Afterword
Hello, this is Wataru Watari.
Out in the world, summer vacation is already in full swing. Where’s my break?
So summer vacation is a wonderful season for making lots of memories, but once you’re an adult looking back, memories are not at all limited to special events. A lot of them are just trivial mundane things that stick oddly in your head.
I’m sure it just feels that way because if something happens on a day-to-day basis, it’s labeled as mundane, but to the person who’s living it, it might be something more special. It’s common to downplay the importance of something like a love affair, a personal relationship, or a nice meal, to see it as just one of the common sights of life, but to the person in question, it can be a major, life-changing thing.
And so this time around, I’ve brought to you a collection of short stories.
Now then, speaking of the mundane and the uncommon, the uncommon has become the mundane for me lately. What the heck, why is my life like a light novel now? However, I have not met anyone.
And now, the acknowledgments.
Holy Ponkan8: Hey? Clearly, Miura’s the heroine, okay? This Miura cover I wanted so bad was so cute, it scared me. This one was the best, yet again! You did a great job! Thank you so much.
To my editor, Hoshino: You put so much effort not only into the editing of this book but also into the multimedia-related work, too. This hell march will continue. This death parade will go on and on. And so thank you very much for your efforts.
To everyone involved in the multimedia franchise, including the anime staff and cast: Thanks to you, we’ve made it through the airing of the TV anime. I know I’ve caused a lot of trouble, but I’m really grateful that it came together. Thank you very much.
And to all my readers: Thank you very much for all your great support for all the multimedia works in this series, including the books and TV anime. I’m really glad that your support has enabled us to put it out into the world. From now on, we will continue to build on it bit by bit. I hope you will continue to stick with me.
And around here is where I run out of pages, so here I will lay down my pen.
Right, then. Let’s meet again in Volume 8!
On a certain day in July, in a certain place in Chiba, while preparing to go buy MAX Coffee in the middle of the night,
Wataru Watari
Translation Notes
SS1 … Hachiman Hikigaya’s idea of “Mom’s cooking” is wrong, as I expected.
1 “I may have M-2 syndrome, but I want to be in love” is the more direct translation of the title of the light-novel series Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions.
2 “The two of them looked ready to nuke me to Neo Tokyo.” Tokyo being nuked to create Neo Tokyo is part of the premise of Akira. The Japanese line here is a rather untranslatable pun: “I’d thoroughly exasperated them. Which makes me think, if you write exasperated (akire in Japanese) as AKIRE, it really sounds like a certain well-known movie (referring to the film Akira).”
SA A … We must wish them all the best in their futures.
1 “…buy some gargling solution and come home to a hippo.” This is a reference to a 1995 ad for Isodine (isojin), a gargling solution to prevent sickness. A woman comes home, saying, “There’s no one here to welcome me home…” She’s greeted by a couple of miniature hippos (mascots for the brand), and they gargle together.
2 “Pretty American. Or Nagoyan. Looks good, meow.” This is a callback to a few jokes Hachiman made in Volume 7, chapter 8, about breakfast sets popular in Nagoya, and Nagoya dialect making it sound like they’re meowing at the end of their sentences.
3 “…for your bacon—I learned that from Silver Spoon.” Silver Spoon is a manga/anime about farming, and being thankful to the animals that provide the meat you eat is a big theme of the series.
4 “…can’t forget to say thank you, my twilight…” The original Japanese gag here was a reference to the Arashi song “Kansha Kangeki Amearashi,” itself a wordplay on an overwrought way of saying thank you. “Thank You, My Twilight” is the name of a song by the Pillows that features in several episodes of FLCL Progressive and FLCL Alternative.
5 “Are you a mayo maniac? Or a Shino-maniac? That’s ultra-relaxing.” The terms (mayolar and Shinolar) sound more similar in Japanese. A mayolar is someone who puts mayonnaise on everything, while Shinolar refers to a late 1990s fashion trend of imitating the brightly colored, eclectic style of the celebrity Tomoe Shinohara. “Ultra Relax” was the title of her 1997 single and the opening song for the anime Kodomo no Omocha (published in English as Kodocha: Sana’s Stage).
