I love your levels of deduction from the small details!
Asumi’s actions - I’m not sure what she was trying to achieve there. Jumping off a cliff to catch someone falling off a cliff is not going to work!!
Marika - Wow! She was kept locked in a single room for years?This is a really unpleasant back story.
The take home message - I mean, yeah, check the place is open before you set off. But after all they went through on the journey - quite funny ending that the place was closed!
No, but it’s dramatic. 
Plus, she might not have been able to stop Marika falling, but she did show her dedication to being friends.
| Start Date | Chapter | Start Page |
Page Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 07 | アスミの桜 | 155 | 30 |
| もうひとつのスピカ | 185 | 4 |
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Back to a flashback chapter. This is the last of the pre-series “canon” one-shot flashback chapters. While the occasional flashback chapter does occur in future volumes, they’re largely shorter character moments rather than the “backstory” stuff that we’ve been getting so far (though there’s also two completely unrelated stand-alone stories - look forward to those).
Page 161, they appear to be at the Shichirigahama waterfront here. There is a hospital in this area: Suzuki Hospital, just behind the famous Kamakura-koko-mae Station on the Enoden, though it’s not right on the roadside like it’s depicted here (the direct view is blocked by an apartment building ironically called “Lion’s Mansion”).
Page 163, I’m not entirely certain whether this specific book that Takashi lends to Asumi is real (perhaps someone with stronger Google fu can find something), but 人類、月に立つ is the title of the Japanese translation of A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin. It’s also the title of the Japanese translation of From the Earth to the Moon a miniseries largely based on the book, produced by HBO. The author of the book shown here is likely a reference to famed Japanese journalist 立花 隆, albeit with the 立 replaced with a 座.
Page 178, there does happen to be a book with this name, though whether it’s the same book is unclear. I am amused by how the drawing she finds in the book-within-the-book is also on page 178, though.
I feel like the afterword chapter is steeped in the youth culture of Yaginuma-sensei’s generation, but most of it’s going completely over my head, I suspect. Page 186, in the third panel, he’s reading Miyuki. In the seventh panel, he’s singing 私たちの望むものは to himself.
Page 187 fourth panel, I’m glad he’s self-aware that he’s not great at drawing people. Those mitten hands…. Sixth panel, 黒板消しクリーナー (this is not exactly the same model, but you get the idea… plus, it amuses me to no end that the brand on this one is Delica Lion).
Another enjoyable volume! I hope we are moving straight onto volume 4 next week, I can’t remember what we did last time.
Missed this on my first readthrough:
Anyone familiar with what this prank is? Have they just shoved lots of pieces of paper into his locker? Seems a lot of effort for little reward…
Japanese is so hard. I looked at this sentence for a full minute before realising it was 描 not 猫.
From this I got the impression it’s not a real book, but the real author it plays on the name of does write about space.
Also up to date for the start of the next volume. A little bit less of a space focused volume compared to the training room arc we had previously, and a little more focus on the characters this time.
Maybe next volume I’ll try be a bit more active on the weekly conversations!
