THE LATECOMER FAVORITE

Reki Kawahara

When M, the editor in chief, started talking to me about writing a letter of recommendation for ^*that^* The Irregular at Magic High School, I was overcome with excitement. “I’ll write it! I’ll write it. I’ll write twenty thousand of them!” I answered immediately, though actually saying that to the editor may have been rather rude, or egotistical, or something… I’m not good enough to write recommendations or commentaries, so please enjoy reading something like a column instead.

Forgive me for prefacing this with a few personal matters, but my—Reki Kawahara’s, that is—first book was published by Dengeki Bunko in February 2009. At the time, there were very few examples of novels released as amateur works on the web to be commercially released (at least, at the young-adult level), but in the past two years there has been an abundance of these “web-released” works that have been published by various companies, so I feel that the existence of online novels has been clearly acknowledged. And recently, the much-awaited publication from Dengeki Bunko is The Irregular at Magic High School, which I will refer to as Magic High School from now on.

All of you readers may already know, but Magic High School was serialized on the novel submission site “Let’s Become an Author” starting in October 2008, and finished in March 2011—a very long work. It had sole occupation of the number one spot in the popularity rankings, and the page view counter showed an insane number exceeding 30,000,000 (!).

There aren’t enough pages for me to even start detailing the appeal of Magic High School, which has garnered so much support. To try to sum it all up, I think this work beautifully and effectively employs a certain deviation that you can only expect from online novels.

Magic High School may have been written as a draft for a newcomer’s prize application, but with its magical theory, constructed so finely it borders on tenacity, and its colorful cast of characters, who appear one after the other in the beginning, needing to cut it down to the required page count was probably inevitable. But in online novels, the only restriction is the author’s limits. No matter how voluminous the settings may be, and no matter how many characters there may be, and no matter how deliberately and carefully the story develops, the writer can write to his or her heart’s content.

Of course, this also deviates heavily from the theory in commercial business. Changing this deviation into appeal—and this is just my own opinion—relies entirely on the volume, or the amount of text in the work. Before I spoke of the author’s limits, but the larger-scale a work becomes, the more difficult it is to continue it for very long. After all, the opinions of the readers are the only things giving the authors of online novels motivation (and in the beginning, you won’t even have that…). A work will have shining charm precisely because the creator uses his or her passion toward the work as an energy source, and to take one step after another outside the realm of established theory.

Magic High School is one of those rare works that has flown high above those limits. The amount of text written by its author, Mr. Tsutomu Sato, exceeded the production pace of most occupational writers. For all of you who have been able to enter the Magic High School world via Dengeki Bunko, I very much hope you will continue to anticipate the infinitely expanding world beyond this book.

I’ve written a lot of formal sentences, but I’m pretty sure the best things about Magic High School’s deviating charm are the extreme love Miyuki has for her brother and Tatsuya’s boundless invincibility!

I can’t help but wait in anticipation for the continuation whenever I think of Ms. Kana Ishida’s beautiful illustrations—whether she’s making Tatsuya seem even more excellent and brilliant, or showing us ever more extreme behavior out of Miyuki.

The latecomer favorite from the world of online novels—that is The Irregular at Magic High School.