Afterword
Long time no see. I’m Wataru Watari. And nice to meet you. I’m Wataru Watari.
This may sound sudden, but the youth you generally hear society describe is all wrong. It’s all total lies. Going on a date to a big mall like LaLaport in your school uniform with your cute girlfriend or getting introduced to a girl from another school through your friend and going out to eat and stuff…none of that ever happens. It’s fiction.
In a teen rom-com, they add this line at the end, right? This is a work of fiction and has no connection to any real incidents, persons, or groups. In other words, any teen rom-com like that is a pack of lies. Everyone is being deceived.
Real youth is when two guys stop by a fast-food joint like Saizeriya after school and loiter around until evening, surviving only on fountain drinks and focaccia, desperately bad-mouthing people and complaining about school to kill time. Stuff like that. That is the real teen experience. I’ve gone through it myself, so it’s absolutely true.
But that kind of experience wasn’t so bad.
Mixing melon soda and orange juice and calling it melonge and getting excited about it, going on field trips and playing mah-jongg in a brutal atmosphere with three other guys, seeing the girl I had a crush on with her boyfriend and me suddenly going quiet… Now I consider those good memories.
Sorry, that’s a lie. I hated it. I wanted to go on a date with a high school girl in uniform, too. No, I still want to now. I wrote those feelings into this. I hope you enjoyed it.
Now, my acknowledgments.
To my manager, Hoshino-sama: If I were to write all my feelings here, I’d write a whole book, so I’ll abridge it. You helped me with everything, big and small. Thank you very much.
To Ponkan -sama: Your extremely cute and wonderful illustrations gave me strength every time I felt as if I would falter. I’m sincerely glad that I asked you to illustrate the book. Thank you very much.
Though she didn’t know me at all, Yomi Hirasaka-sama wrote a blurb for me. When I felt as if I would be crushed by anxiety and worry, Hirasaka’s comments gave me courage. Thank you very much.
To my friends: My friends! You only ever talk about money when I see you! I’m disappointed in you! Talk about your life and stuff!
To all my readers: The author Wataru Watari couldn’t exist without you. Every single word you send me gives me energy. Thank you so much!
And finally, to myself in high school: This work was born precisely because you were so bitter in those days, always saying stuff like This is so boring; this is so stupid. Please be proud. Your youth was all wrong, but I’m sure it was totally right. Thanks.
Now, the story. Whether it continues or not is up to certain factors, but I trust I will see you all again. While I polish the next plot, I think I’ll end it right about here.
On a certain day in February,
In a certain place in Chiba,
Feeling nostalgic for how I was so long ago,
While sipping on sweet, sweet coffee.
Wataru Watari
Translation Notes
Chapter 1 … Anyway, Hachiman Hikigaya is rotten.
1 “That’s some long-nosed sniper material. Are you one of the Straw Hat Pirates or what?” In Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece manga, the long-nosed sniper Usopp is both a chronic liar and a member of the Straw Hat Pirates.
2 “I’ll start looking for a mechanical body and then end up as a bolt.” In Leiji Matsumoto’s Galaxy Express 999 manga, the protagonist, Tetsuro Hoshino, longs to replace his human body with an immortal machine body, but Queen Promethium, ruler of the machine empire, plans to remake him into a simple bolt.
3 “…just like those animals that chomped on Tomoko Matsushima.” Tomoko Matsushima, a Japanese singer and actress, was attacked by both a lion and a leopard in the space of ten days during the filming of a documentary in Kenya in 1986.
4 “This is a gambling apocalypse!” Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji is a manga by Nobuyuki Fukumoto that chronicles the harrowing gambling travails of Kaiji, a feckless young man whose life of poverty leads him to become entangled in ever more dangerous games of chance.
5 “Even without some bespectacled elementary school student to tell me, ‘Huh? Something’s not right!’” Detective Conan, also known as Case Closed, is a long-running mystery manga series by Gosho Aoyama that follows the cases of Shinichi Kudo, a brilliant detective whose strange reaction to a poison turns him into a small child. In his new guise, he solves cases as Conan Edogawa.
6 “More like Demon Superhuman.” Akuma Choujin, or “Demon Superhuman,” is a reference to a group of villains from the Kinnikuman manga by Yoshinori Nakai and Takashi Shimada.
7 “‘The Nighthawk’s Star’? How obscure can you get?” “The Nighthawk’s Star” is a short story by Kenji Miyazawa, about an ugly bird bullied so badly and rejected so thoroughly that he ultimately dies and becomes a star in the night sky.
8 “The only other person I could think of who did that was a Saiyan prince.” Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball manga involves a race known as the Saiyans—the prince of whom, Vegeta, is notoriously arrogant.
9 “Are you Golgo or what?!” Golgo is the main character in Takao Saito’s Golgo 13, a long-running manga about a taciturn, invincible assassin. Golgo’s guard is never down.