6 “Why’s it named like that magical girl show?” Hikigaya is referring to the 1990s magical girl anime Wedding Peach.
7 “Dreamin’” is the name of a song by BOOWY, notable only in that it has a lot of Engrish, much like the title of this magazine in Japanese.
8 “…going around to each and every person, asking, Will you wind? Yes/no.” This is a reference to the manga Rozen Maiden, in which the protagonist receives a letter asking him this question, in reference to whether he will wind up a clockwork doll.
9 Sachi Usuko (literally meaning “unlucky girl”) is a character played by a member of the pop idol group Morning Musume on the variety show Hello!
10 Bride training (hanayome shuugyou) refers to a woman practicing cooking, cleaning, and other domestic tasks in preparation for marriage. Cooking is generally the dominant task on the list.
11 “The heart-fluttering brideness showdown~! ” Heart-fluttering showdown (dokidoki taiketsu) refers to a gag from the manga Uchuu no Housoku Sekai no Kihon (Laws of the universe, fundamentals of the world) by Toraichiro Ota. It’s basically just an excuse to talk about the author’s taste in women.
12 “Hammerspace? Really?” The original line was “Come on, are you some BØY?” in reference to the manga Hareluya II Boy by Haruto Umezawa. The protagonist will pull various implements out of thin air from behind his back, usually baseball bats and frying pans.
13 “Oh, no, no, no! Yoshi-no Nanjou!” Yoshino Nanjou is a voice actress and singer.
14 Battlefield Baseball (Jigoku Koshien) is a gag manga with a film adaptation that skewers high school sports by turning it into a horror-style blood-and-gore fest.
15 Saize (Saizeriya) is a cheap Japanese-style Italian restaurant chain.
16 “My recommendation there is The Little Prince. Okay, then I’ll cover both bases and go with The Prince of Tennis!” Hachiman is just referring back to Totsuka’s role in their class play. The Prince of Tennis is a sports manga and has nothing to do with actual princes of any sort, though its longtime popularity among fujoshi for BL reasons does lend an extra layer to this reference.
17 Hinedere is a word Komachi makes up to describe Hachiman in Volume 4, riffing off terms like tsundere. It’s a combination of twisted and lovestruck.
18 KanColle is the abbreviated name of Kantai Collection, a web browser game featuring warships personified as girls.
Bonus track! “Komachi Hikigaya’s Plot.”
1 Ryojin Hisho (Songs to make the dust dance on the beams) is a collection of songs popular in twelfth-century Japan.
2 Emperor Go-Shirakawa was the emperor from around the time Ryojin Hisho was written, during the Heian period.
3 “…a Gadabout can change classes to Sage at level 20.” This is a reference to Dragon Quest III.
4 Enka is a popular musical form made to resemble traditional Japanese music stylistically. Melancholy, sentimental ballads about heartbreak are a staple. It’s considered rather old-fashioned.
5 “PaRappa” refers to the PS1-era rhythm game PaRappa the Rapper. It’s not really relevant; the name just sounds sort of like Doppler.
6 “Bravery is our birthright, lads!” is a quote from Will Zepelli in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.
7 No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai is one of the most well-known works of contemporary Japanese literature and deals with the subject of societal alienation, among other things.
8 “These girlish lovers are a sight to behold, like a golden mosaic.” Girlish Lover is the name of the OP for Oreshura (My Girlfriend and My Childhood Friend Fight Too Much), and Kiniro Mosaic (Golden Mosaic) is a four-panel gag comic series. The former is a harem show, and the latter is a cute girls / slice of life manga, so they’re not really relevant in terms of content; this gag is a title reference.
9 “And then yet another white lily jumped into this yuri-licious scene.” A white lily, or yuri, is code for girl/girl manga.
