大海原と大海原・Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea Volume 3 Off-Shoot Club Last Chapter Thread

Wizz · April 16, 2022, 7:55pm

Welcome to the Wadanohara Off-Shoot Book Club for Volume 3 Last Chapter Thread!

This book club is for people who want to continue reading Wadanohara, which we started with the absolute beginners book club.
The homethread for the first volume is located here-> Volume 1 Homethread
The homethread for the second volume is located here-> Volume 2 Homethread
The homethread for the third volume is located here-> Volume 3 Homethread

Volume 3 Summary

Long-awaited by fans all over the world! The creator himself made a comic of the undersea pure love RPG !!

The Sea Empire, the birthplace of the sea witch “Wadanohara”, has been invaded by the Totsusa Empire. But when the Princess of the Sea Empire is attacked by the Princess of the Usagi Empire, she is forced to fight back - but after much thought, the two are reconciled.
Far away, Samekichi, a former familiar of Wadanohara, is thinking: “I’m sure I’ll be able to protect you.”
What is the true meaning of Samekichi’s thought?
Now, all the truth will be revealed.

Schedule

Start Date	Chapter	Page Numbers	Page Count
Feb 5th	Chapter 1	2 to 32	31
Feb 12th	Chapter 2	36 to 56	21
Feb 19th	Chapter 3	60 to 86	27
Feb 26th	Chapter 4	90 to 118	29
Mar 5th	Chapter 5	122 to 148	27
Mar 12th	Chapter 6	152 to 174	23
Mar 19th	Chapter 7	178 to 196	19
Mar 26th	Chapter 8	200 to 226	27
Apr 2nd	Chapter 9	230 to 250	21
Apr 9th	Chapter 10	254 to 280	27
Apr 16th	Last Chapter	284 to 320	37

There are two bonus pages at the end of each chapter, which I did not include in the page count.

Please note: There are no page numbers, so I simply assigned them starting from the first page.

Where to read the book

This volume is ONLY available online at pixiv.net. Here are the links to all chapters:

Vocab

RULES, How to contribute to this vocab sheet: The more people contribute to the vocab sheet the more helpful it is for everyone, so please don’t feel shy about adding to it!

Participants

How is your reading going?

I’m reading with the schedule
I’m a bit behind
I’m gonna catch up later
I’m no longer reading

0 voters

Shunrin · April 16, 2022, 9:09pm

Idate = Orca, Sal = Syake-san

Wizz · April 19, 2022, 9:33pm

Finished the last chapter! It was long, but luckily not too hard to understand. My final questions:

Page 286

S286_2
I wanted to confirm my understanding of 二つで一つ. I believe it means two in one or probably more fittingly here two sides of a coin.

Page 304

S304_1
I’m a bit unsure how to interpret all the ように here. I believe it is just a listing of whishes from Wadanohara. So: I wish that when we meet, my chest is filled with pride, I wish that Samekichi find me in this vast ocean, and I wish that I find Samekichi. The last part seems redundant to me, but maybe this is to convey that Wadanohara hopes that they will find each other? Is my interpretation of this panel correct?

Overall story questions

How exactly did Samekichi return? He was sealed in the sea of death, right? Did he just walk to the gate led by the sound of the ocarina and just pass through? Shouldn’t the seal have prevented him from doing that?
What happened to the other familiars? Are they dead? Or do we just not see them anymore?
Is Wadanohara now responsible for the seal? Did she lift this responsibility from Tatsumiya?
I also wonder about the role of the treasure sword. What does it do? The characters seem to find it to be important throughout the story, but I don’t see why… (a bit like the staff that Wadanohara got from her father… seemed important, but then was just dropped and never mentioned again…)
I still don’t understand how/when everyone concluded that Samekichi was a traitor. I mean… what is the evidence? Why was everyone so, so convinced?

Lastly, I want to thank all of you for sticking around till the end! Thanks for always filling the vocab sheet, it was a huge help and I couldn’t have read the third volume without it! Thanks to @Shunrin for the memes, they were all great! Thanks to everyone for always answering my questions, especially @Shunrin and @2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz! Your answers were super helpful and I learned a lot!

