5. Kudou Mirei. The student council president. While I did quite a bit of planning in regard to the other four’s traits and personalities, Kudou’s ended up coming about entirely off the cuff. To be brutally honest: She was actually a guy in the series’ initial plot outline. It was only when I was nearing the end of the writing process for volume one and finally hit the scene where the student council president would be introduced that it struck me that nobody would really be happy to see a guy get thrown into the story at that point, and I changed her into a girl on the spot. That was such a good call, seriously! She ended up being so, so much cuter than I ever imagined in the anime, to the extent that it influenced me to give her more screen time in the later novels as well. As for why she ended up with a stupidly broken power like Grateful Robber...well, I think this volume’s main text already explained that in a nutshell.
6. Saitou Hitomi. A heroine in her mid-twenties—specifically, a heroine for the final boss rather than the protagonist. She started the story out already in full-blown maximum-affection mode, unlike the other heroines, which made her quite fun to write. To be totally frank re: Kiryuu et al, when they showed up back in volume 2, my driving motivation was to just throw out a whole squad of villains all at once. I ended up coming up with their basic characters and power names, then didn’t really think them through much beyond that. I blame the fact that power names are so fun to think up for that questionable decision! Let’s just call it my special move: Leave It for My Future Self to Figure Out. It’s a tactic that I use pretty often, and it works out a surprising amount of the time.
7. Futaba Tamaki. A rustic sort of girl with a thick accent. An aspiring heroine, but one who just couldn’t make the cut. I feel like she ended up coming across as a conniving villainess sort of character, in a sense, but from another perspective, I would say that she’s the most normal girl in the whole cast. Not a heroine—just a normal girl. I really do have to wonder if anyone actually appreciated her having that Fukushima accent in the end, though.
Next up, the men!
1. Andou Jurai. The protagonist. Dark and Dark. A chuuni. The moment I came up with the name “Jurai,” it hit me that this series could actually go the distance. That’s a relatively common thing to have happen in my writing process, actually. Although Andou’s a chuuni, he’s a chuuni with the capacity to look at himself from an outside perspective—in other words, he’s a character whose nature is self-contradictory from the word go. Volume 6 was born from that contradiction, and I think it played a pretty big factor in this final volume as well.
I spent a long time thinking over how this series would end, to be honest, but when all was said and done, I decided that having it conclude with Andou moving on from his chuunibyou would be the right direction to take it in. That’s how a line that I wrote back in volume 1 with no intent of it having any deep significance—“Let us begin the end of the beginning”—ended up being a surprisingly perfect note for the series to wrap up on. And, speaking of which...I ended up making “hella cool” into something of a catchphrase for Andou, which in the long term had the unfortunate side effect of making me have a character sing the praises of names I came up with myself. So, that was sort of humiliating! It was like I was shouting “All right, readers, this is how you give a supernatural power a cool name!” every time I put a new one in, raising the bar for myself to a stupid degree over and over...and god damn if it wasn’t fun as hell!
2. Sagami Shizumu. A self-proclaimed reader. A character who would honestly be even cringier than Andou if he existed in real life, and who threw the story for a loop in all sorts of ways, repeatedly. If it weren’t for him, I feel like the series would’ve probably wrapped up after half as many volumes. I do have to admit, though, that I really like meta characters like him. He also ended up playing the roles of both narrator and protagonist in volume 11, and speaking as the author, even I’m shocked that he of all characters managed to reform himself.
3. Kiryuu Hajime. A final boss, protagonist, and author all in one. A chuuni who’s a step ahead of Andou in terms of both age and his place in the overall story. A man who loves being a chuuni more than anyone and who wants to stay that way more than anything, all the while having already realized that having that desire means he’s started to stray from the chuuni path.
Changing yourself is hard, but forcing yourself to not change can be even harder. I believe that I, myself, have changed considerably as an author over the five years that When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace has run. You could call that growth, in a sense, but you could also call it degeneration. In any case, for better or for worse I don’t think I’ll ever be able to write a story like this again. I could probably write another supernatural battle story, and I could probably write another high school rom-com, but I don’t think I could write this story or these characters anymore. In that sense as well, this final volume represents an ending and a moment of moving on. I’ll still be writing more stories from here on out in general, of course!
And now, it’s time to completely ruin the sentimental mood I have going here with an incredibly blunt announcement! On the same day this final volume goes on sale, the first volume of my brand-new series, Isekai Tennis Musou: Tennis Player Toka Iu Nazo no Otoko ga Chotto Tsuyosugirun Desu Kedo! (Isekai Tennis Warrior: This Mysterious Tennis Player’s Just a Little Too Overpowered!) will be released! I’d explain what it’s about, but I think the title pretty much says it all. It also has an ever so slight connection with When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace’s setting, in the sense that Andou’s child makes an extremely minor cameo! Please check it out, if you’re interested!
Finally, I’d like to offer some thanks. First, to my editor, Nakamizo, and my illustrator, 029. Next, to the good people at Studio TRIGGER, who not only handled the anime but also helped out with the interior illustrations of the novels. And finally, I’d like to offer my thanks to my readers for sticking with this series this whole time. The fact that I was able to finish it off with a proper ending is all thanks to you, and I offer you my greatest and sincerest gratitude.
And that’s all! May we meet again, if the fates allow it!
Kota Nozomi