This may be the best and clearest example of what まま means that I’ve ever encountered. I’ll have to remember it for the next time the topic comes up in a beginner club!
第五十話
I thought the manga spun its wheels for a while after the Farin transformation, but I really enjoy the creativity of the past few chapters. It feels like the story is moving forward too, although I’m still not sure where we’re going exactly.
Oh that’s a nice catch! Actually at the beginning I thought that @simias made it up or something, because chapter 50 doesn’t start with its cover, just a black page.
When I started the chapter and didn’t see the cover, I even went to Bookwalker to check that it was the same over there and that I hadn’t messed up with my files by mistake when I used mokuro or something, I was quite confused.
But I guess they didn’t want to spoil the changelling mushroom transformation before!
The idea was quite funny.
Would be funny to see what everybody would look like when in a different race, I thought to myself, and then accidentally read one page ahead and maybe got my answer or maybe not, can’t say more, I probably said too much already
I haven’t opened the thread before finishing the chapter, so thankfully I was spoiler free! 危なかった！
And I saw the first page of the next chapter too, accidentally.
Are we to understand that the spores themselves kill the host or that being ostracized from their peers leads to death?
I think it’s the latter (otherwise what’s the point of the shapeshifting?) but then how is it a negative side effect for humans and other civilized creatures? Doesn’t explain why it’s not in mainstream use.
The whole chapter is all about how it’s a negative side effect for humans. All of them have spent their entire lifetime learning skills that are dependent on them being the species that they are - finding themselves as different species has rendered their life experiences basically useless. Marcille can’t cast magic, Laios can’t use a weapon, even Senshi can’t hold up the weight of his cooking pot.
So Chilchak says that being able to change shape that way is very convenient and useful, but he surmises that there has to be a catch because he’s never seen it for sale on the market even though rich people would probably be willing to pay good money for it.
So he says that it’s either temporary (which honestly doesn’t sound too bad to me, it would be fun to become a troll for a week) or there’s some kind of unspecified side effect.
Then Raios sweeps that aside and starts to muse how he could use it to help Farin.
Then you get the action sequence with the team understanding how it works. Then later on page 60 Raios explains how the mushroom functions by showing a deer in the woods getting turned into a different creature, being abandoned by his ilk and dying of unspecified causes. I take it to mean that it couldn’t survive on its own.
Then Chilchak comments:
たいした❝副作用❞だ
Calling back to his earlier reflection.
So my understanding is that we’re supposed to understand that the deer dying in the woods is the “catch” as to why this isn’t used more broadly. But why? That wouldn’t really apply to humans or other high-intelligence creatures. And they’ve just established that you only needed to take a shower to return to normal. Seems like these spores would be a very valuable ware unless they’re toxic in some other way.
They are not so expressive in a kobold form.
is another circle, but not eaten.
I will go and read it again