MA in Literature. Criticism of otaku culture, literature, and the arts.
Tomorrow, I Will Die. You Will Live Again.1 won the Gold Prize at the nineteenth Dengeki Novel Prize and placed thirty-fifth overall and tenth among new series in This Light Novel Is Amazing! 2014. It has also earned a modest reputation in China, has been published in Taiwan, and took first place in the Chinese light-novel community Light Kingdom’s 2013 ranking of new works. Readers have lavishly praised its power to move them and bring them to tears. This essay examines the construction of that moving experience and the principles behind it.
Three Distinctive Features
Tearjerkers generally follow a formula. A heroine who has died, or entered a state equivalent to death—as in Sugii Hikaru’s Please Remember Me, or the disappearances in Maeda Jun’s Angel Beats!—has her life prolonged by some supernatural force. But this supernatural reprieve can never last; eventually, death and disappearance must be faced. Please Remember Me, anohana – The Flower We Saw That Day, and other works largely follow this formula.2 Tomorrow, I Will Die. You Will Live Again. broadly follows it too. What distinguishes this novel, however, is that its heroine, Yumesaki Hikari, never appears in the story.
Let us first look at some of the novel’s very peculiar features, then use them to explain what makes it distinctive and why it moves readers so deeply.
The Choice of Viewpoint
The central premise of Tomorrow, I Will Die. You Will Live Again. is “possession,” or “body swapping.”
Having watched a girl die before his eyes, Sakamoto Akitsuki accepts an offer from a mysterious man in black: “save the girl with half your life.” But the bargain does not literally mean “giving away half your lifespan.” Instead, the dead girl—Yumesaki Hikari—possesses Akitsuki’s body, and the two take turns controlling it, one day at a time.
“Possession” and “body swapping” are very familiar premises in otaku culture. NISIOISIN’s Nekomonogatari, Yoshikawa Miki’s Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, and, more recently, Shinkai Makoto’s Your Name all use them.
Although the premise itself is nothing new, this novel handles it in a distinctive way.
From beginning to end, it maintains first-person narration from the male protagonist Sakamoto Akitsuki’s point of view. Across the three volumes of the main story, the viewpoint never once changes. Why is the author so determined to keep it fixed? In fact, this is intimately connected to the novel’s ability to make us cry. I will develop this argument below.
The Diary’s Conversational Effect
For the novel’s second peculiar feature, let us read some passages from the original.3
『ベッドの下を探索していたらとんでもないお宝を発見！まさか坂本くんが女の子と文通していたとはね。かっわいい～～～～～！』
と続いてる。
「昔の話だよ！ほっとけ！」Next comes—
“Went exploring under the bed and found an incredible treasure! Who knew Sakamoto-kun used to write letters to a girl? So. Cuuuuute!”
“That was ages ago! Mind your own business!”—Japanese edition, vol. 1, p. 71
『ねぇ、なんで友達作らないの？』
「なんでだろうね」“Hey, why don’t you make some friends?”
“I wonder why.”—Japanese edition, vol. 1, p. 79
『それに坂本くんてば、わたしの好きな小説のキャラに似てるし。だからダイジョブさ！』
「それと何がどう関係あるんだよ」“Besides, Sakamoto-kun, you’re like a character in a novel I love. So you’ll definitely be fine!”
“What does that have to do with anything?”—Japanese edition, vol. 1, p. 125
By now, you have probably noticed that Sakamoto Akitsuki and Yumesaki Hikari communicate through an “exchange diary.” This is another familiar device in body-swapping stories.
Sakamoto writes on the right-hand side, Hikari on the left. The diary ought to consist of long blocks of messages. But rather than faithfully reproducing the diary format, the novel reconstructs its contents in an arrangement resembling dialogue. Clearly, under the rules of their body-swapping arrangement, Akitsuki and Hikari cannot converse. Yet breaking up those long messages and arranging them as individual lines of dialogue gives us the peculiar feeling that they are actually having a conversation. Let us provisionally call this the conversational effect.
