Yes I was thinking the same! I’m not sure I’d ever considered the difference in nuance in English between “to write” and “to write down”. But I think “to write down” definitely carries that sense of “so I have this in the future”.
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p. 63
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Ah, thanks for clearing that up for me! Especially the different な usages are interesting.
I’m not sure the と思う link there completely applies without the volitional form? -
Got it.
p. 64
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Yeah, I was asking about that. I didn’t have ば yet in my grammar studies - that’s still a few chapters in. Thanks for the super detailed explanation!
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Gotcha. How does なんで work in that sentence? None of the dictionary definitions I can find seem to line up with it. I guess the なん might be the explanatory, but what’s the で then?
p. 65
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Gotcha!
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Guess who completely forgot explanatories and how they work with na-adjectives? (It’s me.) Thanks for the refresher.
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Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Especially now that I know it’s not a name, haha. I was sure I looked it up and I didn’t find any match at the time; probably mistyped it.
p. 66
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Hurray!
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What a nice grammar point. Bookmarked that on Bunpro for later learning!
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Ah. I didn’t learn command form yet, but I should’ve just looked it up. Sorry to bother you there, thanks for the help!
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いえーい！
That was a ton of questions. Thank you so much for all the work you put into answering them!
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Pg. 66
- My understanding is that it does apply, regardless of whether it’s volitional form in front of it or not. I can’t find concrete examples that are exactly like this one, but this page shows the different things that can be attached to と思う/と思っている: https://jlptsensei.com/learn-japanese-grammar/と思う-to-omou-meaning/
It’s not just volitonals that tack on the front, but nouns and adjectives also. The meaning of it and the nuance remains the same, though.
Pg. 64
- Somebody else would probably be better at answering this, as I’m still iffy with that kind of sentence ender, but I think it’s a contracted なので, which has similar feelings as から. It gives the sentence a “because” type feel.
“No, (that won’t work), because it’s a yes response,” essentially.
I should have included that in my original response, but I dropped it, since in English, the because was implied. My bad! My ability to communicate thoughts in my brain can be a bit shoddy. 
Happy to help! It gives me an opportunity to look at the text again, and forces me to slow down and make sure I truly understood it, and didn’t just get the gist!
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I agree that this is the ので particle (which always has a な when connecting with a noun, in this case the noun 返事); it’s not rare for it to be shortened to んで.
It’s more formal than から, and is similarly used to express the reason for something; the difference in nuance is that ので emphasizes more strongly a logical Cause → Consequence relationship, and as such cannot be used for requests or suggestions (e.g., if you wanted to say “Since this movie is good, you should see it”, you would use から, and not ので)
Normally the construction would be A ので, B => where A expresses a cause, and B the consequence. However, B can be omitted if it’s evident from context, which is what is happening in our example. “Because it’s a reply giving my OK (I cannot do that)”
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Ah, so that is the difference between them. I didn’t know that (I only knew they were similar and haven’t gone further into it past that). Thank you! I will keep that in mind!
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For those trying to get into easy reading manga, I would suggest old sports manga that revolve around school life. Whistle and Slam Dunk are two that I’m currently reading and not only does it help with my vocabulary improvement, but I’m also learn terms that I can use with the students that I teach.
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I finally had time to properly read chapter 8! Less questions this time. For some initially puzzling sentences I actually managed to get the meaning after researching a while (especially with Grammar-POI Search - Kanshudo which i found thanks to this thread!). And if I got the meaning easily I didn’t worry about the perfectly understanding the grammar this time.
But some sentences were confusing enough to warrant a question, so here we go…
p. 73
- くそ…田中め一回であんあい…
I’m completely stumped as to what that め is.
p. 74
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絶対何かしてくるぞ
What’s the してくる there? I can only find Grammar-POI Search - Kanshudo and DoJG entry, but I don’t see how either makes sense. DeepL translates it as “He’s definitely going to do something.” which seems right on the spot (and is also what I would’ve guessed), but I don’t understand how the てくる gets it there. -
どーせ「かわいいですね」いってくる気だろうか
I guess that’s the same てくる?
And what’s the 気 doing there?
PS: I’m really proud of (hopefully) successfully using my newfound investigative skills to figure out what ここは私もいっぱいもってくしかない!! means! The てく initially threw me for a loop, and くしかない was not in my dictionary, haha. I did cheat a little with DeepL, but from there I found てく in colloquial variations of Japanese - Grammar - Kanshudo and got the しかない separated.
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Pg. 73
- め as a name suffix is a slightly derogatory suffix. It’s usually translated loosely into English as, “That damn [name here],” or “That bastard, [name here]”. It doesn’t translate well, but it implies irritation with the whomever the め is attached to.
Pg. 74
- Verb + てくる can be to “start to do [verb]”, and that’s how I interpreted it. She was saying to herself not to let her guard down, because he was absolutely about to start doing something (to mess with her, being the implied action, based on context). The し is because it’s a form of する. To use てくる, you put the verb into て form, so する becomes してくる.
JLPT N4 Grammar: てくる (te kuru) Meaning – JLPTsensei.com
- Yep, same てくる. I read the sentence as, “At any rate, I wonder if he intends to say, “You’re cute”?”
I read the 気 as “intent,” essentially. (also left the “start to” part of “start to say” as implicit in the English translation because it doesn’t read well, but just be aware that it is the same てくる construct, using the same “start to do [verb]” meaning, or at the very least, that’s how I interpreted it. Could be somebody else has a better interpretation.)
Sort of as an aside… Is this construct why いってきます! is, essentially, “I’ll go and come back”? That’s one of those phrases I always just took for granted, and didn’t make the connection until now.
Edit: one more thought on the てくる part… I was wondering why it seemed like something I have seen a lot of recently… then it occurred to me. What’s the title of this manga? それでも歩は寄せてくる 
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Adding to what @anon99047008 wrote, you can think of め as adding a feeling of contempt, for whatever English words you can think of that you’d put alongside someone’s name to show such.
Those who’ve been reading this author’s other work, Teasing-Master Takagi-san, will be familiar with it:
Here’s one from Pokémon:
ichi.moe is also a great resource for parsing out a sentence.
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@MrGeneric
p. 74
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& 3. Hum hum. Makes sense, although… I gotta admit that I don’t see what’s the big difference the てくる (as opposed to just e.g. just 絶対何かするぞ) makes here. I guess it might be something that I might or might not pick up while getting more exposure to the language.
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Ah, the 気 as “intent” makes a lot of sense! I should’ve looked it up - I felt like I knew so many meanings of it already, but that one I missed. And then the fragment before that just describes the 気.
No idea on the exact grammar of いってきます, but it fits well, doesn’t it? I always thought it might just be a normal て-form sequence, which I guess might be the foundation for that part of the the てくる grammar point anyway.
Haha. At this point it feels like the author is just teasing me with it!
Got it on the め part. Thanks for the additional examples!
And wow, thanks for the ichi.moe link! I’m slowly getting the feeling that while I might not improve my vocab while reading this manga, I’ll at least get a whole lot of research tools and skills out of this!
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