10 “Think of it as the Hyperbolic Time Chamber.” In Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball manga, the Hyperbolic Time Chamber is a training room where time passes more slowly, allowing years of training to take place in mere days of real-world time. In Japanese it’s known as the Seishin to Toki no Heya or “Room of Spirit and Time.”
11 “Or would it be easier to understand if I just called it Revolutionary Girl Utena?” Revolutionary Girl Utena is a 1997 anime directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara. It involves a sinister student council scheming to “crack the world’s shell.”
12 “It’s sort of like Shonen Jump!” Weekly Shonen Jump is the most popular manga serialization magazine in Japan, serializing many popular adventure, action, and sports titles. Their main demographic consists of young boys or shonen. Most of the titles have themes revolving around the “Jump triangle” of friendship, competition, and hard work. They’re generally about good old-fashioned heroes saving the world and achieving their dreams.
13 “Gundam Fight! Ready? Go!” The Mobile Fighter G Gundam incarnation of the Gundam series involves organized battle tournaments between various mecha, which begin with this line. Like all of Ms. Hiratsuka’s favorites, it’s from the 1990s.
14 “It would have been easier to understand if I said ‘Robattle,’ huh?” “Robattle” refers to battles between robots in the Medabots anime series, which is much more obscure than Gundam.
15 “Thinking that naughty, rage-inducing girl’s a tsundere…” Tsundere is a Japanese term that combines the terms tsun-tsun (“prickly”) and dere-dere (“bashful”). It refers to a character who is prickly and irritable on the outside but secretly sentimental.
Chapter 2 … Yukino Yukinoshita always stands firm.
1 “She’s like something out of Alcatraz or Cassandra. Why couldn’t a Savior of Century’s End show up right about now?” Alcatraz is one famous prison, but Cassandra is another—at least, in the manga series Fist of the North Star. Its hero, Kenshiro, is known as the Savior of the Century’s End.
2 “Maybe you’re so twisted up, it reversed all your meridians.” Another Fist of the North Star reference, this time to Souther, a villain whose internal organs are positioned in a mirror image from normal anatomy. One of his villainous projects is the construction of the Holy Emperor Cross Mausoleum, a pyramid built by child slave labor.
3 “You have a full-blown case of second-year head swell.” Second-year head swell (kounibyou, literally, “second year of high school disease”) is a term Ms. Hiratsuka invents here to tease Hikigaya. However, it’s based on an existing term, chuunibyou (literally, “second year of middle school disease, translated in this book as “M-2 syndrome”).
4 “Do you like Keigo Higashino or Koutarou Isaka?” Keigo Higashino and Koutarou Isaka are famous mystery authors.
5 “Gagaga and Kodansha BOX.” Gagaga Bunko published the My Youth Romantic Comedy series in Japan, while Kodansha BOX publishes NisiOisiN’s Monogatari series.
6 “…it was as if she’d told me, I think you should give up on ‘Concrete Road.’” In the 1995 Studio Ghibli film Whisper of the Heart, Seiji Amasawa tells the protagonist Shizuku Tsukishima that she should give up on “Concrete Road,” her lyrical rewrite of John Denver’s song “Country Road.” In response to this, she repeats “He’s a jerk!” over and over.
7 “Foul play on the level of Maradona’s Hand of God.” In the 1986 World Cup semifinal, Argentina defeated England thanks to a notorious goal scored by Diego Maradona in which he illegally used his hand.
8 “Are you friends if you meet someone once and siblings if you see them everyday? Mi-Do-Fa-Do-Re-Si-So-La-O?” The opening song to the children’s TV show Do-Re-Mi-Fa Donuts states that “if you meet someone once you’re friends; if you see them every day you’re siblings.”
Chapter 3 … Yui Yuigahama is perpetually glancing around furtively.
1 “What was this, a Ryuu Murakami novel?” Ryuu Murakami is a writer of literary fiction whose 1976 debut work, Almost Transparent Blue, chronicles the drug-fueled hedonism of a group of Japanese teenagers.
2 “There’s no way my little sister could be this incompetent.” Very likely a reference to Tsukasa Fushimi’s light novel Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (“There’s No Way My Little Sister Could Be This Cute”).
3 “What color is your patisserie?!” Natsumi Matsumoto’s Yumeiro Patisserie (“Dream-Colored Pastry Chef”) follows the travails of clumsy but talented Ichigo Amano, who loves cake and dreams of turning pro.
4 “There is a certain saying… If you have love…love is okay!” This is a catchphrase for Apron of Love, a novelty cooking show wherein female celebrities attempt to cook dishes in a kitchen full of unlabeled ingredients for a panel of male celebrity judges. Love is frequently not enough to ensure edible outcomes.
Chapter 4 … Even so, the class is doing well.
1 “And by ‘those guys,’ I was referring to the ones who’d brought their PSPs for a hunt…” A reference to the Monster Hunter series of video games.
2 “This was an inquisition, and Yuigahama was being forced to step on a cross…” When Christianity was outlawed during the Tokugawa period, people suspected of being Christian were forced to step on a crucifix in order to prove their innocence.
