So I meant to post here last weekend and clearly I didn’t - partly due to lack of time and partly because I keep hesitating between reading faster and not understanding some things, and analyzing every single sentence. I think I might keep analyzing on the side, at a slower pace, and without sharing here unless there’s something I really don’t get (typing stuff out takes so much time
). For now, I’ll try to go through a first read of one chapter per week to keep up with the schedule. I’m now on “page 1” (the second chapter in the book, the first one being “unwritten”, the prologue).
Here's what I got for 'page 1' (it's a bunch of comments and thoughts rather than a summary):
- So she (Futaba) is starting high school now, and she still thinks about Tanaka kun a bit.
- She’s doing ok, and they talk about a girl who’s being ostracized (for “acting cute”
) , and she herself was ostracized in junior high just because the boys liked her, so she changed for high school (to be less ladylike I think - she’s messy, eats a lot, etc). [Side note: I hate how often this sort of things comes up in manga, like it seems to be a super common thing. I mean the poor girl is having to be gross/unattractive intentionally ffs]
- There’s a teacher called Tanaka that reminds her of Tanaka kun [could it be an older brother? We’ll see
]
- She ran into Tanaka (maybe, she’s not sure because he’s very different), and she happened to say she was bad with boys again.
- Her friends are talking about her in the bathroom and it’s hard to tell if they’re insulting or complimenting her
but I’m not sure I like them…
- Ok so it is Tanaka but his surname changed to Mabuchi because his parents divorced [and this is why you don’t call people by their surnames and change surnames smh]
- Is he making fun of her for not recognizing him sooner? I can’t tell but he seems to be mocking her
- He liked her?? (Past tense ofc otherwise there wouldn’t be 13 volumes of the manga)
- She got accused of stealing by the lunch lady (because she didn’t have a bag I think), and her friend also immediately accused her?? What a shitty friend imho
- And he told her her friends are fake (or something like this, not sure. I agree though).
- And he is not Tanaka, he is Mabuchi (he’s the one saying this because she keeps calling him Tanaka)
And that’s about it, plus multiple comments along the lines of “can’t go back to that time”.
I do have a question from the first page of unwritten though: what exactly does 中学になって益々 mean? I thought it meant “we’re becoming junior high schoolers” (i.e. they’re at the end of elementary school), but after reading some of page 1 they seem to say that the prologue happened in the 1st year of junior high (before the summer vacation, so 1st trimester I guess?). So I’m not sure how to read this sentence.
How is everyone else doing on the reading? I feel very out of my depth tbh, I’m glossing over a lot of things because I don’t have the time to stop and understand everything so I’m trying to focus on key parts only… I do want to read in English afterwards to not miss any important things, and perhaps later reread in Japanese again… we’ll see 