The lack of kanji on はさむ does tend to throw off Japanese parsers.
(Some ichi.moe users may just now be learning about a feature.)
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*puts hand up
What’s the magic number in brackets at the end of the sentence?
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ichi.moe’s parser comes up with multiple potential parsings, and each one is scored for how likely it is to be the “correct” one. They are sorted from highest to lowest, from “most likely” to “least likely”.
Sometimes you’ll see much greater variation in the numbers, even including negative numbers on some results. For this sentence, however, we see that the correct parsing is just one point below the selected parsing, meaning the parser almost had it right, but not quite.
I’m not familiar with how the parser works (I couldn’t get it installed locally the couple of times I’ve tried, so I’ve not looked into its inner workings), but it feels like it’s just a tiny bit of grammar recognition away from better results.
Often times you’ll find ichi.moe gives better results if you replace kana words with their kanji counterparts. But, that’s not exactly easy if you’re not certain what’s a particle and what’s part of a word when は is involved! Especially when it’s a noun (ギャグ) immediately before the は.
The tip-off here would be that 「さむの」 doesn’t make any sense, but that’s something that takes familiarity (such as through a lot of reading over time) to get a sense for what “doesn’t feel right”.
It probably seems like a bad thing to throw at the absolute beginner readers who’ve made it this far, but on the contrary, I think it’s good to encounter things like this while in a book club environment, where it can be asked about and answered, so readers are aware of it when they encounter it in the future =D
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Fun(?) book club tidbit:
I originally planned to have a “characters appearing this week” section in the first post for each week of the club. Although I did include this for earlier weeks, I figured we’d reached a point where people were familiar with who’s who (as the overall cast is fairly small), and I stopped including it.
Here's the cast images I had prepared for the current chapter.
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Thanks @Belthazar! That all makes sense.
Yes, indeed that was why I had trouble. Sometimes I feel like it’s too much of a crutch to reflexively type the whole sentence in ichi.moe when I can’t separate the words, but there are way too many words I don’t know at this point.
How long have I been using ichi.moe without knowing about that?!?
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It gets easier as you get used to patterns, where you can spot a verb from an adjective from a noun, and so on. Then it becomes more clear when a word or clause is modifying a noun. And then they start dropping particles, just to mess with you.
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Can someone just explain this entire sentence to me on page 79. I’m kind of lost. DeepL gave me that translation and it seems wrong?
戦争があるから毒のエサで殺すことにしたんだけど
There’s a war on, and I’ve decided to kill it with poison bait.
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Here you go.
There are a couple of particles that can help split the sentence into clauses:
から = because
けど = however
「Because 戦争がある, 毒のエサで殺すことにしたんだ. However…」
Let’s leave off the んだ for the very end.
The first clause here is: 「戦争がある」
Essentially “war exists”, but in English we might word this as “There is a war,” or if we’re narrating in the past tense, “There was a war.”
The second clause is 「毒のエサで殺すことにした」
Now we have 「毒のエサで殺すことにした」
ことにする means essentially “to do toward (clausing ending in する)”, meaning you decide to do (that clause). Essentially, “decide to do”. And here it’s past tense した, so “decided to do”.
This gets us to: 「It was decided to 毒のエサで殺す」
This gives us a simpler clause to work out, 「毒のエサで殺す」 “To kill by (means of) poisoned feed.”
Let’s start putting these two clauses back together:
「Because there was war, it was decided to kill the animals with poisoned feedんだ. However…」
The のだ gives an explanatory tone. Rather than saying, “There was a war, so it was decided to poison the animals,” it’s more like, “There was a war, so it is that it was decided to poison the animals.” (This isn’t the best sentence for me to be able to write a rundown on what exactly のだ in contributing, I’m afraid!)
Let me know if you have any questions! This is exactly the kind of sentence that takes time to get used to all the bits of grammar that go into it. You have a から and a けど, you have a form of にする, and you have your のだ. Because of all this, it’s fine to say, “This one’s a bit complex for me right now,” take note of some grammar to read up on, and push forward.
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I too was not prepared for all the puns! 
And I still have a few questions:
Page 83
What does さっさと食べろ mean? According to jisho さっさ means without delay or quickly. So I guess Sacchan is saying: Eat quickly, quickly! But what is the meaning of と in this sentence?
Page 84
I’m not too sure what エサをあげないからこういうことになる means.
エサ: animal feed
あげない: not sure what meaning of あげる fits here… probably to increase?
から: since, because
こういう: like this, such
ことになる: to be the result of
Because the animal feed was not increased, this is the result. Is this correct?
Thanks! 
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Not just a war, but the war. Which is to say, World War II.
As per the Jisho definition you posted, さっさ is an “Adverb taking the ‘to’ particle”. Essentially, it’s a quotation marker which indicates the manner by which the verb is taking place. Sort of thing.
It’s “to give”. Remember, they came here out of a concern that the animals aren’t being fed. (Well, the elephants specifically, but they got distracted.)
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I actually only learned this alongside the club, that this is based on a true event (and storybook)!
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Ah that was extremely helpful! Thank you! The funny thing is I know those grammar points, but the sentence still just wasn’t clicking for me
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I got distracted with other stuff I’m reading for a bit, and just kept forgetting, but I caught back up with this week’s reading now! Fun stuff. I appreciate all you all have already talked about, cause this manga is good at having something that keeps you on your toes. Between last chapter and this first half, I’m enjoying the Colors getting wrapped up in their own imaginations. It’s cute, works well for the age they’re supposed to be.
That children’s book sounds really sad! I don’t really want to know about that true story as an adult!
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The several people in this thread (including myself) who find this a melancholy prospect might be able to take some comfort from the Wikipedia article on it, which quotes two children’s literature academics casting doubt on its historicity. I agree with @omk3 generally though - one of the first picture books I read in Japanese was Hasegawa Yuuji’s “Forest of the Heart”, and… damn.
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Are we still talking about the poisoned elephants? You set me off again… 
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If it helps any, the elephants didn’t eat the poisoned food. (Just don’t read past that part.)
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Again most of my questions have been answered thanks to this thread (I was wondering why they were talking about poisoning elephants before going to the zoo, without realizing that they were first talking about the book’s story).
I think there’s just one sentence tripping me up that hasn’t been discussed.
Page 83, panel 6 スマトラトラだってー逆から読んでもスマトラトラ: I’m reading this as Sacchan talking about There being a plaindrome with スマトラトラ, but I’m not seeing anything that reads the same way forwards and in reverse. What does this mean?
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Page 84, Panel 3
ゆい says「え まさか 人なの あの骨⁉」What is な contributing? Why not just 人の?
Page 85, Panels 3 and 5
- Who is the “old man” that さっちゃん is asking to wait? The tiger? Why is this funny?
- What is ゆい saying in the last panel?
手遅れ being too late
Is she saying it’s too late for the poor soul who (supposedly) got eaten?
Sorry if any of these are repeats and I didn’t notice.
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You interpreted that sentence correctly and also rightly noticed that there is no palindrome. ことは responds ちがわい you’re mistaken (with emphasis).
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The spaces indicate that these are four separate “sentences”:
え? まさか! 人なの? あの骨?
“What? No way! Is it a person('s)? This bone?”
It's the おやじ of course!
Also, yes to your second question. I don’t think there would be much left of him to save by now.
No palindrome of course, but Satchan is never accurate with her word choices 
It think she might be confusing it with シンメトリック? Not that they’re that close.
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