3 “Meals should have been more joyous and fun than this. If you subscribed to the ideology of the Lonely Gourmet, anyway.” Kodoku no Gurume (“The Lonely Gourmet”) is a manga series written by Masayuki Qusumi and drawn by Jiro Taniguchi. It follows the gustatory life of Goro Inogashira, a salaryman whose greatest pleasure comes from solitary enjoyment of cuisine.
4 “Like even when we were playing Ojamajo Doremi…” Yuigahama is referencing Ojamajo Doremi, a magical girl anime. Hazuki is the shyest and most passive of the main cast of characters.
5 “I won’t read any light novels with evil gods in them at school anymore.” The Jashin Oonuma (“Evil God Oonuma”) series of light novels follow the adventures of a boy who decides to become an evil deity with the help of an instruction manual and starter kit. It’s published in Japan by Gagaga Bunko—which also publishes My Youth Romantic Comedy.
Chapter 5 … In other words, Yoshiteru Zaimokuza is rather off.
1 “I miss the purity of the Muromachi era…” In Japanese history, the Muromachi period refers to the time between the mid-1300s to the mid-1500s, during which Japan was ruled by the Muromachi shogunate. The period ended with the collapse of Japan into smaller factions, a violent era known as the Sengoku or “warring states” era, to which Zaimokuza is referring here.
2 “I think he’s just taking the name Hachiman and thinking of the Bodhisattva Hachiman.” Hachiman is a god of war in the Shinto tradition; with the arrival of Buddhism in Japan he was integrated into that faith as a bodhisattva, a human who has attained Buddhahood.
3 “The Seiwa Genji clan zealously worshipped him as a god of war.” The Seiwa Genji were a powerful line of the Minamoto clan of Japanese nobility for hundreds of years, tracing their lineage back to the Emperor Seiwa. The Kamakura and Ashikaga shogunates were both descended from the Seiwa Genji, and the Tokugawa shogunate claimed the lineage as well.
4 “I played Nobunaga’s Ambition, okay?” Nobunaga’s Ambition is a series of turn-based strategy video games set during the Sengoku period. They follow Oda Nobunaga’s quest to unify Japan.
5 “They were printed in a fixed grid of forty-two by thirty-two characters…” Gagaga Bunko, the imprint that publishes the My Youth Romantic Comedy series as well as many others, requires submissions in this format.
Chapter 6 … But Saika Totsuka has one.
1 “…the kind they say gets marinated in Max coffee…” MAX Coffee is a type of extra-sweet coffee available in cans and bottles. At one point it was marketed only in the Chiba, Ibaraki, and Tochigi prefectures of Japan.
2 From the Northern Country is a long-running series of Japanese dramas set in the town of Furano, on Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan.
3 Issei Fuubi Sepia was a performance group that was active in the 1980s. One of their most popular songs was called “Zenryaku, Michi no Ue Yori” (“Preface: From Above the Road”) in which the exclamation “Soiya!” is repeated many times.
4 “What, are you buying treats for the office?” Hachiman is referencing chuugen, a period in July when workers bring in gifts (usually edible) to give to their superiors as tokens of appreciation.
5 “…like you’d say ‘the ham man.’” This is a reference to a series of TV ads positioning Marudai-brand ham gift sets as good chuugen gifts. The first ham man was actor Tetsuya Bessho.
6 “Hikitani.” The second kanji character in Hachiman Hikigaya’s name means “valley” and can be read as “tani.” Hayama is therefore misreading his name as “Hikitani.”
7 “My motto was I canna keep this up! like some kind of Korosuke imitation…” Korosuke is a character from Kiteretsu Encyclopedia with a very peculiar way of talking.
8 “…he was less Dragon Quest and more like King Bonbii from Momotetsu, I think.” In classic Dragon Quest, all the characters follow behind the leader in a line. Momotetsu is another long running video game series that’s sort of like a board game, and King Bonbii is an annoying character who follows behind the player and harasses them.
Chapter 7 … Sometimes, the gods of romantic comedy are kind.
1 “I read the entire series, and I even saw the musical.” The popular tennis manga Prince of Tennis had a stage musical adaptation, which is what Zaimokuza is probably talking about.
2 “Was she Madame Butterfly or what?” Madame Butterfly was a voluminously-coiffed character in Ace wo Nerae! (“Aim for the Ace!”), a famous 1970s shoujo manga about tennis.
3 “Who are you, Hiei?” Hiei is a character from Yu Yu Hakusho, whose Black Dragon special attack leaves him unconscious after its completion.
Chapter 8 … And then Hikigaya ponders.
1 “The heroine has a body made of rubber…” This is a reference to the hero of One Piece, whose body has rubberlike properties.
2 “Are you Gian or what?” Gian is the bully character in the famous manga series Doraemon.
Afterword
1 “Real youth is when two guys stop by a fast-food joint like Saizeriya after school and loiter around until evening…” Saizeriya is a Japanese Italian fast-food chain. Its budget menu and relaxed atmosphere make it popular with students and families.
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