My thoughts on the story - @fyrember

@fyrember, I saw your post a few chapters back and wanted to answer, but you deleted it. I still want to take the opportunity to share my thoughts as well, I hope that’ alright with you.
In general I understand your frustration. I too had a bit of a WTF moment when Wadanohara got stabbed again after she just received a new staff and new confidence from her dad… Like… why even include that if she not going to do anything with it? I probably just don’t feel too strongly about this because I’ve seen the maiden in distress theme a thousand times. I feel that manga/anime often does this to female characters. They are introduced as badass and strong or special and after a few chapters they are passive and need rescuing.
I don’t however agree with your other point about everyone being in love with Wadanohara. Honestly, in the beginning I read the interactions between Wadanohara and her familiars as devotion, meaning that in my mind the love/affection was purely platonic. Looking back, this probably was not true though I still however believe that only Samekichi and Fukami are in love, whereas the others are “only” devoted. Consequently, I didn’t feel that there was a harem aspect to the story. I also think that most of the other characters have respect for Wadanohara because she is the daughter of the Great Wizard, which is why they are all friendly towards her.
Overall, I have very positive feelings towards this series. The art is beautiful and the first volume was the first native japanese material I’ve ever read. It was hard at first, but the story was interesting to me, which is why I kept reading. I pushed through every chapter because I wanted to know how things are going to develop and this alone is enough for me to like and greatly appreciate the books (even if in the end I wish some storylines would have played out differently). I really liked Kuromaki and I enjoyed the fighting scenes of the familiars a lot (Fukami being badass, especially! ). I also thought it was cool that that the story had some comedic aspects, as well as serious background stories and action packed scenes. The alternating themes kept me interested.
I’m also glad I joined the bookclub when I did (Wadanohara being the first native material I read), because while I finished Mitsuboshi no Colors I did not enjoy the story at all and I’m pretty sure that I would’ve dropped it, if it would have been my introduction to native japanese material. It just would’ve been interesting enough for me to push through all the hurdles. That’s also why I feel positively towards Wadanohara.

(Wow that was long )

Hope to see you all in some other bookclubs or threads on Wanikani!

enono · April 19, 2022, 9:50pm

Two of them are in the omake comics after the end of the chapter.

2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz · April 20, 2022, 2:01am

That was my understanding as well.

I agree with your interpretation ように used this way is usually the equivalent of a sort of prayer where a person can express wishes that are difficult or out of their control to fulfill.

On a separate note, I also feel the story left quite a few things unanswered, and was overall more confusing than I expected. Despite this I enjoyed the whole fantasy-inside-the-ocean theme, and I felt it did a very good job of setting up a mysterious atmosphere during the first two volumes, though the lack of explanations at the end kind of counters that.

I’d like to give huge thanks to @Wizz for running the off-shoot club, and to @Shunrin for all the additional insight into the story and of course also for the memes

When I initially read the synopsis for this series I wasn’t very interested in it, but the gorgeous art in the sample pages instantly convinced me. Afterwards I even ran by pure coincidence into an interview with the person who translated the original Wadanohara game into English. I feel like I should give the game a try someday.

Hope to see you all in some other bookclubs!

Shunrin · April 20, 2022, 6:25am

You’re welcome for all the memes! (Seriously, you have no idea how long I was waiting to share some of those, but I couldn’t do it earlier because spoilers.)

story questions

Yes, Tatsumiya was basically filling in for her until she got strong enough.

I think the Sacred Sword, along with Wadanohara’s magic, was required to break the Pearl and open/close the gate to the Sea of Death - that’s why Syake-san needed to steal it and why Samekichi had to go in after him to close the gate.

There wasn’t really any hard evidence (since it wasn’t actually him), but basically he disappeared at the same time that the sword did, refused to come back and explain himself, and started acting completely different than he did before. Syake-san might have encouraged everyone else to start suspecting Samekichi as well, since he was the one trying to make Samekichi a scapegoat.