Some readers may object that, logically, there is nothing to prevent someone from treating an exchange diary like a novel and writing it in dialogue. There are also narrative reminders of the diary format: phrases such as “it said…”
But I want to make a distinction here. Our concern is not whether its form matches dialogue exactly, but whether the arrangement makes it feel as though a conversation is taking place. Admittedly, the examples quoted so far still contain narrative reminders that this is a diary, and their conversational effect is not yet very strong. But the quotations are not finished. Let us read on.
二月ほど前だろうか。誕生日でもないのに、いきなり誕生日プレゼントを渡されたあの事件。お返しを催促されていたのだが,色々とドタバタしていて完全に忘れてた。どうやらそれが、凶行の原因となっていたらしい。
『いい？今回は許してあげるけど、今度からは気をつけること！女の子はイベントをすっごく大事にするんだからね！次はあんな復讐じゃすまないと心得よ！』
「へいへい。気をつけますよ」
アレをこえるとなると、家族会議に発展する可能性がある。気をつけよう。About two months ago, was it? That time I suddenly got a birthday present when it wasn’t even my birthday. She’d been nagging me for one in return, but with all the commotion, I’d completely forgotten. Apparently that was her motive for the crime.
“Got it? I’ll forgive you this time, but you’d better be more careful from now on! Girls take special occasions veeeery seriously! Next time my revenge won’t stop at that. You’d better remember it!”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be careful.”
If she goes any further, we could end up having a family meeting. Better watch myself.—Japanese edition, vol. 2, p. 37
ノートを開いて最初の一行目を目に入れる。
『タマタマ痛い……』
「女の子がそんな単語使うなよ……」
いきなりなんだ。
『なんで？坂本くんの秘蔵動画を参考に、彼氏が喜ぶポーズをレクチャーしてあげただけなのに……雪瑚ちゃん、あんなに思いっきり蹴り上げなくても……』
またいらんイベントがあったようだ。つーかどいつもこいつも秘蔵動画を漁りやがって。もう秘蔵でもなんでもねーじゃんか。
『痛いよぉ……。お風呂でマッサージしたのにまだ痛い……心なしか腫れてるような……』
あんまり触るなって、恥ずかしいんだから。
『坂本くんが童貞卒業できなくなっちゃう。ただでさえ、ちっちゃくて頼りないのに……』
泣くぞ！
『だめ。ちょっと我慢できない。薬塗っておこう。ムヒでいいや』
「…………え？」
お、おい。まさか……。
『坂本くん、ごめんね。机の上にひむ置いとくから、起きてもまだ痛かったら塗ってね』
ま、待て。そ、それだけは……。
『これでぐっすり寢られるね。んじゃ、おやすみ～』
や、やめ――。I open the notebook and read the first line.
“My balls hurt…”
“Girls shouldn’t use words like that…”
Where did that come from?
“Why? All I did was use Sakamoto-kun’s secret video stash to teach her some poses her boyfriend would like… Yukiko-chan didn’t have to kick me that hard…”
Looks like there’s been more trouble I could’ve done without. And why is every last one of them digging through my secret video stash? What’s even secret about it anymore?
“Owww… I massaged them in the bath and they still hurt… Maybe I’m imagining it, but they seem swollen…”
Don’t touch it so much. It’s embarrassing.
“Sakamoto-kun won’t be able to lose his virginity now. It’s already so tiny and unreliable…”
You’re going to make me cry!
“Nope. Can’t stand it. Better put some medicine on. Muhi will do.”
“…Huh?”
H-hey. Don’t tell me…
“Sorry, Sakamoto-kun. I’ll leave the Muhi on the desk. If it still hurts when you wake up, put some more on.”
W-wait. Anything but that…
“Now I can finally get a good night’s sleep. Nighty-night!”
