Benjamin almost seemed like someone who sees living dolls as people, but then he called them tools. I guess even if a shadow sees them as tools, they see them as very important tools, worth taking care of.
Also, man, I was bowled over when Patrick’s crush was revealed in the anime. What a good plot twist! It was more explicitly foreshadowed in the manga though, where you could see a thought bubble of Emilico when he stopped himself from denying John’s assertion that he liked Kate in an earlier chapter.
This makes me think that either クリストファー was 同期 with someone in the 星つき, and specifically ベンジャミン, who is the one that gets the most mad about the subject and who is suspiciously not talked about in the 同期 conversation in chapter 66. I think クリストファー might have taken the お呼ばれ and either succeeded (and that’s why they can’t talk about him and ベンジャミン might be jealous) or more probably failed (and that would make it to ベンジャミン is maybe hurt by his “death” and wants to avoid the subject). I’m not sure if I’m forgetting something here but this makes sense to me
Honestly I was not expecting that lol. I didn’t notice the foreshadowing before either. I just thought he was interested in Kate and thought “John has some competition, eh?”. And with Rikki seemingly liking Luu (And him pushing Patrick towards Louise), I have a feeling this whole “who has a crush on whom” is only going to get more complicated.
Yeah I feel like it may be this. It seems that something bad happened to Christopher, rather than him just being elsewhere.
One thing I’m confused about is why the starbearers got angry at John though. Was it because he made a fuss about Kate at some point?
I think John unintentionally caused a fuss by declaring himself Kate’s fiance. For several chapter’s now, it’s been clear from the conversations of other shadows that the “news” is spreading, to Kate’s chagrin. I’m not exactly sure how that’s a nuisance to the star bearers, though.
This week’s reading was straight fire! Even knowing what happens afterward from the anime, it was hard not to read ahead. Especially since the last chapter does one of those seamless transitions into the next. Watch out for that if you don’t want to read ahead by accident!
Story comments
So, now we’ve gotten to the part where special morphs, and morphs in general, are explained. I guess somehow having those extra memories makes them not susceptible to the influence that living dolls normally have on shadows. I wonder if that influence is natural, or if it’s somehow induced in them as part of all the other stuff Shadow House sets up.
Since they take their entire form based on the living dolls, it would make sense that the influence is natural. Maybe having memories of the time before taking the human’s form allows the shadow to have more individuality, versus just trying to be like the human whose form they took?
Yes - I’ve already finished chapter 72! I think I’ll be finishing it this week. But I’ll make myself do my other book club reading in between, since I’m behind on 3…
Edit: finished the volume (after catching up with one book club).
I’ve been looking back and forth since the revelation at the beginning of chapter 69 and happened to notice something interesting (I don’t think it’s a major plot point, just an extra bit of flair).
Compare the top right panel on p109 with the top right, p102 of volume 4.
I should add, obviously don’t do this before you’ve read to this point!
The start of chapter 69 answers my question as to why they couldn’t tell if the robed figure was male or female by the voice. Again, having not seen the anime I don’t know if the voice is clearly an altered voice or not.
Chapter 70 in particular has so many awesome images, especially a couple at the end.
One thing I noticed in this week’s reading. I’m not sure what the significance is. Maybe they’ll get into it later. Maryrose isn’t referring to herself in the third person. Her 私 doesn’t have any furigana. Now I actually can’t remember if I ever saw her use a furigana’d 私.
