Kind of the beginning of a new arc I guess? I wonder how action-packed this festival will be. (do we know how old are they by the way? I feel like they look very young, not expecting any actual romance between Tata and Koko)
I also think Koko and Tartar are still pre-teens, for all their romantic energy.
This was quite a change of pace after K-dog’s betrayal of Oru last chapter. Looks like Agathe is expecting to run into someone from her family at the festival, so maybe that’s gonna be the next drama point.
Uh, I actually thought koco would be 13 or something like that. The fan wiki says “10-12” though. Not sure where they got that from and I don’t want to check in case I get spoiled… Maybe it’s 10 at the start and 12 in the latest volume? If that’s the case she’d be around 11 in our current progression.
So, Tartar is a little taboo breaker, too. Honestly, all the people around Koko who have a motive to loosen the rules about magical healing should just flock together and found their own brimmed hat sect at this point.
It was a surprise to see Kustas again. I thought he would be one of those one-time side characters. If he keeps hanging around with Tartar and the atelier kids, maybe at some point they’ll make a wizard of him and their little sect will be +1.
I have to say, I still find the art in this manga amazing, but not feeling very engaged in the story
A lot of unanswered questions, new questions keep appearing instead of answers…
What are you guys’ thoughts so far?
Look at this bozo caring about the consequences of selling his product instead of looking for venture capitalist money. Let the free market decide!
a retrospective
I actually found this specific chapter more interesting than the few before because it seems to cement that coko & co are working on a third way which is neither tongari nor tsubaari, and I like that the mangaka doesn’t seem to be forcing a black and white outcome.
I do agree that more generally the manga has been spinning its wheels since the end of the snake path arc. It feels a bit directionless. I kind of like that it makes it all feel a bit more grounded (in real life we don’t just jump from crisis to crisis for years on end) and we get some character development instead, but I think it’s about time that some stakes are reintroduced and we get a new concrete objective/threat. The beautiful art keeps me going either way.
I also think that Full Metal Alchemist does the whole “no real answers, only more questions” a lot worse than this, so maybe by contrast I don’t mind Atelier too much.
Honestly before I started learning Japanese a few years ago I never consumed a huge amount of manga or anime but I always felt that Japanese media in general is just bad at pacing. I genuinely can’t think of a single piece of serialized Japanese media where I didn’t feel like you could cut 50% of the content and lose nothing. It seems that Japanese culture just loves that stuff? It may also be because of the way the publishing schedules work. If I understand correctly mangakas and animes basically have to keep outputting new chapters/episodes weekly or it’s game over?
Oh no, so I have that to look forward to, with FMA
Yeah there may be something there. It’s like you can feel the difference between a full album of Asterix / Tintin with another comic that’s a combinations of chapters from a Spirou magazine (sorry for non French people, don’t know if you’ll get the reference).
Well I just went on Verasia to buy the next volumes of Atelier only to find out that volume 9 is out of stock! I should have bought it earlier. So I got a bunch of Nana instead:
I’m feeling the same. There were some really amazing art moments in this chapter, it was gorgeous to read. But the story is feeling a bit plodding and unfocused at present, especially compared to the first few volumes.
I tend to buy the next 2 or 3 volumes when there is a 50% coin back on bookwalker. I have bought 9-11 this week, but it was the first time I hesitated a bit before commiting to carrying on.
But having bought them, the cover collection looks so nice…
Similar sentiment here. I don’t dislike that the author is expanding the world and developing the characters, but yeah, the main story doesn’t seem to be progressing much. I still enjoy reading it but it’s not making me desperate to find out what happens next…