D-don’t—Essay author’s note: Putting Muhi there has much the same effect as putting fengyoujing, a Chinese medicated oil, there… Especially if it gets into the urethra—the consequences don’t bear thinking about. Please, nobody try this.
—Japanese edition, vol. 2, p. 60
As the story progresses, we can see the quoted passages gradually dropping the narrative reminders that this is a diary. The conversational effect grows stronger. In the last quotation, apart from the opening sentence, there is not a single narrative reminder of the diary format. This intensification continues: see, for example, volume 2, pages 74, 107, 183, 186, 293, and 297. And that is not the end of it.
The moment we pick up the Japanese third volume and turn to the opening—
季節は肌寒い十月の休日。
『怒らないと約束できるなら、真実を教えよう』
「なんだいきなり」
起床と共に開いた日記の書き出しはこんな文章。さて、嫌な予感が全力疾走してきたぞ。
『どんな真実を知っても怒らないと、ここに誓うのだ』
「へいへいわかったよ。なにをやらかしただ」
どうせまたドジを踏んだんだろうけど。
『絶対怒らない？』
「怒らないよ」
『ほんとにほんとに？』
「ほんとにほんとに」
『もし怒ったら、パソコンの検索履歴に「ミク 縞パン」があったことバラすからね』
「それバラしたら確実に怒るからな」
なんで知ってるんだ。いいから用件を言えっつーの。
『月曜日だったかな。かすみちゃんから「週末、一緒に遊びに行こう」って誘われたの。ごめん、言うの忘れてた』
「なんだ、そんなことかよ」
[Remainder omitted.]A chilly day off in October.
“Promise you won’t get angry, and I’ll tell you the truth.”
“Where did that come from?”
This is how the diary begins when I open it as soon as I wake up. A bad feeling is sprinting straight toward me.
“Swear that you won’t get angry, whatever the truth turns out to be.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. What have you done now?”
She’s probably gotten into trouble again.
“Absolutely no getting angry?”
“I won’t get angry.”
“Really? Really?”
“Really, really.”
“If you do, I’ll tell everyone your computer’s search history includes ‘Miku striped panties.’”
“Tell anyone that and I’ll definitely get angry.”
How do you even know that? All right, all right, get to the point.
“It was Monday, I think. Kasumi-chan asked me, ‘Want to go out together this weekend?’ Sorry, I forgot to tell you.”
“What, that’s all?”[Remainder omitted.]
—Japanese edition, vol. 3, p. 12
Volume 3 hits us with this right at the start. The conversational effect has almost reached its final form. Even the remaining narrative reminders of the diary cannot shake the powerful sense of conversation in this passage. The effect is still fairly weak in volume 1, develops in volume 2, and reaches its height in volume 3. Further examples appear on pages 92–94, 101, 127, and 175 of volume 3.
To sum up: in Tomorrow, I Will Die. You Will Live Again., Sakamoto Akitsuki and Yumesaki Hikari use an exchange diary, so the messages Hikari leaves ought to follow a diary’s format. Yet rather than depicting the diary directly, the novel breaks up and arranges its contents in a very peculiar way. What Akitsuki encounters ought to be long blocks of messages. The special arrangement, however, gives readers the illusion that he and Hikari are conversing. The heroine never appears in these scenes, yet the dialogue-like arrangement leads readers to mistakenly believe that she actually exists within the work. This illusion will become the source of the entire novel’s tragedy.
Multivoicedness Through Typography
For the third distinctive feature, let us return to the original.
「セクシードリーム自身が『わたしは桜姫高校２年２組在籍の者だ！悔しかったら明日か三日後か五日後に仕返しにこい！』とほざいとったんじゃい！文句あんのか！」
“Sexy Dream was the one mouthing off: ‘I’m in Class 2-2 at Sakurahime High! If you’re sore about it, come get your revenge tomorrow, or in three days, or five!’ You got a problem with that?”