10 “Despairingly cool!” is the line that comes during the next-episode previews of Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter (Super high-speed transforming Gyrozetter). It’s about transforming robots.
11 “Hachiman knows. All of Class 2-F are good friends! Except me.” This is in reference to an Internet meme. The original is “Moppii knows all about that. Moppii knows everyone loves her.” Created by 2ch, Moppii is a cute blob character, a “witch who watches over threads regarding sales of anime products.” She was originally based on the character Houki Shinonono from the Infinite Stratos series, but she took on a life of her own as a meme.
12 Purikura is short for “print club.” They are photo booths equipped with various filters to make your skin whiter, eyes larger, and legs longer and add all sorts of digital effects before the photos are printed.
13 “…those people who don’t have enough friends to make a collection, or those who try to turn over a new leaf and still end up living in a tent…” Referencing the games Friends Collection and Animal Crossing: New Leaf.
14 “…Haruno would be loved by the tiles…” Being “loved by the tiles” is a characteristic of the titular character in the mah-jongg manga Saki.
15 “…Kawa-something seems like she’d be supergood at digital style.” “Digital style” is the mah-jongg play style of Nodoka Haramura, also from Saki.
16 “…throwing uncensored porn at a cute girl who still believes in cabbage patches and storks.” This is a reference to a line from the character Itsuki in Yu Yu Hakusho.
17 “I can go out in mah-jongg, but not on a date… Ha-ha-ha…hah…” “Going out” in mah-jongg means getting rid of all your tiles, or losing the game. This is adapted from the Japanese wordplay “pon kan shin,” where pon and kan are mah-jongg terms (pong and chow) and kanshin means “interest.”
18 “Quiz Magic Chibademy!” This is riffing off Quiz Magic Academy, the long-running series of arcade quiz games.
19 The Ostrich Kingdom is an ostrich farm and general tourist attraction located in Chiba.
20 Chiiba-kun is a red dog and the mascot character for Chiba prefecture. His body is shaped like the borders of Chiba.
21 Fastest Finger First is a manga about a high school quiz-bowl club.
22 “You’ve got guts, little firefighter.” This quote is from the manga Firefighter! Daigo of Company M by Masahito Soda. As a child, the protagonist runs back into a burning building to save a dog, and the firefighter who rescues him says that line to him, inspiring him to become a firefighter.
23 “Hammer chance” is a card in the WIXOSS TCG that can only be used when your life is at zero. Basically, it’s a chance at a comeback.
24 “What the heck, is this some Chiba anime?” This refers to Oreimo (There’s No Way My Little Sister Could Be This Cute), which is set in Chiba.
25 Zero Requiem is Lelouch’s plan in Code Geass to end all war and usher in an age of peace.
SS3 … Unexpectedly, Hachiman Hikigaya’s studying methods are not wrong.
1 Gagaga Bunko is the imprint that publishes this series in Japanese.
SA B … They have yet to know of a place they should go back to.
1 “Barf Spark–level obnoxious.” Barf Spark is meme from the Touhou Project games, relating specifically to yukkuris (disembodied character heads) and a method by which yukkuris brutally kill one another.
2 “Japan’s summer is not Kincho’s summer.” This is an advertising slogan for a brand of insect repellent.
3 “…some bullshit I’d learned from Rurouni Kenshin…” The manga Rurouni Kenshin, which is about a Meiji-period swordsman, features the “formless stance,” a staple of Kenshin’s flexible fighting style.
4 The Tenchi-matou stance is the ultimate stance used by Vearn, the villain of the manga Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai. It’s supposed to counter any and all attacks.
5 “…get the wind to blow my hair back like T.M.Revolution…” TMR is a pop artist with a long history of doing anime and game theme songs. He’s done a few videos that involve getting buffeted by the elements, including “High Pressure,” “White Breath,” and “Hot Limit,” making “pretending to be TMR” into a meme.
