This is it, folks. This week, we are passing the mid-way point of the book. It’s all downhill from here!
(Disclaimer: May not be downhill from here)
Also: more than a hundred pages of actual text!
This is actually the fastest I’ve read a novel in Japanese. I’ve read 2 others, but they took over 6 months because I’d take a bunch of breaks. Y’all’re keeping me on track.
Why isn’t anyone else using guns? It’s not like they are uncommon; we have seen multiple character wearing them, including the guards last week. Weird.
Also, it looks like it’s indeed obvious (to the old man at least) that Kino is a woman. Not to the guards, though, since 坊や is only used for guys… Also, Kino’s reaction to both お嬢さん and 坊や is the same. Interesting.
I love opening the book to where we’re at and feeling the big chunk that I’ve already read. Feels good!
I had no idea going into this that Kino’s gender was gonna be this big mystery. Where did that come from? Had everyone here already heard of this series and knew it was a thing?
I heard that Kino’s gender was unclear from the (old) description on floflo. I think the point is that first time reader would probably assume that Kino is male and the author is playing with that.
I was quite thrown off by the outlandish (anime-ish?) weapons people were using. I thought Kino’s universe was made up of mundane things, besides maybe a talking モトラドor two =P. I think everyone isn’t using guns simply for plot convenience; to keep things a bit varied? Besides, it helps show off Kino’s alleged conflict superiority
Spoiler for p. 127, a.k.a. Oops I read too far
while setting a contrast to the later fight(s?) when guns are used.
I didn’t know beforehand, but thought Kino was female just from the drawings in the book. So I was confused by the (already quite confounding as to who is speaking when) conversation in the prologue where Kino’s voice is described as 少年のような
I knew about it from a review or something I read a while back and knew that it was supposed to be unclear. That’s about the only thing I knew before reading though.
I knew about it because I read some post on this very forum where someone said this. It was a year or something ago and I hadn’t ever heard of the series before, but somehow I never forgot
I watched a few episodes of the (2003) anime. The summary given on the anime site I used states that she is female but that she acts in an almost gender-neutral way so that everybody can identify with it.
I read the first manga, which has the stories in a different order. One of the first ones appears to be an origin story, and strongly implies Kino’s gender.
OK, so, that third fight? I loved that! I was wondering who that old dude calling Kino 嬢ちゃん was going to be, and I am not disappointed.
The fire spewing trombone sure didn’t hurt, either. I mean, I know people were wondering at the lack of guns (at least at the beginning), but I actually love the wacky weapons.
I continue to be amazed how well I can read this while still missing so many words. I assume if I manage to go in depth and look stuff up this week, I will have… Some questions.
Still, this week’s conversations are so varied, I’m having lots of fun. Hope they’ll continue to meet multiple people in future chapters.
Got to at least add some furigana… Last week’s reading was a bit painful. For the others that is.
Edit: Umm… it was kind of surprising to me how short this week’s reading is. I read up till 130 because I was so sure it would be 15 pages (and thought maybe this was the one where there was a cut in the middle of things). It’s just 12, right? Unless I can’t count, which is always a possibility.
Although there were a few dense scene descriptions, I felt like this week was a pretty easy read. There was a fair amount of conversation, which I always find easier to understand, and it was more interesting because there were a lot more characters. Like others have mentioned, I found myself reading ahead without realizing it.
I also think it is a pretty easy chapter. I basically started to catch up yesterday, and I read 7 or so pages in a row (which I think is an absolute first for me!). Ironically I only had to interrupt my reading for a Japanese lesson that I had scheduled.
What I take from this is that I need to read more books with fights in them