—Japanese edition, vol. 1, p. 98
In this scene, the guy with the mohawk comes to the protagonist’s classroom to take revenge on Sexy Dream. These are the mohawk guy’s lines, so the voice we supply in our heads as we read ought to be male. But most readers probably imagine a female voice here. At least, I did. Let us keep reading.
「『教えてくれてありがとう。ごめんね、勝手なことしちゃって。わたしなりに坂本くんにたすけてもらったお礼をしたかったんだけど、余計だったよね。かすみちゃんにも悪いことしちゃっったし……。かすみちゃんにはできるだけ普通に接してあげて。急に距離を置いたら傷ついちゃうから。わたしもかすみちゃんのこと、できるだけ気をつけるようにする。本当にごめんなさい。
んでんで、やっぱり好きな子いたんだ！んもう、恥ずかしいがらなくていいのに～！坂本くんて結構かっこいいし、実はヘタレ萌えキャラだから母性本能がアレでコレで絶対うまくいくよ。がんばれ坂本くん！応援するぜぇ！』か……」“‘Thanks for telling me. I’m sorry I went ahead and did all that without asking. I wanted to thank you in my own way for saving me, Sakamoto-kun, but I guess I just got in the way. And I wasn’t fair to Kasumi-chan either… Please try to treat her as normally as possible. It’ll hurt her if you suddenly start keeping your distance. I’ll try to be more careful with Kasumi-chan too. I’m really sorry.
Anyway, anyway—so you do have someone you like! Oh, come on, there’s no need to be embarrassed! You’re pretty good-looking, Sakamoto-kun, and you’re actually the adorably hapless type, so maternal instincts will kick in and one thing will lead to another and it’ll definitely work out. Go for it, Sakamoto-kun! I’m rooting for you!’ Huh…”—Japanese edition, vol. 1, p. 176
「『南極星で風城くんのお誕生日会を開いた！財布忘れたからおごってもらった！』『風城くんの家で化学のテスト勉強をした！モルって何？って訊いたら笑われた！』『進路希望に風城くんが教師って書いてた！』『向いてなさそうって言ったら怒られた！』『風城くんに無理矢理パセリ食べさせたらむちゃくちゃ怒られた！今度もっかいくわせてやる！』」
“‘Had a birthday party for Kazeshiro-kun at the South Pole Star! Forgot my wallet, so he paid!’ ‘Studied for the chemistry test at Kazeshiro-kun’s house! Asked him what a mole was and he laughed at me!’ ‘Kazeshiro-kun wrote “teacher” on his career-planning form!’ ‘I told him he didn’t look cut out for it and he got mad!’ ‘Made Kazeshiro-kun eat parsley and he got really mad! I’m going to make him eat it again next time!’”
—Japanese edition, vol. 1, p. 288
Like the earlier examples, these passages contain Hikari’s “speech (parole)” and “writing” from the times when she controls Akitsuki’s body, subsequently “voiced (parole)” by someone else. Logically, in these quotations and the preceding one, the people directly “voicing” the words are the mohawked thug and Sakamoto Akitsuki. We ought to imagine male voices. Yet beyond the voice logically warranted by the scene, readers supply a delicate girl’s voice. In other words, the “voices” in these passages become layered. Besides these quotations, there are the alarm-clock episodes on pages 128 and 254 of volume 2. I call this phenomenon multivoicedness: readers imagine a girl’s voice where they ought to imagine a man’s.
There are two reasons for this multivoicedness.
First, the passages use feminine language.
Second, as the quotations show, they use bold type. Putting all of Hikari’s “utterances (parole)” and “writing” in bold establishes a consistent equation: bold type = Hikari speaking. Readers therefore cannot help imagining a girl’s voice whenever they encounter bold type. But we must remember that only readers can see this typography. The protagonist inside the work cannot experience its dialogue-like arrangement or multivoicedness. For example, on page 129 of volume 2, Sakamoto wakes to a recording made by his previous day’s self—Sakamoto Akitsuki under Hikari’s control—and feels awful. But because of multivoicedness, readers imagine a mischievous girl’s voice here. This gives us a glimpse of the information gap between protagonist and reader.
