The first thread of the Ao Haru Ride book club! We’ll be reading volume 1 starting February 1st. Click here for the home thread.
For all spoilers, please post the chapter number followed by blurred or hidden text:
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[spoiler]stuff happens[/spoiler]
Spoilers for chapter 4 stuff happens
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[details="spoilers for chapter 5"] More stuff happens [/details]
spoilers for chapter 5
More stuff happens
So I was going to write here sooner but I got sidetracked by なぜ？どうして？
I’m not sure what format we’re using here, and I need to go back and read more, but I wanted to pop in and say that I got the free (for now) volume 1 from amazon and decided to get a head start. I did a first pass of the prologue, and while I need to go back and look up some words, I was super happy because I was able to get the general idea of what happened!
It’s not too hard to follow because it’s pretty cliche, but basically: girl in school (elementary but almost middle, I think) hates boys cause they’re violent and noisy, but this one boy is different. And they’re getting along well but she yells at another boy that she hates all boys and he overhears, so enter misunderstanding (she’s thinking he knows she didn’t mean him, but they were going to go to the summer festival together but he didn’t show up). And then there’s summer vacation and she wants to talk to him when they go back to school, but… surprise surprise, he transferred to a different school and she’s sad now cause she liked him (duh).
Anyways, I’ll be back once I look at the text more closely and start getting myself confused about grammar 
You got it! 
Yeah its a pretty simple manga since its really just highschool slice of life. Theres no fantasy or philosophical vocab so most words you’ll read in it will actually be applicable to real life
You did it 
So, today we finally start 
My first time reading with a group, I’m really looking forward to this!
よろしくおねがいします 
Same here, looking forward to it!
I finally managed to find time to pick up the first volume from the bookstore a couple of days ago (since as I mentioned in the other thread, my free kindle version turned into pumpkins 
), but I don’t think I have time to read today 
I will try to be back tomorrow with the questions for chapter 1 that I promised a week ago
よろしく〜
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).
) , 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]
]
but I’m not sure I like them…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
I’m going to make a fuller post over the weekend after my midterm, but to answer your question:
I’m pretty sure its referring to the first part of the sentence:
男子って苦手
中学になって益々
I think she’s saying that she’s bad at dealing with boys, and it’s been getting worse in middle school
Ah, that makes so much sense, thanks! I guess I need to be figuring out where sentences start and end
Good luck with your midterm!
So, I finished going through “page 2”, and honestly I have no problem knowing what they’re talking about but it’s really hard to know what kind of things they’re saying about it.
And now I have 10 days to read the last chapter! I don’t think a re-read in Japanese is going to happen for now, I’m happy enough with what I’m understanding + reading in English (once I actually buy it ).
I am having to look up quite a few words, but that’s not very hard (nor surprising, my vocabulary is very lacking), grammar is what I struggle with (not surprising either, so basically I’m way in over my head with this book haha but it’s still fun to understand even just a little bit )
With one day left in the month, I just barely finished…the second chapter (“page 1”). I had things keeping me busy for a bit of February, so I hope to get back on track and caught up on things in March.
This word reminded me of one reason I love Japanese. One little word in Japanese conveys so many words of English:
Near the end of my reading today, I found myself trying to figure out the 「あすみ」 in 「明日実たちがいてくれる」 only to realize an hour and a half later…that’s a name =P
Do you guys want to slow it down to 1 volume / 2 months (so about half a chapter per week)? Theres absolutely no rush, and I could use the extra time to catch up with the other bookclub I’m taking part in (Hyouka)!
I think this is a good beginner level manga for even lower WK users since it has furigana, so a slower pace might be more suitable anyway.
Slower is okay for me. I have little time to read now anyway, so that might be easier for me too
I know!! I love that acpect of Japanese as well
Oh, I haven’t read Hyouka before, but I loved the anime 
I don’t mind either way. My pace should pick up once once I get back to my regular reading schedule (but we’ll see…)
Slower is fine by me (maybe then I can catch up on the なぜ？どうして？ club), though I did try to power through “page 3” chapter today so I could say I finished it in a month (I did also buy the next volume already ).
In any case, here are my notes on the last chapter.
I hope he’s not trying to get revenge or something like that
I really need to get the English version, if I do that I will probably have some more concrete questions about sentences I completely misunderstood haha.
And tbh I’m not sure how to do the bookclub (I haven’t really done one before), so idk if my notes are helpful at all or what structure people normally follow
It seems you understood a lot of what happened! I hope you like the story so far
You could find the manga in english fairly easily online, though a physical copy is always nice
Baby Kou He really is cute. He is one of my favorite male anime characters for slice of life
Yeah, I already took a look at an English version online and there were several times I read something and was like “wait, what? I completely missed this part!” If we also have all of March for volume 1, then I will be looking at those things in more detail
But I do want to get the physical books, and it’s also a way to support the author
Btw, should we update the list of bookclubs saying it’s one volume every two months / a chapter every two weeks? If we all agreed on changing the schedule.
I imagine this would be me if I hadn’t (recently) watched the anime with English subtitles. I’ve only been looking up words I don’t know when they appear at least twice, or when I feel I don’t understand what’s going on in the dialogue, but after enough lookups I might kind of push through without lookups even if I’m not 100% certain what’s being said because I know the scene. Once the manga gets to material beyond the end of the anime, I’ll be spending a lot more time looking up vocabulary.
I’m having to look up a lot of words, but often I still don’t understand due to grammar (multiple times I knew roughly what they were talking about, but I didn’t always know if it was positive or negative). Both my vocab and grammar levels are pretty low, so I’m not surprised 
But I don’t have enough time to stop on every sentence so I’m just going for basic understanding, which is good practice as well, and pretty fun
Maybe you could look up some grammar? For me textfugu has worked well to get a basic understanding. They build up sentence structure very logically, and even if you might not remember everything afterwards, I think it’ll be easier to understand and recognize in text. I focused on reading through their grammar points and explanations, since wanikani already gives kanji and vocab practice.
As I understand, negtive form will be/include/end with: ではありません、じゃありません、じゃない、ない、ません、くない、くなかった and sometimes I’ve seen a dragged out ね. But I might very well have forgotten or missed some of them
But going though verb, adjectives, nouns and their conjugation, both formal and causual, helped a lot for me, and textfugu explains them very well.
I think you’ll manage well with what you already know though, especially if you can have the english version easily accessable to check when you’re unsure
