Thus endeth the Kasane arc. As with Kiriu before her, we won’t be seeing her again. Aside from both of them giving Asumi some kind of closure for events in her past, I’m not entirely clear on how they advance the storyline.
I was confused when Asumi said the closest two stars to the sun are Proxima Centauri and Rigel. Rigel is a bright star in Orion, and is 850 light years away.
Turns out she is referring to Rigil Kentaurus, which like Proxima Centauri is part of the the Alpha Centauri star system. This should have been written as リギル in Japanese, not リゲル (which is Japanese for the star Rigel in Orion).
Ain’t got any driverless JR trains in the present day, though apparently they’re working to implement it for the Joetsu Shinkansen by 2030, and the Yamanote Line by 2035.
I was trying to work out when the current volume is set in time. I think volume 1 started in 2024, which should mean they were entering their third year in April 2026. So at the start of this school year they were roughly equal in time to where we are now, which is quite fun!
But like you say - still no driverless trains in real life (although telecoms and social media have vastly surpassed what the author envisaged).
We’ve also just sent humans further into space than ever before, breaking previous records from over decades ago!
Though the record for the youngest person in orbit remains unbroken since 1961, when Gherman Titov did so at the age of 25 (and eleven months). He was also the second person to orbit the Earth, and the first person to take photos from space.
A humanoid robot in a space suit, though? Is that really the most efficient body shape? Probably about as efficient as humanoid robots whose entire purpose is to defeat real humans in a marathon. Maybe reinvent the wheel sometime.
Mission 56: Amazing how these three characters from that story years ago in the woods of Yuigahama, have storylines that all converge again in 2026 - especially given that two of them are dead! (The original Marika replaced by her clone, and the boy now existing as the ghost of his adult self…)
Oh and just remembered a question for p82-84 - which volume or chapter does that relate to? I’ve been looking for it to go over it but not found it yet.
Volume five, chapters 22 to 24 - the end of chapter 24 pretty much connects directly with the start of the flashback in this chapter. It’s further back than I realised. Coincidentally enough (or not?), Team Asumi were in the middle of one of their multi-day practical excursions that time as well.
I still don’t really understand what Marika is doing in this school. With her health issues she is clearly not a candidate for being an astronaut. I can see why she might go to the school to learn science, and to work in the space programme in a role other than astronaut, but that’s not how her plans to date have been portrayed.
I guess similar for Asumi too. While she’s a great candidate in terms of her fitness, intelligence and other personality traits - I feel like she would never be able to make it into a space programme when she’s so small.
Shuu running with Asumi - I feel your pain Shuu. Plenty of times experiencing that feeling that I should be able to keep up with this female runner who is a lot smaller than me, and then getting blown out of the water!