The Nonexistent Heroine
Strictly speaking, Yumesaki Hikari does not exist within the story. Under its rules, she can exist only by inhabiting Sakamoto’s body. She cannot leave her host and exist independently like a ghost. Their inability to share memories of the periods when the other controls the body also shows that Hikari is not attached to Sakamoto all the time. In short, her existence is not continuous.
Tomorrow, I Will Die. You Will Live Again. maintains a fixed narrative viewpoint: that of its protagonist, Sakamoto Akitsuki. When Hikari “possesses” him, he loses consciousness. While she is active, therefore, the viewpoint character cannot observe her. Likewise, when Akitsuki is active, Hikari’s consciousness disappears. Akitsuki can never meet Hikari. The viewpoint character can never observe her.
A Heroine Added Afterward
The novel offers no direct depiction of Hikari. What does her voice sound like? We cannot even prove that she is female. Yet readers quite naturally imagine her as a girl, treat her as the heroine, supply her appearance and voice in their minds, and weep over the impossible love between her and Akitsuki.
The heroine Yumesaki Hikari does not exist. Yet by controlling Akitsuki’s body, she undeniably affects the world of the novel. Readers nevertheless fall under the illusion that “Hikari exists,” and that she exists as a girl. As discussed above, this happens because of the conversational effect and multivoicedness.
Let us now consider another reason readers experience this illusion.
I believe the preconceptions produced by the light-novel format also play a part. Dengeki Bunko light novels conventionally depict the heroine on the cover, which gives readers their first impression. The more familiar readers are with this convention—in other words, the more light novels they have read—the more readily they form this preconception.
This novel deliberately exploits that preconception to construct Hikari as its heroine. In an interview, the author mentioned an important fact: when the work won the Dengeki Novel Prize, it was simply a story about multiple personalities, with very few female characters. Most importantly, that version had no heroine. Only during the post-award publication process was it revised to give it more of a “Dengeki Bunko” flavor, and Hikari added as its heroine.4
The Contradiction Between Illustrations and Story
Hikari did not exist at first; she was constructed afterward. The contradiction between illustrations and story reflects this too. As we have seen, the premise makes it impossible for Hikari and Akitsuki to exist simultaneously within the story. Yet they appear together outside it, on the covers and in the illustrations. I have already discussed the covers, so I will not dwell on them here. As for the illustrations, consider the first and last black-and-white illustrations in the fourth volume, the short-story collection. They show Hikari writing in the diary, while the text says: “Moving the boy’s body, which she was still unused to, the girl began to write.” The prose describes Sakamoto Akitsuki—with Hikari in control—but the pictures depict Hikari. The illustrations contradict the story’s description. And this contradiction is deliberate. Interpreting it will open up an entirely new perspective on the novel.
The Fictional Heroine
We should therefore consider the illustrations separately from the story. For example, the covers always position Akitsuki and Hikari so that their gazes do not meet. Rather than depicting the story’s events, the covers are independent works that interpret its central idea—a love between two people who cannot meet—from another perspective. And like the multivoicedness produced by typography, the information in the covers and the contradictory illustrations discussed above is unavailable to the characters within the story.
I therefore propose treating the covers and illustrations as outside the story. Once we arrange matters this way, a fairly clear structure emerges: the heroine Yumesaki Hikari has never existed inside the story; she exists only outside it.
What Possession Really Is
The preceding discussion established two points. Hikari exists not inside the story but outside it; within the story, she can exist only in the form of Sakamoto Akitsuki. Akitsuki understands this, yet at the same time falls hopelessly in love with this nonexistent girl. I now want to uncover the particular significance of these two points.
As noted earlier, this novel’s “body swapping” is very different from the conventional kind, because the person with whom the body is swapped has never existed in the work. What, then, is this sort of “body swapping”?
