Monogatari Series - Volume 7 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

Because human beings are, all in all, creatures with terribly narrow outlooks, we can’t help but want to solve any problem that might occur in our lives, but when you sit up and think about whether every problem that comes up over the course of a lifetime has to be solved, you may be surprised to find that not to be the case at all. Well no, of course it’s better to solve a problem than to leave it unsolved, but when you take a broad look across the world, you unexpectedly find many problems that have been left sitting there, and while they do spew forth so many problems that it’s a problem, people around them may have actually accepted them along with the harm that comes from them. In fact, having solved a problem sometimes results in greater chaos and confusion, though not always. There’s the fact that people dislike change even if it’s evolution and prefer stability no matter how unstable it is, but prior to any of that, an “environment” is what already accepted the problems as problems, or so I think. I mean, honestly, it’s as though people feel most “alive” when they’re confronting a problem and agonizing, suffering, and accumulating stress over it. Rather than the consummation of a longstanding wish or love bearing fruit, maybe life is about “problems”? In that case, you might say people don’t strive to make their dreams come true; they dream just so they can strive. Geez, what sort of nightmare drama is that?

This volume, NEKOMONOGATARI (BLACK), is the seventh installment in the MONOGATARI series. It tells the story of Tsubasa Hanekawa’s Golden Week, which we’ve been getting modest, casual, yet unsubtle whiffs of since “Hitagi Crab,” the first story, was published in Mephisto. Actually, this was rather the type of secret tale that gets sealed away forever, but various conditions were met through no doing of my own and it is now seeing the light of day. Thank you so much. Once a series has this many volumes out, though, its plot is wont to be full of fatal contradictions; if you do find any issues, I’d appreciate it if you could just smooth over and overcome them with your passion for reading. For that is how aberrations transform as they are passed down (I say, trying to sound cool). Anyway, this has been NEKOMONOGATARI (BLACK), a novel I wrote cat-percent to entertain myself. NEKOMONOGATARI (WHITE) will be out soon enough, and I hope you pick that one up too. I’m doing everything I can to make it cat-percent free of contradictions, meowkay?

The illustrator VOFAN worked on the front cover and insert images for publication. The anime version of BAKEMONOGATARI that was broadcast as I was putting together and writing this book had an incredible, motivating impact on me. I could not be any more grateful. It makes me want to keep writing an original worthy of such visual work.

See you again soon.

NISIOISIN