Synopsis: Book One follows タスクくん after he sees a mysterious boy jump off cliff. He runs up to his house to find him… perfectly fine? And also… handsome. Lol I haven’t made it that far but that’s what I get from the first few pages.
Actual Professional Summary
Set in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, high school student Tasuku Kaname prepares to commit suicide after his classmates discover gay pornography on his phone. Before he is able to do so, he witnesses a person jump from a window, only to discover they were unharmed in the building where they jumped from. Tasuku discovers that the building is an open “drop-in center”, where he meets other people with various troubles and learns to accept his sexuality.
We’ll be reading this at an intermediate pace. As I read, if there are any words I don’t know I’ll assume that many others would have trouble too, so I’ll make a vocab post for collect trouble words. (Honestly the kanji is super simple for the most part). Try to have fun and pick up new words with out worrying too much about understanding everything. This book is quite… eccentric and not everything is logical anyway.
I’m giving two weeks for the first chapter just to give people time to buy it. I use a japanese kindle account to buy my manga with instant delivery.
Level: This book is incredibly visual. Like emotions are given visual and abstract representation so you usually understand with out even reading at all. The actual reading level is… beginner intermediate. I’d say. I first read and enjoyed it at about N4 level.
Upcoming Books: LGBT+GSRM Book Club!
Please come to the book club as we are currently voting for our next book!
I’m in! I’ll try to buy the physical edition but its out stock… worst case, I’ll just grab it for my kindle. Funny enough, I do have the physical edition of volume 4 - but just volume 4, not the rest. I think I bought it for the cover, looking back, lol
Just incase it is helpful to people. I didn’t recognize 観て right away.
Page 3:ホモ動画観てたん
ホモ動画＞This isn’t specifically a vocab word on wanikani but you would have learned both of these by level 12. Put together, moving picture, is video. Homo implies obviously that they were gay… videos… of… things.
観てた>A fancy kanji for みる、means the same thing. It’s spoken pattern for みていた
タスク、動画を見ていたん。Tasuku were you watching gay movies…
Page 9: 談話室＞だんわしつ Common Room, This is on the sign as he walks in.
相談＞そうだん. You would recognize 談 from そうだん. It’s a level 9 so not a hard word. I just hand never come across this set before. But I think this explains why it isn’t so weird that he just walks in.
Page 10: 床板>ゆかいた・とこいた. Floor boards? 持ってってくれって, To me, seems to be 持って行ってくれって。Can you take the book shelf and the floorboards. They seem to think he’s a worker or something.
Page 13: I just find it interesting they use 彼女 for 誰かさん。
Page 14: Is that squid… alive?
Page 15: There seem to be a lot of double meanings in this book. I thought 散歩・上の公園 was referring to the jumping but now there is also an actually park, and not like heaven. Is 誰かさん, like a dragon or something?
Page 18: 釣り動画 Wanikani level 44, つりどうが. I see the word fishing a lot, but fishing video seems to be the abstract meaning of the word. Prank video would be a better translation in English.
引っかかる, This word should be easy to read but in this case it’s a N2 usage of the word meaning to be tricked.
履歴消す・りれき this part kills me… personal history. In this case browsing history so they know he’s lying. Yes, he forgot to delete he browsing history before you stole his phone out of his hand.
返せって I’ve never seen it this way, basically. “give it back”.
Only 床板 had me totally stumped and you could skip it and understand the sentence. There was lots of contractions which I’m studying for N2 listening so that was good practice.
The only thing I couldn’t figure of was the カマ in カマホモ, further internet sleuthing… It seems to be like flaming gay? オカマ is “male homosexual; effeminate man; male transvestite”. Any way part 2 coming at a later time. I love the energy of this 漫画家.
Thanks @amagi, I’m excited to read this with everyone!
Should we have a bit more leeway time for people who want to order the book physically? I’m personally planning to read a digital version, but I don’t mind starting later if others need more time to order physical copies!
Also, are we planning to read all four volumes together as a club (I would like to)?
@Clovie1 This wasn’t officially voted on. So it’s kind of just… I’m reading this, I hope you can too. I wanted something that keeps the hype of the group up while we pick the “official” book. This book is a very quick read. The author does not use a lot of dialogue. I’ve had children’s books that take me longer to get through.
So five weeks should give us one to two to pick the next book, and three for people to order it physically if they want.
If you want to keep reading the rest of the volumes together on this thread I’d be happy to keep it going with you.
@yuetu If you can order the book on amazon kindle, (I have a japanese account) you should! It’s a very beautifully illustrated manga. You’ll able to read it soon. It’s surprising approachable language wise, and if you have question on grammar you can ask here. I want to say level 10s could read this with difficulty… level 20s should be fine. ish.
By the way, I noticed that しまなみ誰そ彼 volume 1 is currently free for a limited time on Kobo (so it’s probably free on Bookwalker too)! But it expires on September 14th, which would be before the scheduled date for the first chapter. Thought I’d put that out there in case anyone is interested in flipping through the book before purchasing, or reading the whole volume in one go!
I’m undecided if I’ll be joining or not (I’m behind on my existing commitments as it is…), but I did download myself a digital copy of volume 1 and ran it through Mokuro so that I can copy and paste the text and use Yomichan on it for instant lookups. I only looked at the first handful of pages, but it seems to be parsing the text pretty well! So that’s an option for anyone who wants to join the club, but doesn’t want to get too bogged down by lookups.
Just read chapter 1! It went by much faster than I expected, I think I just kind of devoured it I love the art and the atmosphere of the lounge in this series.
By the way, I just checked your summary but I thought the person jumping was female, never really considered they could be a guy (or maybe even enby or trans I guess?)
Just finished chapter 1, and I really like the setting so far too! The town being on a hill overlooking a river is so scenic, and the lounge is so cozy-looking. I felt so bad for Tasuku when he was getting bullied , but I’m looking forward to when he visits the the lounge again!
I found this definition for the term: Link
It confirms what you said about it being a combination of オカマ and ホモ. According to their definition, it seems to mean when a man wears feminine clothes and flirts with men.
I thought 誰か-san was a woman too, because they refer to her as 彼女. She seems really cool, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of her!
oh wow, I just picked this up randomly because I liked the artstyle and now I realized there’s a book club, that’s awesome! Just devoured the first chapter yesterday although I feel like a lot of stuff went over my head Have to reread a bit slower (especially now that I know there’s a book club!) to fully grasp everything, but I guess a lot of things just stay mysterious and aren’t answered immediately.
I was also confused by several things, like why the people from the lounge were suddenly going out to get a bookshelf, and why 誰かさん was totally fine after jumping from great heights! But like you said, it felt like the lounge people are supposed to seem kinda mysterious and inscrutable right now (especially from Tasuku’s perspective).
I’m about half way through the chapter but this is what I got. I think they were talking to each other to confirm plans to go somewhere else to get things like bookshelves and floorboards to maybe do some renovations. I was a bit confused since I didn’t know why they would be talking about floorboards so I looked at the English version to confirm my understanding.
I love the art and the atmosphere of the lounge in this series.
, but I’m looking forward to when he visits the the lounge again!