaiki is right in that every work should have a lesson for the reader to take – yet Shinobumonogatari only offers lessons for the protagonist, lessons he doesn’t take to heart anyway. One should then posit the entire book as a pointless exercise, save for the cash grab.

So why translate ‘Mayoi Snail’? The inoffensive answer would be ‘with Shinobumonogatari translated, the time has come to complete Yoimonogatari’, though in truth, the decision was perhaps fuelled by an unhealthy dose of cynicism and hubris – ‘to not let translations of Monogatari’s main novels end on such a terrible book’ (no offence to the poor soul who translated it). I hold ‘Mayoi Snail’ in mildly higher regard because it’s more focussed, more restrained, with a better ending that reinforces Monster Season’s purported overall theme of ‘growing up’. More fool me, then, that most who read Shinobumonogatari praised it for being unrestrained and fun – I imagine most people would hence consider ‘Mayoi Snail’ staid and dull. Not to say those aren’t valid criticisms – ‘Mayoi Snail’ still shares much of the same weaknesses that mar its immediate predecessor. Metahumour is incredibly powerful in tiny doses, but Nisio uses it like it’s heroin in 1970s West Berlin – if Senjougahara’s early appearance was intended to be a clever subversion, the numbersome hints prior serve only to its detriment. Riding high on the success of his Forgetful Detective, it seems Nisio is hell bent on remoulding Koyomi into the Oblivious Defective – with his insistence that it can only be a kidnapping after 017, or the cafeteria scene in 019 and 020, one is once again dumbfounded and frustrated at Koyomi’s judgement, such that by the time the twists come, none bar him is surprised at there being a twist. Whilst the gruelling exposition near the end is arguably more diegetic and less insidious than Koyomi claiming Harimaze’s voice in parts of Shinobumonogatari’s narration, it similarly violates the ‘show, don’t tell’ principle without satisfactory justification. Presenting a never-seen oddity with a novel mechanism as the ‘solution’ feels somewhat disingenuous and rushed, if not a case of oddity ex machina. As with Shinobumonogatari, pages that could’ve been spent giving new characters a personality, making us empathise with them and thereby raising the stakes were eschewed for repetitive humour between characters we’re all too familiar with. One is confused as to what the author wants the reader to do: the frustrating pacing, underdeveloped characters (alongside over-developed underdeveloped ones) and unforeseeable solutions merely serve to disinvite the reader from forming their own conjectures. Editorially, it’s no better – between Higasa’s name, ‘five circles’, confusing OB with OG, half-baked wordplay that is neither funny nor satisfying to translate, and trying to pull off the Otorimonogatari thing again, one is increasingly convinced that consistency is Nisio’s worst enemy, alongside logic, decency, and a refined sense of humour.

There’s an inherent danger in attributing every inconsistency, every poorly-written passage towards the translator, absolving the author from any accountability. As a translator, every mistake from the author means trouble, because something will always be lost – whether through not doing anything and letting myself be mistaken, clarifying via a footnote and introducing something never in the original, or by directly removing such mistakes and quirks, changing the nature of the text. There were moments when I was tempted to leave in typos and suboptimal translations, to treat the story with the same neglect (!) as the author did, though in the end, I guess the pride in doing something well (professionalism?) overrode the desire towards pettiness (though this afterword probably proves otherwise).

Be that as it may, as one can readily infer from the previous paragraphs, whatever enthusiasm present when I translated Nademonogatari and [the easy] parts of Orokamonogatari over a year ago has all but evaporated. The longer a series drags on, the more it has to justify its continued existence to a diminishing number of readers. Monster Season may attempt to reinvent itself via a drastic change in direction, but only manages to undo every reasonable conclusion Off Season made, along with a nosedive in writing quality. Given that, the chances of me returning to translate more Monogatari is virtually nil. Considering Nisio’s comment on the nature of bookends, it is quite amusing that I ended translating Monogatari the same way I started – completing the remaining chapter(s) of a book started by the same colleague. I hope that, despite it all, you have found reading this first part of Yoimonogatari enjoyable, however unofficial its journey to English may have been.