Afterword

Hello everyone, I’m Rin Murakami. It’s been a while.

Thank you so much for reading the second volume of Guide to the Perfect Otaku Girlfriend! I started writing this series last year and it’s thanks to you, the readers, that I’ve been able to continue up to this point. I hope you liked the main theme of this volume: meeting new people in the workplace.

Since I became a full-time writer, my sleep schedule has become so bad that I now sleep during the day and work at night. I sometimes try to fix that by waking up earlier, but then I end up writing until late and I go back to square one. It’s a vicious cycle...

Since sleeping correctly isn’t an option, I try to take care of myself by exercising—jogging and cycling—but it’s painful to admit that the years have taken their toll on my body.

When writing this volume, as I wanted the characters to look for romance by starting a job, I had to find a good option for otaku to meet each other. I have a couple of friends who have worked in themed cafés, so I asked them a ton of questions to get ideas. Kagetora and Kokoro ended up working in a maid café. I also chose that, and was (hopefully) able to write about it in an interesting way, because I personally love going to all kinds of themed cafés.

There are so many weird cafés in Japan. There are ones where you can play board games with the maids, ones which have stage performances, ones that make fine cuisine, ones where you can roleplay with the maids, and so on. There’s even one, which I haven’t visited myself, where the maids dress and act like little girls. I’m told that, despite how that sounds, it’s a normal, wholesome place. The café in the story, however, with the waitresses dressed as maids with cat ears, is a relatively standard one.

In order to get more material for the book, I even visited what is probably the single most popular maid café in Japan, and I was shocked to see just how pretty all of the maids were. As it turned out, though, they weren’t all otaku. I still believe that one of the best things about maid cafés is that you can revel in your otakuness without needing to hide your power level.

Other ideas I considered for the protagonists’ jobs were working in an anime store, selling doujinshi, and debugging games. I know people who have done these things, but they all sound exhausting...

Another possible job, which I’ve actually experienced myself, would have been working in an internet café. The coolest benefit was being able to read manga when there was nothing else to do. I’ve also tried attending events to help manga circles sell their doujinshi, although I’m not sure that counts as a proper job. That was a lot of fun too, and it made for a good experience.

As for the romance part, back when I was in school, I used to hear a lot about how the people around me had found their boyfriend or girlfriend at their part-time job, be it at a fast food joint, at a pizzeria, as a cram school instructor, at a family restaurant, or so on. Incidentally, most of those who found love at work did so at Mister Donut, for some reason.

Most of my part-time jobs were things like cleaning, posting pamphlets, or working in factories and warehouses, which meant that I never had any luck meeting anyone there.

When it comes to otaku romance specifically, I think that most otaku become couples at events and offline meetups, or even by using dating apps, like the ones in the first volume. Everyone who attends that kind of event is an otaku to begin with, and with the apps you can filter out people to find those that have the same interests as you. Just like in the book, dating apps really do have lots of otaku communities centered around particular anime or games.

Nowadays, with all the different kinds of dating apps on the market, there are some that allow you to filter people based on their ideas or their personality, match with people who walk past you on the street, choose partners only based on appearance, look for people who live near you, etc. Some of them even let you register with your social network profiles, giving you the option to never match with your friends on those sites.

I actually tried using one myself for a while, but I lost interest quickly. Several of my friends have found partners through dating apps, though, so I think that they’re a good tool. Also, recently, there have been a lot more matchmaking parties aimed at otaku, so that should give people who are in the same position as Kagetora and Kokoro more options.

I love using real stories as inspiration for the things that happen to my characters, so I hope that if you are looking for a boyfriend or girlfriend, reading this series could be of some use to you.

Since the second volume is mostly set in a maid café, Mako Tatekawa is drawing Kokoro in a maid outfit for the cover! I’ve only seen the rough sketch, but it’s so cute that it almost gave me a heart attack...

There are also several new characters appearing for the first time: Iroha, Mikoto, Kusumi, and Yume. Did you like them? I looked at the character design illustrations from Mako Tatekawa, and they look exactly like I’d pictured them, if not even better. Iroha and Yume are adorable, Mikoto is cool and beautiful, and Kusumi is handsome! Thank you so much, Mako Tatekawa!

I also want to thank my editor, who even helped me with promoting the book online. I’m very grateful for that.

In the third volume, I hope to write about Kagetora’s first cosplay, how he looks for romance by doing so, and how he grows closer to the various girls.

I hope to see you there!

Rin Murakami