僕が愛したすべての君へ 📦 (Intermediate Book Club) ・ Week 13

Week 13 13 May 2023
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End phrase 重ねられた唇のように、その罵声は柔らかかった。
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Home Thread 僕が愛したすべての君へ

Vocabulary

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

Live Readings

The next weekly live reading session will be 2023-05-21T12:30:00Z Join the Japanese Book Club Discord to either read or listen!

Proper Nouns

Name Reading Notes
高崎暦 たかさきこよみ The main character
ユノ ユノ His grandfather’s dog
瀧川和音 たきがわかずね A top student in 暦’s class
虚質科学研究所 きょしつかがくけんきゅうじょ Institute of Imaginary Science
佐藤綾子 さとういとこ The founder of imaginary science

Participation

Will you be reading along with us this week?

  • I’m reading along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m reading this book after the club has finished
  • I’m no longer reading the book

0 voters

If you’ve already read this book but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have read this part.”

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!

4 Likes

It’s been quite a while since the last parallel shift.

While reading about the incident at the shrine and its lucky outcome I kept fearing that they would soon notice that the happy outcome happened only in a parallel world, and in world 0 something more terrible had happened. But so far everything is well …

5 Likes

Calendar used to be distraught over the thought of himself being a Chad 85 parallel worlds away. In this chapter, he learned that he was the Chad all along. /s

Oh, that’s an interesting idea 2000kanji! He did make it seem at the beginning like this would have bigger implications, so I’m wondering if we’re not out of the clear yet. Not that I want the characters to get hurt but I am hoping for a bit more of a payoff/climax for this story.

7 Likes

I can practically smell the end of the book already, only a quarter of it left over.

thoughts

This was a weird mix. That will be the summary of my thoughts.

First we get a jargon heavy first half, where all that happened was the establishment of a few government agencies with ridiculously long kanji names (I mean, come on 国立研究開発法人虚質科学研究所, really, 15 characters, with some repeated ones even).

After that I guess we got an “action” scene. Not gonna lie, I’m kinda annoyed by things just happening and then not having any lasting effects. The toy gun from the beginning, the accidental long shift, now a masked rampager that went nowhere. All of these seemed like events, that could have caused issues, a part of me even imagined a scenario, where Calendar would’ve lost his son and then optional shifted into far away worlds, just so he can see him again.

The book definitely has strong points, especially when it talks about the ways parallel universes, and moving between them changes the every day life of everyone. However these uneventful events are not that. Still a good book, still enjoying, but could do without these.

Also, I have some thought experiments, what happens if a serial killer does their killing by shifting into a different universe, doing the deed and then shifting back? Would there be any sort of evidence? Like sure, if you do something, shift away and leave your parallel universe self behind, you can tell where the culprit is by checking the number on their monitor. But if you shift away first, nothing.

9 Likes

At least the book admits that it’s 長ったらしい :smile:

Agreed, although the striking lack of consequences does make me wonder whether they could still become significant later on in the book :thinking:

7 Likes

Part of it is kind of explained I believe. If you shift away in an attempt to escape from a crime, your IP gets blocked and you stay in the faraway parallel universe. However, that sounds like a terrible idea, considering that A) the “criminal mind” is still on the lose and B) police probably would want to actually catch the culprit :sweat_smile: .

But in general I agree with a lot of your comments 100%. The book could explore the idea of parallel universes a lot more (and a lot of more seriously, considering the complexity), but instead we have things happening and the main protagonist repeatedly spoiling future events for the reader :confused: . Like for instance, Koyomi just “throwing it out there” at a end of one of the past chapters that eventually he and Kazune got married. Like c’mon, them trying to figure out whether they even can get married was a key plot point for several pages and a critical aspect of the clinical trials for optional shifts they both underwent…

6 Likes

Yeah, it definitely sounded weird when I read it. The original issue was exactly that the criminal shifted away and fixed his position in place. So to make it easier to catch them you… fix them even more in place? Who does that help and how?

4 Likes

I actually had to re-read that part a couple of times to make sure I’m not misunderstanding (my reading comprehension per JLPT standards is not the best :frowning: ), but after the explanation there is a clear example and a follow-up so I think we’re both on the same page with it. Except as you say, it sounds weird :sweat_smile: .

3 Likes

I feel you. I’m trying to punch above my weight here a lot.

4 Likes