HS1C09: Afterword

First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who has taken my work into their hands. Having received the honorable mention in the “2nd Kyoto Animation Award” contest, I remember it like something from long ago. Never dreaming that it would be published like this at that time, I just have a thousand emotions flooding my heart now.

When participating in talks for the publication, the first thing I thought was ‘I can meet Haruka and the others again’. When I turned the pages of the manuscript after it’s been a while, they released their glittering radiance, their surging liveliness unchanged as well. Calling out ‘Yo, take care of us again’, Haruka fleetingly turned his gaze towards me, with the usual blunt expression on his face.

Sixth grade elementary school students are right in the delicate period when an adult-like way of thinking starts sprouting and as seniors, they come to have a sense of responsibility and a sense of self-reliance as an individual person. They, who’ve realized that they cannot stay as children, anguishing in hesitation and bewilderment, that anguish makes their heart grow.

Even if they’re playing sports, even if they’re studying, even when they’re playing, even when they’re crying, even if they’re just standing without doing anything, they are brightly shining.

Having thought that I wanted to depict them who are like that was the motive. Then, when I thought of making it a story about swimming, I began to write one more line.

“The water is alive.”

With this outset, the story’s direction was mostly decided. The concept is ‘the story of swimmers who’ll be called prodigies in the future, before they’ve awakened yet’. The theme is ‘through swimming, depicting the friendship and growth of the boys’. I thought of the setting and composition while writing. It was an unreasonable way of doing it, but I had the confidence to finish writing it. The power to make me believe just that was in this ‘one line’.

Then, when I was finished with writing it all, the message packed into the work finally came into sight, as if it was rising to the surface. Such as ‘Aah, so it was this sort of thing that I wanted to say.’, while thinking of it as if it’s someone else’s work, I gazed at the work that was just finished.

The message must possess a universality that isn’t affected by the changes of the period and the circumstances. Because, that’s why it’s something that reveals a person’s true nature.

As to what that is, I venture to leave it unspoken. There’s no answer. The answer is what everyone felt. If you can’t feel anything from it, that is the author’s lack of ability. If most of the people who have taken my work into their hands each felt something, nothing makes me happier.

In the future, I feel that I want to send out more works into the world that makes even more people feel even more things.

In closing, I would like to deeply express my gratitude to everyone who has given their assistance for the publication.

2013, summer breeze weather, Ohji Kouji