Good gravy, this book was long!!! Figures that the finale would be longer than any of the others!
Thank you so, so much for reading this far. I can only imagine how much of your time I’ve taken up with my series. But without your support, Kokoro Connect never would have made it this far! I can’t thank you enough! Signed, yours truly, Anda “KokoroCo” Sadanatsu!
Just kidding.
As much as I’d enjoy closing out my series with that sort of chipper tone, I figure I should take this a bit more seriously, seeing as it’s the end and all. Then again, I did get pretty sentimental in the last volume... Oh well.
That being said, I feel it’s a bit inappropriate for the author to comment on a story that belongs to the characters who told it. That’s the way I look at it, anyhow. That’s why I never really talked about the subject matter in any of the afterwords thus far, and I don’t foresee that changing anytime soon.
So instead, while I have the chance to share this moment with you, I’d like to tell you a bit about myself. Think of it as a rare opportunity... because it is!
See, I still don’t think of myself as a “real” author. Not just because I’m reliant upon artists and designers to help get my books published, but because I seriously doubt I could write something marketable without input from editors and proofreaders. I require a tremendous amount of assistance to get my works out there. And because of that, I feel like an amateur.
But in spite of that, I still take pride in the books I’ve written. And if I’m proud of them, then I’m allowed to charge money for them, because they’re worth it! Think about it — wouldn’t it be extremely disrespectful to the people who love my books if I wasn’t proud of them?
Sure, there are countless great stories out there that dwarf mine considerably. But in my opinion, as an author, I’m obligated to proclaim mine to be the very best. I know they have a lot of flaws, but if I sat around waiting for my stories to be perfect, then they’d never get published at all. So yes, I’m a work in progress, but I’m gonna put my books out there anyway because I gave it my best effort, damn it.
That said, I have trouble outright declaring something to be my “best effort.” Partly because I always start to question whether I actually gave it my all, and partly because I’m terrified people will look at my work and say, “That was your best? Yikes.”
Now then, how do I feel, looking back at the series I’ve written? Well, there are tons of parts that sucked, parts that still needed work, and parts that I should have written differently altogether... but I don’t feel the desire to turn back time and do it all over again. All the little steps I took thus far have led me to this moment, writing this afterword, and I don’t want to invalidate that hard work. I may be an amateur, but I still gave it my best effort, and after perusing some reader critiques, I believe that effort made an impact on at least some of you. (Not to brag or anything.)
I occasionally see people saying “I’m amazed he can write that level of cringe.” Not in a disparaging way, but more of a “His storytelling is immature” sort of way, or at least that’s the impression I get. And yet, those immature stories are what got me here. I feel like if your book doesn’t get haters, then it hasn’t made enough of an impact to change anything.
And speaking of “what got me here,” it would be remiss of me not to mention the multimedia franchise my series has spawned: manga, drama CDs, an anime (they made 17 episodes and even had a theater showing), and ultimately a visual novel. At this point, Kokoro Connect has a world of its own, and I’m starting to think it’s beyond my control...
But in this new world, I know there will be new doors to open and new experiences to discover. I have benefited from this multimedia project in a lot of ways, and for that, I am tremendously grateful.
That being said, it’s now much too large for me to get a handle on all of it, and sometimes things happened without my knowledge.
As more and more people got involved with Kokoro Connect in some capacity, some of those people did so after reading the source material, but most didn’t. (Not to suggest that that’s a bad thing, per se.) So while it was all based on my personal creation, some of it felt foreign to me, like there was a clear line between my work and theirs.
But looking back now, I can say this: Regardless of “whose” it is, all of it is inarguably my beloved Kokoro Connect. I love its world and characters more than anyone else. So it is with that love that I watch over Kokoro Connect as I send it out to all of you.
Hell, I’ll shout it from the rooftops! Read the manga! Listen to the drama CDs! Watch the anime! Play the visual novel!
This is the wonderful world everyone has built with me.
With your help, Kokoro Connect has come to an end... but lately I’m fortunate to say I’ve been getting a handful of inquiries about my next work. Honestly, I don’t know what my plans are. However, I want to be transparent with my readers — after all, I feel deeply indebted to those who have paid money for my books. For now, what I can say for sure is this: I don’t want to write a new book just because people want me to, or because I need the money, or purely on a whim. I don’t want to publish anything that, to me, does not have a clear purpose.
For that matter, I’m not dead-set on writing more, either; I barely consider myself an “author” to begin with. And frankly, I don’t have to be an author to accomplish the goal I have in mind. But at the same time, I imagine writing is the closest I’ll get to it, and I can’t deny that I want to keep writing. In short, writing is not my one true calling in life. It is simply a means to an end.
With that in mind, all I can say is — the next time you see a book by Anda Sadanatsu, you’ll know that he truly wanted to write it.
To the readers of Kokoro Connect, I hope to see you again someday. And I do believe that day will come eventually.
...Okay, enough of me trying to sound cool. All I want is for all of you to have fun and enjoy my work. Plus, it’s possible I might change my mind about a lot of this stuff (he says, avoiding all responsibility).
But just imagine: today might be the day that we meet. And meeting you might dramatically change my life, or my perspective. Who knows what might happen from there?
From the bottom of my heart, I’m grateful I got to share this fleeting moment with all of you.
Okay, now it really sounds like a final farewell — but actually, there’s going to be one more short story compilation after this. An epilogue collection, if you will. This book is for the fans, so let me know what you want to see, and I’ll try to work it in!
Until then, I’ll see you around...
Oh, right! I was going to save all the detailed acknowledgments for the next volume, but it’s possible some people will stop here, so just in case: I’d like to thank everyone who helped get this book published. Thank you so much!
—Anda Sadanatsu
March 2013