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Originally Posted by iceburgdragon
Below is the Afterword of Zoku for anyone who's interested. I tried my best to translate it, but there will always be things that are lost in translation.
Spoiler for Afterword:
When you think about what you've done and what you haven't done in your life, naturally the latter outweighs the former. So "doing something" basically means you're not doing anything else. Moreover, "trying hard to do something" means "being lazy about everything else". When you read about famous figures, you might be baffled by how hard those geniuses have worked. However if you think about it, you realize that they have probably missed out on a lot of other things in life. Does that mean you can't do everything, and that you have to give up on certain things? Does choosing one kind of happiness mean having to sacrifice another kind of happiness? When you accomplish something, you might have just lost something important at the same time. When this process is repeated, you may eventually end up reaching a point of no return where it's too late to turn back. But then again, trying to do a little bit of everything isn't very practical, and it will probably hinder your growth. However there is an old saying that says mastering a particular field can allow one to use the expertise on other areas. So doing something is definitely better than doing nothing. But in that case, the difference between "do something" and "can do something" is also pretty obvious, and if "what you did" equals "what you couldn't do", that might be a tough thing to live with. It can be kind of depressing if the more you do, the more you will regret and feel guilty. But the feeling of "I should have done that instead that time" may also lead to the next step.
Anyways, this book is basically a bonus chapter in the Monogatari series. Owarimonogatari "Ge" (third book) is the official final book in the series. So this time I tried to write a book where "it doesn't matter if you read it or not". Because of that, this book is filled with inconsistencies that are hard to ignore. It's pretty fun creating a world where I don't have to worry about connecting loose ends. Of course I'll be in trouble if I were to do that all the time. So anyways, this was "Zokuowarimonogatari Final Chapter, Koyomi Reverse", a story about regrets. Oh, speaking of which, yes I did change the title. "Koyomi Book" sounded like a subheading of "Koyomimonogatari" so I changed my mind.
The book cover is a happy Oikura Sodachi-san. Cute! I knew it was unreasonable of me to request drawing her like that, but VOFAN-san, you pulled it off perfectly. Thank you so much for that. I am also truly grateful for all of you readers who have read all 18 books in the series. It makes me happy most of all that you chose to read a book where "it doesn't matter if you read it or not". Cheers, (Otsukaresama deshita)!
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Thanks for that, I really enjoyed his final thoughts there! I have to say that it seems very much like him to create an end that the audience doesn't need to read - yet also has its own message. Instead of putting his climax where one would expect, he resolves that one book early and moves on to look at one final theme before the series is wrapped up - one which fits the universe very well considering how self-persecuting a lot of the characters are.
It's a fitting end to the series, even though there are loose ends still within the universe it was never a series which one expected a concrete end out of. It's very different from Medaka Box, which had a rather concrete end whilst still leaving its own message. I look forward to Nisio Isin's next work!
On that note a few of his one-shots showed a lot of promise, I wonder if he's going to pick any of them up.