#414 [MUNPIA’s Hit Academy Battle Web Novel! Academy Black-haired Foreigner! The Highly Anticipated Final Volume Released!]
Dear respected and beloved Readers, hello! It’s Nobbakuman here.
Academy Black-haired Foreigner has finally come to an end.
The total length to the finale is a whopping 413 chapters, and it’s been more than a year of serialization.
First off, I want to thank all of you, my esteemed and beloved readers, for joining me on this long journey from the first day of serialization on April 12, 2021, to the finale today, October 17, 2022.
There have been quite a few ups and downs during the serialization, but without your support, I wouldn’t have made it this far.
And in the end, I messed up and posted the review before the epilogue. I sincerely apologize for that.
Honestly, as I mentioned in the Q&A notice, this work had a strong gambling aspect.
After my first work, “The Ultimate Boss Has Returned,” went down the drain and while preparing for over a year for the next piece, “Academy Loser Is a Total Trendsetter,” everything fell apart, which was truly despairing.
When the situation of my long-prepared academy-themed work “Academy Black-haired Foreigner” fell apart like a blown-up balloon, it was nothing short of despair.
I was behind on insurance payments, couldn’t pay my phone bill, and my phone got cut off. Thanks to the advance payment, I had to almost force myself to write the next project.
Looking back, if it hadn’t been for that advance, I might have just thought, “Well, this is as far as my talent goes,” hung up my pen, and never touched web novels again.
In that situation, I saw a 200,000 won worth of battle academy light novels I had bought for inspiration, which I thought would be useless, and out of frustration wrote a piece that just so happened to become “Academy Black-haired Foreigner.”
So initially, I didn’t have the settings and characters properly in place. I briefly posted it, then announced a remake and pulled it down—quite the spectacle.
After refining the settings a bit, I properly began the serialization of “Academy Black-haired Foreigner” on April 12, 2021, but up until then, my goal was simply to monetize it, pay off the advance, and then wrap up my author career to find a job.
Writing a light novel was quite the gamble back then, after all.
Moreover, during the free serialization, the ranking was stuck at 100 on Tove. Once I made it into the rankings, traffic surged, but when I took a weekend break, the traffic dropped again, pushing me back out of the Tove.
In chapter 14, I mentioned that if I posted this novel on a serialization site, the reader rates would drop to half before chapter 20, followed by a tearful announcement for a locked ending—this reflected my feelings at the time perfectly.
However, as I continued the serialization, the traffic gradually increased, and by the time I hit the monetization point, thanks to the overwhelming love from readers, I not only settled into Tove but also achieved a respectable performance with a successful monetization process. “Academy Black-haired Foreigner” became a steadily loved work from its paid serialization to its conclusion.
From serialization to completion, this work has consistently been loved.
All of this is thanks to the support of you wonderful readers whom I respect and love. Thank you so much!
Without your support, love, interest, and encouragement, neither I nor the foreigner with black hair from the academy would have made it this far.
Once again, I sincerely thank you, dear readers.
Of course, the foreigner from the academy isn’t a perfect work.
Looking back, there were certainly downsides, like the heroine’s airheadedness and the ever-increasing number of heroines that just kept adding to the length, and then we even had to take breaks twice when our stock ran out and we switched to live serialization.
I genuinely apologize for that.
However, I still believe that the foreigner from the academy is a really fun piece.
In fact, while we conveniently call it a light novel, there are actually many genres within it that can’t just be dismissed as simply “light novels.”
We have fantasy, romantic comedies,青春 stories, mystery, academy battles, different worlds, exile stories, villainess tales, romance fantasy, you name it! Like Korean web novels, light novels encompass a wide range of internal genres and offer a diverse spectrum of works.
From genres close to general novels to what’s commonly known as “moe” stories.
For narrative convenience, I lumped it all together as light novels, but the genre that serves as the background for the foreigner from the academy is a core battle genre represented by works like Infinite Stratos (a true masterpiece!), Aria the Scarlet Ammo, The Heroic Legend of Arslan, The Weakest Tamer Tried to Save the World, and others that revolve around “battle academy” themes.
This genre was all the rage around ten years ago when anime adaptations were pouring out in Japan. It’s like Japan’s own academy genre.
Without the trend of academy battle stories, and without those shared memories we all cherish, the work known as the foreigner from the academy wouldn’t have come to life either.
If it weren’t for the memories we all share from that time, the work “The Foreign Black-Haired Guy at the Academy” would never have been born.
I want to express my gratitude and respect to those individuals.
And I’d like to extend my respect and thanks to Writer Kim Galbi-bone, who provided the title idea “The Isekai Foreign Black-Haired Guy,” and to Writer Myung Won of “Foreign Black-Haired US Army Officer,” who inspired the motif of a Korean protagonist thriving abroad.
As a former Taple member, having my first experience with paid serialization on Munpia, the tips shared by the Luck Fairy writer were incredibly helpful. I also want to thank the Luck Fairy from “It’s Not a Girl Group Novel?” I’m currently enjoying the paid serialization “Cosmic Warlock Prelude” as well.
Moreover, I want to take this opportunity to express my respect and gratitude to the writer People Save, who went through so much with me during “I Killed the Academy Player” and “The King of Knights Returned with the Gods.”
I respect and thank all the illustrators who worked on “The Foreign Black-Haired Guy at the Academy”: Blundy, Bae Ga-yeon, the Anonymous Writer, Leutte, and 2poet.
I also want to thank the dedicated PD who worked hard with us during the serialization.
Last but not least, I want to express my gratitude once again to my respected and beloved readers.
Thanks to you all, I’ve been happy during this time.
Really, thank you.
“The Foreign Black-Haired Guy at the Academy” ends here.
But the author Nobackman is not done yet.
I’ll be taking a short break and returning next year, in 2023, with either a martial arts or fantasy genre work.
I wish all my respected and beloved readers good health and happiness always.
– Nobackman Signing Off