The answer has actually been there in the novel all along. Let us look at this passage.
『あぎゃほぼうちゃれひゃはばあひゃｈｆせーじぇいｐはどえあ』
—Japanese edition, vol. 2, p. 59
A translation? … There isn’t one.
Here, Hikari has accidentally applied fengyoujing to a sensitive part of the body and left a “dying message” on the floor. Think about it carefully, and you will notice something very odd about that message. Odd in what way?
First, let me tell you a joke.
“So I called Yukari an old hag, so what? It’s not like she can appear behind me and smash my head into the keyboard sidufgusydufg维素ftjusdygjhweth29w783trsydvgjsfsdk”5
As you can see, when we think carefully about Hikari’s meaningless dying message on the floor, it is hard to imagine it being written with a pen. It looks much more like something typed on a keyboard.
In other words, Hikari and Akitsuki’s peculiar body-swapping life is, at bottom, less like possession or swapping than like sharing an online-game account.
Let us lay out the novel’s body-swapping rules. Hikari and Akitsuki share one body. Control changes hands daily. They cannot share each other’s memories. They can never exist at the same time. I therefore think we can treat Akitsuki’s body as an online-game account. Hikari’s consciousness and Akitsuki’s consciousness both have its password. When one logs in, the other is forced offline. Neither knows what the other has done with the account except through the diary’s records and other characters’ reports. And the person who gives Akitsuki’s password to the dead Hikari is the GM—the game master—in the black cloak.
Hikari, whose own account has already been deleted, can therefore enter the story only through Akitsuki’s account. Akitsuki, in turn, can know only the other self recorded in the diary. This is the “game-like realism” concealed within the novel.
Of course, it is difficult to say that the author consciously devised such a complex setup. But an unconscious influence is entirely plausible. And we have sufficient evidence to establish that influence: the dying message quoted above; the allusion on page 43 of volume 1 to Hosoda Mamoru, director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time—a work regarded as a prime example of game-like realism; and the many scenes involving Yahoo! Chiebukuro, Japan’s Yahoo! Answers, and Twitter. To some extent, these scenes also function as metaphors. The younger sister’s tweets, for instance, receive distinct typographic treatment. Assigning different type styles or text colors to different characters is very common in gal games, games centered on attractive female characters.
The most important piece of evidence, however, is the author’s explicit statement in the interview that he drew on the 2ch forum when creating Hikari: “The heroine Yumesaki Hikari was born from 2ch” (Dengeki Bunko interview, p. 3).6 Although I have used a “game” as my analogy, the central concept is the “account.” Games and forums alike share the three concepts of account, user, and administrator.
The Heroine as Representation
Hikari is a being who transcends the story. She never appears within it, but is represented through textual games such as the conversational effect and multivoicedness. The diary’s unusual arrangement leads readers to mistake this representation for an actual being: they believe Hikari exists here and converses with Akitsuki. They see the distinctive typography and supply her voice in their heads. The construction of Hikari as a character is inseparable from our reading. In a sense, she can exist within the work in this highly unusual form only after readers read it and fall under its illusion. Hikari is a heroine who exists as a representation, an autonomous sign. A heroine completed after the fact.
Falling in Love with a Nonexistent Girl
The heroine is a representation. Within the story, her mode of existence is male. Yet the protagonist Sakamoto Akitsuki regards him as female without the slightest resistance. Page 143 of the Japanese first volume, for instance, reads:
『それはさておき、いつも優しくしてくれてありがとう。きみと一緒ですっごくたのしいよ。これからもずっと一緒にいようね。坂本くん』
という台詞に、似合わないとわかっていながらも赤面してしまう。“Anyway, thank you for always being so kind to me. I’m really happy being with you. Let’s stay together forever, Sakamoto-kun.”
Reading these words, I can’t help blushing, even though I know it doesn’t suit me.
