イクサガミ(天) ⚔️ Week 4

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1

イクサガミ(天) :crossed_swords: Week 4

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Week 4 June 20th 2026
Chapter(s) and sections 参ノ章
Start page 117
End page 149
Page count 32
Stop percent 44%
Last week week 3
Next week week 5

Vocabulary

Discussion Guidelines

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
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Character names

Full Name Details
嵯峨愁二郎さがしゅうじろ Our protagonist
槐えんじゅ Explains the rules of the game
双葉ふたば Young girl our protagonist picks up at start fo the game
響陣きょうじん 上方 dialect speaking stranger that is friendly to us?
Maps for reference

map1
map11023×732 280 KB

map2
map2864×1214 104 KB

Participation

Will you be reading along with us this week?

Will you be reading with us?
  • I’m reading along
  • I will catch up later
  • I’m still reading the book, but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’ve read this previously, but I’m here for the discussion
  • I’m reading this book after the club has finished
  • I’m no longer reading the book
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2

I finished watching the drama. It ended up growing on me. The big set-piece fight scenes in particular were really well done, even if there were some goofy moments (I swear that in the fight vs Gentosai it sounded like someone was making the sword-swishing noises with their mouth :laughing:). The show also seemed too short - there were some character and plot development moments that didn’t hit very hard because I’d only known the characters for a few hours of screentime, and they’d only known each other for a few days.

3

Finished with the part

Thoughts

We make our way through a pass that turns out to be a pretty big hurdle on the way. I found it interesting that they think they already lost a lot of time to the front of the pack and guesstimate that they are already in the latter half of the people making their way to Tokyo.

So we learn that 4 of the 義兄弟 participate in the game, and we already met 2 of them. One that seems scary, 四蔵, at the beginning in 天龍寺; locked eyes with him. Apparently he already killed some of the other 義兄弟 to get to their techniques. The first of the 義兄弟 died and 愁二郎 got his technique for free.
So if I counted correctly all other 義兄弟 that are still alive are then present in the game. Seems to me that the story might evolve into a “gotta catch em all” technique hunt on top of the こどく game. Also feels like the techniques have some fantastical element to them with the whole “reading/feeling the immediate future” ability and “seeming to warp” attacks.

I’m most interested in 双葉 and 愁二郎’s relationship at the moment.

Sadly, I think the drama deviates too much, and you won’t get much out of the weekly discussions. Our current week still hasn’t caught up to where I watched it. I think I’ll finish book one first and then finish the drama after. It looks to me that many of the story lines interwoven in the drama will probably make their first appearances only in the later books.

Let’s see how the book turns out. Sometimes they do travel really fast, other times the explanations are pretty detailed, e.g. about his past situation in this week.. I am kinda surprised we are already halfway through, but it doesn’t feel like a lot happened yet :thinking:

4

Well, halfway through the first of five books is still only 10%, so that checks out…

I find it quite sad that he doesn’t manage to pick up more of his opponents‘ numbertags… Probably others will collect them, but if everybody keeps losing them, way fewer than his envisioned 9 people will make it to Tokyo :thinking: