Given that it ends on the mother of all cliffhangers, did you manage to stop there or did you go straight to volume 2?
Well my plane landed, so I had a natural pause. Trying to work out what to do next. I’d kind of like to read with the club. I also have to keep up with my other nine book clubs…
OMG didn’t notice - that is fabulous, thanks for posting!
Yeah, but the magic system as we’ve seen it so far also hasn’t been great on continuity either. For example the flying chariot’s circle noticeably changing in design from one page to the next back in chapter one.
Or they’ve been watching the standard test-taking grounds for anyone not in the standard pattern to show up.
Several other spells in the book probably would have turned out just as fatal if she’d traced it directly from the book rather than drawing it freehand. Like that fire spell.
This week, on “weird translation choices by Kodansha”, フデムシ became “brushbuddy”. Did “brushworm” make people feel too squeamish? Though I did like the panel on page 68 of the フデムシ holding the flower.
Reply to Belthazar
I kind of like what they went for, I definitely thought the worm was not going to be friendly, but either agressive or poisonous, because I was expecting that the mountains would be a bit more dangerous than “just” high and unclimbable. So I got super surprised that the worm was just super chill and staying with Koko.
On the taxonomy of fantasy fauna
At least it kinda sounds good with the alliteration. “Brushbug” would have sounded pretty good too I think and fits the name, but obviously not the appearance.
In the end I suspect they picked the name that would sell the most plushes…
Yeah I was on the same page, I thought that maybe there would be hundreds of them drawn to her magic and swarming her or something which could be dangerous even if the creatures aren’t aggressive.
In the end the only practical danger was just the elevation, which is fair enough I suppose.
alternate ending / fantasy fauna
I was so imagining this scenario, where the challenge is to get the flowers and the hell out of there before there are so many brush worms crawling on you you can’t move
You’re forgetting death by cuteness.
Though, I had been wondering what Tetia had around her neck in last chapter’s omake panel…
Thoughts on Agathe
This has been rolling around my mind. Last week my impression of Agathe had been quite villainy like she was trying to get rid of Koko and didn’t care if she got hurt. This week it got more nuanced. Her dislike of Koko because of her ineptitude had a surprising depth that I found really creepy. But her intent/action got softened quite a bit. It turns out she just thought Koko would give up and come back through the portal and then by default - no more Koko because it would disqualify her from becoming a pupil. Still mean, but less cruel compared to what I thought in Ch 4 - that Agathe had ditched her in another world on some odyssey where the only way back was if you had the flower. Last week, I didn’t come up with the idea that the portal was still available from the other side. Don’t they lock their doors there? And it was interesting that it turned out not to be true that Koko needed to pass the test! So if Koko would have come straight back, through Qifrey’s special permission she would have still become a pupil and the test was just a formality. I guess Agathe is even more livid now. Not only did Koko pass the test, she (would have) received special treatment. 
I’m still betting on Agathe becoming a villain, we’re just seeing the seeds planted here…
I don’t think it is. Like, the physical portal is still there - when Qifrey first shows it to her, he tells her it connects to other portals - but the image of the receiving side visible in the final panel of page 169 shows that it’s missing the dials used to connect to a portal from the sending side.
Ah, she ain’t the villain trope, she’s the rival trope who’s still in the “I can’t stand the sight of their face” stage of her arc.
When they introduced the portals they said that the pattern has to match on both sides to open the path. I presume that the portal on the tata mountain side has a fixed pattern that can be “dialed” from anywhere.
Conversely even if it did have dials, Coko couldn’t really use it unless she knew the exact current configuration of the one at the Atelier or one nearby.
I wonder if the manga will tell us what happens if two different portals dial the same third one at the same time.
Ah nice one, that makes a lot more sense. So in that case I’m guessing Agathe thought Koko could have sat next to the portal and waited it out
It’s not just Japanese I’m learning about here!
Some relevant vocab just coming up in Wanikani for me
I have actually seen this one in the wild! Though it was in something talking about Japanese history or maybe it was a folk tale about 地蔵 or something
They actually have かさ but with a different kanji this week I think?
Edit: can’t find it. Maybe it was something else…