The passage shows that Akitsuki always imagines Hikari as a girl; that is why his imagined Hikari makes him blush. Some readers may suggest that Akitsuki could be gay. Come on—Sakamoto-kun, who wouldn’t even accept Kinoshita-kun, a boy who looks like a girl? Who’s buying that?
Back to the point: in Akitsuki’s imagination, Hikari is always a girl. Yet this is not entirely consistent. Whenever she gets into trouble over “gender”—barging into the girls’ changing room, for instance—or his sister comments on a letter he has sent himself, saying, “Yesterday’s you asked me to pass this on,” or he sees Hikari’s selfie parodying The Shawshank Redemption in a sunset downpour, he ought once again to recognize that Hikari is actually a man, and that man is himself.
Yet even with these reminders, Akitsuki quite naturally treats Hikari as a girl. He blushes at her writing and imagines a girl blushing; he lets “a girl’s voice flow through [his] mind” (Japanese edition, vol. 2, p. 13). He wakes to his own voice recorded the previous day and feels awful (vol. 2, p. 129), yet cannot keep from crying over the very same recording (p. 254). He “gently strokes her words” (vol. 1, p. 27), and silently makes a vow to “you, who exist nowhere in this world” (p. 237).
Faced with the busty Kasumi throwing herself at him and trying to seduce him, and with the pretty younger schoolmate Misaki, with her “absolute territory” on display, asking, “Am I your ideal Misaki today, Senpai?”, Akitsuki refuses their offers of love without hesitation.7 Without hesitation, he rejects two women who actually exist, and falls hopelessly in love with a nonexistent girl.
Falling in Love with a Representation
Tomorrow, I Will Die. You Will Live Again. devotes considerable space to sexually charged descriptions of the two women who actually exist, Kasumi and Misaki. Once we understand that Hikari is a nonexistent girl—or that the only form in which she exists within the work is male—the contrast becomes stark.
On one side are a younger schoolmate with mouthwatering absolute territory and long, slender legs, and a classmate whose enormous breasts are the source of all the world’s evil. On the other is a “nonexistent girl” who exists in the form of a man. Akitsuki chooses the latter without hesitation. Rather than liking women who actually exist, he chooses a fictional female character. In this, he is very close to the otaku who make up the main readership of light novels.
But as discussed above, Akitsuki, as a character within the story, cannot gather information from outside it. Readers treat Hikari as a girl and come to feel moe for her8 because they have access to such things as the covers, illustrations, multivoicedness, and conversational effect, all outside the story. Akitsuki has no access to this information. On the contrary, as the person actually sharing his body, he ought to have a more immediate sense than readers do that Hikari’s mode of existence is male. Nevertheless, he follows the same path as the readers and falls for her.
The Correspondence Between Light-Novel Readers and the Protagonist
Through its ingenious arrangement, the novel creates an illusion that leads readers to feel moe for a character who does not exist within the work in the first place. Unable to experience that arrangement, Sakamoto nevertheless takes the same path.
Like us, Sakamoto Akitsuki projects the figure of Hikari, who does not exist within the work, onto tomorrow’s Sakamoto Akitsuki. We all fall in love with this nonexistent girl. A bond of “complicity” is thus established between the readers and the protagonist. It makes it easier for readers to identify with him. The novel insists on first-person narration from Akitsuki’s viewpoint precisely to bring readers and protagonist into alignment and strengthen their relationship.
Metafiction
Tomorrow, I Will Die. You Will Live Again. depicts a fictional heroine and tells us from the outset that she does not exist. Even so, Akitsuki and we readers fall hopelessly in love with her.
When Hikari writes in the exchange diary, she casually adds a few drawings of herself. A diary deliberately arranged as dialogue, with illustrations inside it: Hikari and Akitsuki’s exchange diary is a metaphor for this light novel.
We readers come to feel moe for Hikari through the light novel. Akitsuki falls in love with her through the diary.
