It’s the first afterword in quite a while. Otsukare-sama desu; this is nigozyu. How have you been?
Good old all-purpose Otsukare-sama desu, which literally means, “You must be very tired.” It’s a handy greeting you can use at any time of day, but once I grew up and started using it, for the first time I thought, Come to think of it, I am tired every day. It’s possible that humans’ feelings are more influenced by words than you’d think. I hope that being tired is still very much a foreign concept to everyone who’s reading this book.
Anyway. Once again, thank you for picking up Volume 11 of The Detective Is Already Dead! The series has made it to double digits, and this is the final volume of the Akashic Records arc, which began in Volume 7. The timeline skipped around all over the place, which I think might have made it a little hard to read here and there.
The fact that the story doesn’t necessarily occur in chronological order is one of the distinguishing traits of this series, but I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they need to reread the previous volume every time a new one comes out or they can’t remember it. I’m really sorry for all the trouble…! Fortunately, though, the story made it to this ending as originally scheduled. (Although the wills of Kimizuka and the other characters sometimes nudged it in directions that weren’t what I’d originally had in mind.) Thank you so much! As I write this afterword, I keep sighing with relief.
Which brings me to my next topic: works other than the original series. The art book The Detective Is Already Dead: Umibouzu Artworks is being released on the same day as this volume! It’s filled with all sorts of super-amazing illustrations that Umibouzu has drawn for Detective over the course of the series. I admire it every day, and I hope you all do the same. They even let me publish a brand-new short story in it!
Also, last month, Volume 2 of the spinoff novel Nagisa Natsunagi Still Wants to Be a High School Girl: The Detective Is Already Dead, Ordinary Cases (written by Syusui Tsukimi and illustrated by Umibouzu) was released! It’s a spin-off series set in high school with a supremely cute and dashing Natsunagi as the protagonist, and it ties in with the main series. It’s packed with startling developments that will make you go “Whoa!” so you should absolutely read it!
Then there’s Detective Academy (by Moyashi Itame), which runs on the official Detective X (Twitter) page every other Tuesday! It’s an ordinary school romcom version of Detective…until you realize there’s more to it than that. I highly encourage you to start at the first chapter and read this one through as well. It’s not too late to start now!
Anyway, as you can see, Detective is scheduled to bring plenty of energy to 2024 as well, and it would make me so happy if you kept giving it your support. It’s going to be a little more of a wait for the second season of the anime, but I bet the extra time will make the end product even better, so please join me in looking forward to it!
In closing, allow me to bring things back to the original series. As a matter of fact, there’s a little bit left to read in Volume 11. It’s a scene that’s connected to the mystery that was left unresolved, something you could also call the prologue to Volume 12. Kimizuka and company’s story isn’t over. They haven’t reached the actual epilogue yet. So go ahead and turn the page.
The Detective Is Already Dead enters the __________________ arc.