Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume31 Postscript
Afterword
…… It’s not like the title was chosen to flatter Shueisha[1] or anything.
Hello, it’s Konno.
This volume’s subtitle is “Marguerite Ribbon”. When I thought of it, I had no idea that “Marguerite” and “Ribbon” are names of two very popular girls manga magazines. After thinking about it I went, “Come to think of it…”, but that’s no reason to change it, and since they are both Shueisha, I thought, “Well, it’s fine”, (I don’t think there is any point in writing about it after such a long time, but the Cobalt magazine is also Shueisha). If I really was trying to flatter them, I would not have called it “Marguerite Ribbon”. That on its own is half-hearted.
“A Bouquet with a Ribbon Wrapped Around Marguerite (…… does it sound old?)”.
Wait-wait, can I do it?
“A Jumping Playboy Holding a Marguerite Bouquet with a Cobalt Blue Ribbon Wrapped Around it is Chanting “You””. [2]
⸻ Just kidding. It’s a little (well, a lot) too long to be the subtitle.
Now, this “Maria-sama ga Miteru: Marguerite Ribbon” is a paperback that combines several short stories into one, just like the previously published “Maria-sama ga Miteru: Variety Gifts”, “Maria-sama ga Miteru: In Library” and “Maria-sama ga Miteru: Frame of Mind”. However, what is decisively different from the previous three books is that it is entirely new. Up until now, when I had enough short stories published in the Cobalt magazine, I would think “It’s about time” and compile them. But this time it’s different.
As the series gets longer, I receive requests from various people. Ranging from “Please give us more ◯◯”, to “Please make △△ and ◼◼ soeurs”, to “I want to see where ⚫⚫ goes” and to “Please let ◇◇ and XX flirt more”.
It is impossible to fulfill all the requests, so they have all been accepted with the caveats of “if possible” and “if there is an opportunity”, but such opportunities do not arise easily. I came up with this project to create such opportunities from the beginning.
It’s not in order of the most requests received, so it may not necessarily be the lineup that meets everyone’s wishes. Due to the limited number of pages, there were some stories that were nominated but ultimately passed on. There are many different stories in it, so I hope you like at least one of them.
By the way, “Marguerite Ribbon” is different from previous collections of short stories in another aspect in addition to being comprised of entirely new stories. That is, the rule of no stories from the future is broken. You can tell by looking at the chapters' titles, which include “Yumi-chan’s Illustrated Diary — Future Volume 1” and “Yumi-chan’s Illustrated Diary — Future Volume 2”. Regarding these two, their stories happen after “Marguerite Ribbon 1” through “Marguerite Ribbon 4”. You could skip the two future stories and then return to “Yumi-chan’s Illustrated Diary — Future Volume”, but I don’t think it would flow as beautifully.
I didn’t realize it while writing, but there were some keywords in the short stories. Inari shrines and torii (including Eriko’s)[3], coffee (cups, cans, plastic bottles), death of family members (…… this one not so much), all are written from a main character’s perspective (I was aware of this one though) etc. That’s all I can think of right now, but there may be more if you look for them. Of course, the blue umbrella appears in all of the stories from “Memories of the Blue Umbrella”.
So, now that I think about it, I feel like the title could have been “Torii, Coffee and the Blue Umbrella”, but “Marguerite Ribbon” is visually prettier so I am going with it. First of all, even Hibiki-san would have trouble deciding what kind of illustration to draw on the cover of “Torii”, “Coffee” and “Blue Umbrella”.
The main story here takes place in March. Sachiko and Rei’s graduation ceremony will soon be held. It seems that “Maria-sama ga Miteru”’s pair of Yumi and Sachiko, which has been receiving support for so long, are almost reaching their goal.
Like Yumi, I have mixed feelings about Sachiko’s graduation ceremony.
But it will work out somehow (right, Yumi?).
So, for now, I’m going to work hard to tie a ribbon on the bouquet of Marguerite flowers instead of spring chrysanthemums.
Konno Oyuki
𐮛This is a work of fiction. It has no relation to any real person, organisation or incident.
Translator's Notes
- ↑ Shueisha is a huge Japanese publishing company. It owns many popular entertainment magazines and is the company that published all the "Maria-sama ga Miteru" novels.
- ↑ Here Konno incorporates the names of a bunch of magazines published by Shueisha into the subtitle, namely "Jump" (there are a lot of magazines with the word "Jump" in them), "Playboy", "Margaret", "Bouquet", "Cobalt" (all Maria-sama ga Miteru short stories were published there), "Ribbon", "Chorus" (the name of the magazine was since changed to "Cocohana". And yes, I translated it as "Chanting" because "Chorusing" is not a word), and "You" .
- ↑ Torii is a traditional Japanese gate, most often found at shrines. Here we have a pun, because it is also Torii Ericko's surname.
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