That is why, when Hikari is about to disappear, we weep alongside Sakamoto and share his anguish at never seeing her again. We readers, who exist beyond the work, in reality, are drawn into it and assimilated to its protagonist. By using characters inside the work to refer metaphorically to the circumstances outside it, the novel makes itself an exquisite work of metafiction.
A Metafictional Tragedy
The novel is a tragedy not only because Akitsuki and Hikari’s love cannot be fulfilled. There is Akitsuki, who knows Hikari does not exist and falls in love with her anyway; there are the otaku readers, who know a light-novel heroine is fictional and feel moe for her anyway. A light-novel heroine is a fiction we can never touch; loss is implicit from the outset. To like a fictional character, to feel moe for her, is at the same time to lose her, to remain forever unable to touch her. Moe and loss are synonymous. The tragedy depicted here is not someone else’s: it belongs to the readers—the otaku—themselves. The more light novels they have read, the more immersed they are in the otaku cultural marketplace, the more deeply they can feel the sorrow this novel depicts. Readers do not weep only for a story of tragic destinies. They sob for themselves.
Has Hikari Really Disappeared?
The dream is over. We wake, and Hikari is gone; tomorrow’s self has become today’s self again. Falling in love with a fictional girl must, in the end, close in tragedy.
But white lights come on again over the stage where the curtain should have fallen.
Turn the whole room upside down. Found them. Under the carpet. In the gaps in the chair. Behind the clock, too.
When… when did she do all this… so many—
Countless notes appearing everywhere. The other one I love—
Countless notes, appearing in every corner, as though telling Sakamoto Akitsuki that the dream is not over.
Feeling lonely living on your own? Hikari-chan makes her dazzling entrance! Caught you off guard!
The note tucked into a gap in the computer makes Akitsuki notice something.
For some reason, a smile appears on his face. He senses it: something has surely changed.
And so he picks up the notebook left on the desk, believing that, in the diary—
Tomorrow’s Sakamoto Akitsuki has disappeared. Sakamoto Akitsuki has returned to everyday life. Hikari can no longer control tomorrow’s Akitsuki to write notes. The note in the computer could indeed just be something Hikari wrote after correctly guessing how he would be living now.
But Akitsuki has “noticed.” He has noticed another possibility. What if she can write this note without possessing him? Perhaps Hikari is watching him from somewhere right now? If the notes she left never run out, if there are always more to find, appearing beside him when he least expects them—would that not be the best proof that Hikari exists? Even if the place where she exists is not beside him, the notes will form a bond between them. He and Hikari are still connected.
And that “somewhere,” that place “not beside him,” is outside the story: the character database.
In the short-story collection, Hikari plans a Christmas gathering for several years in the future. Even though her body-swapping life with Akitsuki has ended, even though she has vanished from the story without a trace—
When “everyone raises their palms and looks up at the sky,”
white snowflakes drift gently down, as if “timed to the moment,” as if Hikari is watching them.
As if Hikari is controlling the snowfall.
“Welcome back, Yumesaki Hikari.”
An Affirmation of Moe
Feeling moe for a fictional girl must, in the end, be a tragedy.
And yet, even if it is a tragedy, Sakamoto—and the readers—still believe.
Snow drifts down from the sky, as if Hikari, outside the story, is answering that belief.
Tomorrow, I Will Die. You Will Live Again. tells us that even if the girl we feel moe for does not exist, even if this act is itself a tragedy, we can still believe. Believe that it is real. Believe that we can still be connected to them.
And what connects us is light novel after light novel. As long as the work never ends, Hikari will always exist; we will always be able to make contact with her. Even after it ends, we can create fan works, criticism, drawings—use every means of creation. Like those inexhaustible notes, as long as this body of work keeps renewing itself, as long as we keep giving it life, Hikari will never truly disappear.
And that is my greatest reason for writing this criticism.
Today I write criticism; tomorrow Hikari will live again.
Editor’s Note
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