I would have tried to catch up today… if I hadn’t forgotten my copy of the manga somewhere. Oh well… maybe I’ll be able to read chapters two and three next weekend, and then join the discussion for chapter 4!
I have to say I’ve found less advanced bookclubs easier, because so many people post questions that is saves me a lot of time in reading the book… As it is, time wise it is difficult for me to read the book and post all the questions that I encounter
Continued: and so I’ve skipped most of chapter two to try to follow along and stay in the active thread It helps that I’ve watched the anime so know all the stories
Can 影 refer to a person’s ‘presence’, as it were, rather than just their literal shadow? I assume this character isn’t literally saying that Natsume has a weak shadow
Page 109
Bottom-right panel
多くの妖怪達に名を紙に書かせ
集めた
Just curious what the conjugation of 書く is here - causative (which would explain the に being attached to the 妖怪達)?
Yes, it can. Similarly 人影 means presence (as in someone being there).
I don’t know the context (since I don’t have the book ) but yes, that causative. Someone have made many yokai write their own name (and the same someone has gathered those names).
Crazy how things can be easier to express in one language compared to another.
No, it’s more like you can use 集める as a verb suffix (I don’t know the actual technical grammatical term). It adds the idea of gathering to the previous action. Here are some examples:
Aah, thank you. That was my initial assumption but I couldn’t find any specific examples on Jisho (which does usually mention auxiliary verb functions, I think?).
Only four pages in and already learned something new
Yeah so here’s me checking my unread threads every day to check whether anyone’s posted anything in chapter 3 yet… only to realise a week too late that that I haven’t even bookmarked it properly
Anyhow, hi, somehow, I’ve been able to keep up so far
OK, I finally made it through Ch 3!
I have to say I quite liked Cyclops and Cowface, especially when they were acting as his cheer squad at school. Also when ニャンコ先生 showed up with おみやげ
It was a bit sad around the p130+ mark when it turned out his new friend was just another 妖怪
By the way, I’ve not had the time or (to be honest) the inclination to read all those text boxes which show up from time to time on the left hand side eg p135. My impression is that they are not critical for the storyline… if someone could confirm that, I would appreciate it.
I don’t believe so (and I’ve also been skipping them). From what I read of the first one, they’re basically little messages from the author, and I seem to remember somebody way back reassuring me that they were all like that. So basically they’re entirely external to the story itself.
The second line is 仕様がない, but instead of looking just at 仕様, you need to look at the phrase as a whole. It has the same meaning as 仕方がない. If you also aren’t familiar with that phrase, it means something like “can’t be helped” or more literally, “there is no way (not to do something).”
返還に応じる、this means to agree/to comply with returning, i.e. the returning of the names of the yokai. (On the page is also the phrase: 名の返還を求める妖怪).
This my interpretation:
Because I have their names, which are also their lives, in my hands,
I have no choice but to comply with their requests day after day.
The framing here still kills me… Please… Spoilers for later in the chapter: Why do they do Tanuma so dirty here!! They make him seem so malicious LMFAO
Just noting that this is 影が薄い or “not standing out/having much presence” for anyone unfamiliar! The way that even Nishimura isn’t sure he’s there despite being in the same class…
Really minor thing here, but… I like how Natsume’s pupils really make him look so inhuman here. I’m really used to the colouring he has in the anime, but I feel like in the manga they really make you question Natsume’s own background? Because of the silver hair, and the way his eyes look at times…
Also a random gripe with the font for this manga after all this time: as someone who likes using Mokuro and being able to grab the text easily, the っ get registered as つ so often lskjdlgj Why are they so big!!
sjgdlkjlj Man, the way that even this is so isolating in its own way. Natsume… Especially with them cutting to this riiight after he tells Nishimura that there’s nothing he’s worried about/that’s keeping him up at night.
Ahh, I always really like this part. The way that it’s just like… until Nyanko-sensei started teaching him, he just had no way to navigate the uncertainty of the world he interacted with. Not knowing what’s “real” and what’s not to the people around him, while everything is real to him…
心を傾けて was only showing up in my monolingual dictionaries, so I’ll link to it here.
I’m not 100% on this, but so far I’m parsing this part like: “I don’t want to let these uncertainties seep into(/take hold of) my heart anymore, only to cry about it later.”
Ahh, this scene closing like this with Natsume talking to Madara… In light of how they’ve been interacting so far, and how Natsume still has so much distrust for youkai (and was even fresh off of getting lied to by them again!), it’s interesting that he makes the (conscious) decision to ask Madara about how he experienced this… That he’s making that effort to try and connect with him, rather than it just being something surrounding learning about youkai or the 友人帳. Proud of him for immediately trying to act on this thought…
Thinking about… Natsume saying that the two of them might be the strange ones. The way that it’s an obvious callback to what the youkai posing as a woman said to him, but also that it feels like… it’s him also referring back to kind of viewing humans and youkai as equivalent? The youkai are strange, but so are they…
It also still feels a little lonely that Natsume was really hoping he’d have someone who shared the same experiences at him, only to find out while Tanuma has some sensitivity, he’s just not on the same level as Natsume after all.
Also man, this chapter has been so interesting to me when again, I rewatch the anime way more than I reread the manga. There’s so many little details where I’m wondering if I’ve just forgotten them, or if they were just cut out of the anime?? I also don’t even remember this whole part with how 中級 were intentionally omitting information to get Natsume’s help, plus how Madara was on to them instantly and was trying to help Natsume out…
I also feel like you feel Natsume’s distrust of ayakashi so much more acutely in this. Again, it’s hard to suss out if it’s just the difference between the manga and then its anime adaptation, or if it’s just details I’m overlooking after years of being familiar with this series (and sort of taking some development for granted). But… it really does feel like Madara’s relationship with Natsume feels much worse/more strained here, particularly from Natsume’s side of things given his history with the ayakashi… Maybe it’s also just a side-effect of the manga allowing more interiority, plus it also fitting in more details about Natsume’s past that the anime allowed for.
It’s genuinely been so nice to read and refresh myself on things, and I feel like I’m thinking about my boy Natsume deeply in a way I haven’t in literal years.
) but yes, that causative. Someone have made many yokai write their own name (and the same someone has gathered those names).
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