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Participation Poll
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For our participants who have never read anything harder: How are you doing so far?
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And here we are at the last chapter already! Let’s see if you can guess which icon I actually wanted to use for the book club, but then didn’t use to avoid accidentially spoiling one of my favourite moments in the series.
Chapter spoilers
And man… I obviously don’t know what Shi-san is actually thinking or feeling, but even after all this time I’m still getting a little bit teary looking at page 197/198.
And what a finale for the first volume. I really, really enjoyed the manga already before this, but I did absolutely not expect the lore here. And what a role Shi-san had… I thought “communication with the cosmos” was just random flavor text back when they mentioned it, but yeah, that was definitely their job.
And Rojica deciding on the spot to adopt the child, despite being a different race, and on top one that he has heard bad things about!
I haven’t been following the threads super closely, but I have been reading along!
What a great way to end that volume wow. Really didn’t know what to expect and was kinda hesitant going into this club, but absolutely was rewarded for sticking with it. Great choice, everyone
The 落下星 name spelling reveal right at the end just killed me. Poor Shi-san, part of me wants learn a bit more about him later, but honestly if the story just ended here I think it’d basically be a perfect little story already.
Wow, I wasn’t expecting so much exposition in this last chapter! It was a really nice way to wrap up the volume, since so many things make sense now, like why Rakkasei is the only human, and why Shi-san’s been around for so long and has a funny-sounding name.
I was also touched that Rojica took in Rakkasei so readily (although I guess it’s not that surprising since he took in Bakubaku in the same way).
This was a really beautiful chapter, and a really impactful way to end the volume. I wasn’t planning ok reading at once (I feel like I saw this every week) but I just had my eyes glued into it until the end. I definitely have to go back as there were some complex words I just glossed over, but man. What a ride.
@TobiasW , are you planning to continue with volumes 2 and 3 as an ofshoot club? No pressure of course, I know organising a book club is a lot of work. I do believe we have a sizeable group of members interested in it, but a poll could always give more info
Wow, also blown away by this last chapter.
Kind of got used to the funky-stories apparently not related at all to each other, and then bam, big background-story explanation.
When I saw this panel page 192:
I had to go back to the previous chapter to count how many cross, I would expect to count 13 and not 9?
Page 172:
What a way to end this book! This chapter was bittersweet and I really enjoyed it. The world created in this book was so intriguing. This was my first book club and it was great reading along each week. Thank you @TobiasW for nominating and hosting this!
The end clears up something discussed in the first week
That was really well spotted @Markdg ! Now we know that indeed Rojica is the older one (the parent even) and at the end Aizaku is described as a 若者, so indeed probably younger than Rojica and older than Rakkasei
It was a great ending indeed and I really liked how the chapter only slowly revealed what it was actually about.
So I just got around to finishing and wow I didn’t expect to tear up from this. The chapter was done so well, starting with the who I’m assuming is Rakkasei’s dad pulling the classic self sacrifice. Gotta respect it. Shii-san was brutal to Isaac’s lecture though, that got me laughing a bit.
And unfortunately, her mom died protecting, and when Shii-san was talking about humanity with great knowledge, beyond even what Isaac seems to know, I figured he was the communicator, seemed a bit melancholy.
Then Rojika named Rakkasei, I thought he was affectionately calling her a peanut or something. But it also made me wonder, what is Rakkasei’s real name?
And finally at the end, Shii-san seemingly losing his purpose. The vibe and context this chapter created was amazing.
Once I saw Rakkasei in kanji though, it definitely hit different.
Thanks @TobiasW for this book club, honestly ended up enjoying it even more than Ruri. I’m definitely in for the offshoot.
You mean because Shi-san says that “work is done”? I think that’s just for the day, and that there might be more giants to be found.
You’re welcome! Ever since I read the manga I was looking to make it more popular (how does nobody know about it, despite it being so good?), so I got something out of it too.
Yes I guess that part is a bit confusing for me, I understood that they told the humans that they could come now, which didn’t work out because of the meteor shower, but why did they tell them to come if they didn’t finish killing down the giants?
Yes, that is also how I interpreted it. I thought that it was even mentioned somewhere that there are still more to be found, but I tried and couldn’t find it anymore (maybe I misremembered).
I also wondered about that, but thought that maybe enough of the giants are dealt with to make it safe again.
Because the earth got to the point that people could live there again. Why that happened despite not all giants being dead is anybody’s guess at this point (maybe enough giants were dealt with as @wiersm speculates), but that’s why Shi-san told the humans that it’s okay to come home.
“Not all giants are dead” is pretty much a given at the time of this chapter since we know that there was at least one giant that was killed later in the story (in the previous chapter), so it’s at least possible there are more alive. Also, the “dungeon” with the giant seems pretty close to their home, and neither the environment nor the dungeon itself seemed poisoned.
Good points! And indeed the giant we saw seemed to have lost its powers and was in rather a deteriorating state. It seemed to be more in hiding than a threat
I would also gladly join an offshoot bookclub and read the following volume(s?)
btw is this still an ongoing series? Or completed?
But I am really curious how the next volumes will differ from the first one. Because the first volume always had this “mysterious” atmosphere and the overlaying question “what did happen on earth?”. But obviously this was all answered (I think). Will it only be a slice of life manga now? Or is there more to discover? I guess we will find out
Really enjoyed the last chapter. I’m very happy with how the 1st volume ended and how the story evolved until this point!
Thanks to everyone in the book club for answering questions and sticking around. And of course thanks for picking this gem of a manga out, @TobiasW ! I had a great time.