6 “Ah, My Angel Totsuka. I want to answer quiz questions right to make him grow.” This is a reference to a series of quiz arcade games called Kosodate Quiz: My Angel (Parenting quiz: My angel) in which the parent has to successfully answer questions to raise their daughter’s age from zero to twenty-five years old.
7 Black Jack is an unlicensed physician and the protagonist of the manga Black Jack by Osamu Tezuka.
8 “Whichever the case, if it were Another, you’d be dead.” This line is a meme that originated with the series of mystery horror novels and their anime adaptation. The series involves a lot of gruesome deaths.
9 “…the ‘I’m a satorare theory.’” Satorare is a fictional ailment that causes the sufferer’s feelings to be projected as waves and transmitted to people around them. Originates from the manga Satorare by Makoto Satou.
10 “…Everyone is the same, and everyone is good.” This is a deliberate misquoting of Misuzu Kaneko, the early twentieth-century poet. The actual line from her poem “Me, a Birdie and a Bell” is “Everyone is different, and everyone is good.”
11 “Personally, I like to keep the summer humidity at bay with my dry sense of humor.” The original line here is “Oh God, why have you made me think about this nonsense?” The Japanese pun was on kami (hair), kami (paper), and kami (god).
12 “When droplets of sweat hit the paper, the way it goes all limp can be a real mood-killer.” The original Japanese contains a reference to a gay porn called A Midsummer Night’s Lewd Dream that ended up becoming memeified.
13 “She’s kinda making it out to be like Trouble Contractors, or TROCON, for short. Is there gonna be a coconut crab massacre?” Trouble Contractor is the profession of the protagonist of Lost Universe, a series of light novels by Hajime Kanzaka from the 1990s that also have an anime adaptation. The “coconut crab massacre” is the name of the infamous fourth episode, which is known for being a poorly animated mess with loads of production issues.
14 “There’s no seat for your ass anyway!” This is a line from Midori Iwamoto in the J-drama Life. She says it to her former “bad friend” Manami Anzai, when she dumps her graffiti-tagged desk and chair out the classroom window.
15 CoCoICHI is Coco Ichibanya (a curry restaurant), while Karekichi is another curry restaurant.
16 “…this inkare thing sounds like a topic a certain curry-loving voice actor would enjoy.” Hachiman’s voice actor in the anime, Takuya Eguchi, is a famous curry maniac.
17 “Herk! A competition?!” In Japanese, this cry is hoge, the wail of Kankichi, the protagonist of the long-running comedy manga Kochikame (the common abbreviation for the manga This is the police station in front of Kameari Park in Katsushika Ward).
18 “No, I know thou lieth…” In the original Japanese, the sentence ended here with desushi osushi, a sentence-ending particle popularized by players of the MMO Final Fantasy XI, combining the verbal tic desushi with a popular in-game item, osushi.
19 “I’m not wearing a construction helmet or anything, though. Maybe I should get fatter and fuzzier.” This is referring to the character Boss (Taishou-kun) in the anime Hamtaro. In Japanese, the reference is to his verbal quirk dajee.
20 Yamcha is a character in the Dragon Ball series who gets thoroughly overshadowed by more powerful fighters who appear later in the series.
21 “Chii is learning” became an Internet meme due to how often the robot girl says that line in the CLAMP manga and anime series Chobits. It’s something said whenever you learn something new, especially new words.
22 “My ghost is whispering to me…” is something Motoko Kusanagi says more than once in the anime Ghost in the Shell. Ghost here refers to the soul.
23 “What the hell, is she Kenichi’s teacher?” Hachiman is referencing the martial arts manga Kenichi: the Mightiest Disciple.
SS4 … Regardless, Hachiman Hikigaya’s positive thinking is completely twisted.
1 “If they say Bro Bro too much, I’ll go and found Chanko Dining or something.” Chanko Dining is the name of a chain of restaurants founded by celebrity and former sumo wrestler Masaru Hanada. In his sumo wrestler days, he was known by the nickname Oniichan (big brother).
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