As for the rest of it, if you have extra time and don’t mind Let’s Play videos, I’d recommend watching the video game bonus content.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNUK5HMjAz8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liSnXpozOEc

(The video is in Japanese but the commentary/translation is in English. The English translation is mostly accurate but has some minor mistakes and at least one glaring error that I’ve noticed. So tread with caution there.)

msbrown · April 20, 2022, 12:44pm

Just finished! This was such a fun series! Thanks so much to everybody who followed along. I’d like to thank @Whizz for running this volume, and @bearytoast for running the original book club. It’s really nice to read with a group, however small, so anybody who participated at all has my thanks. But also, people like @Shunrin and @2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz clearly know a bit more than I do, so extra thanks for sticking around for the rest of us.

l have more to say on books overall, but I’ll have to type it out later when I have time.

fyrember · April 20, 2022, 3:36pm

First of all I want to thank everyone, @Wizz for running the bookclub, @Shunrin for the memes (that I was really looking forward to each week), @2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz for their insightful answers that helped me a lot (even when I wasn’t the one asking a question they helped me realize of doubts I didn’t know I had haha) and everyone for their contribution to the vocab sheets, that really reduced my workload, especially on this last volume with no furigana.

Story thoughts (Rant revival)

Yeah, I ended up deleting it cause later when I read it more calmly I thought it was too negative and I didn’t want to ruin everyone’s experience with so much negativity haha.

I still have those feelings after this last chapter though, and the maiden in distress wadanohara feels so … Idk, bland I guess? Like she’s more a princess than a witch (even more a princess than the princess herself, who even fought against みこつ. It feels like the manga did a huge disservice to Wadanohara herself, and the whole “waiting” theme is just sad, I feel like the getting tired of waiting and helping was a great development for her, but then she gets stabbed and we are back at square one.
All in all, I feel like for being the titular character, she is just tossed into the sidelines too much.

On the harem point, I didn’t mean literally everyone, but there were just too many interested in her in my opinion hahaha (that being fukami, samekichi and the one we do not name). I can appreciate the different forms of love that each one has tho, so that trope didn’t really bother me as much.

I do agree that the art is pretty and it has a particular “cutesy” style that contrasts nicely with the dark themes of the manga, I really have no complaints on the art side.

The story however felt super incomplete and the parts of it that were shown felt like a waste of time. I did like the character interactions, butmostly the ones that didn’t involve wadanohara (like between cloud gal and the other one, and dolpi and memoca).

If I had to put a number to it, I think I’d give the art a 9 and the story a 3, coming to a 6, it was ok.

I have to say my experience overall was positive, I don’t think I would have continued this manga if I was reading it on my own, but the bookclub and everyone involved made it so I could push through and finish it. This is the first manga I finish completely in japanese (I’m on other bookclubs but they are all still ongoing hahaha, slice of life has so many volumes) and I will always appreciate it for it.

I know most of you are participating on the other bookclubs so I’ll be seeing you around!

msbrown · April 22, 2022, 12:52pm

Story Comments

The one part of the plot I absolutely loved is at the beginning of the third volume you find out that the two kingdoms were being played against each other. It was such a good twist that explained some missing pieces up to that point. If it ended at the second volume it would have been kind of a flat ending, but with the third volume it really ups the stakes. Maybe there could have been more of a hint about the sea of death at the end of the second volume to draw the reader in to the next book?

With that said, I also thought the story was lacking. The overall plot was fun, but it seemed like there were holes in the writing, many of which were already pointed out here.

To add to the plot questions: What was up with the bone princess? We never directly got a feel for her intentions after she was released, as we didn’t see much of her. I can assume some generally evil things like destroying the other kingdoms and taking over, but I didn’t hear it from her. It seemed like she was defeated at the beginning of chapter 7, but we really don’t see it. I was expecting at least a small story arch around the character. She said “Father…” around then as well, leading me to believe she can speak a little bit. I wonder if she isn’t inherently evil, just misunderstood/misguided? That’s probably not true, but that’s the kind of story points I enjoy.

What I’ve concluded is that the series is really character-centered and not plot-centered, too much so I think. Like when Samekichi goes into the sea of death, the manga focuses on the feelings between him and Wadanohara, and completely leaves out what he actually does. Maybe that was written but cut out of the manga, since it’s already pretty long as it is.

I’m also a bit bothered by the “maiden in distress” aspect of Wadanohara. Did she really have to get stabbed twice? It seemed like she had power but never really used it. I’d understand if she had some character growth and got more capable by the end and helped seal the sea of death. I assume she got more capable afterwards, helping to protect the sea, but we’re not really shown what she does at that point.

On the “harem” point, maybe "harem isn’t the right word. Like @Wizz said, most of the characters have more of a devotion than love for her. Wadanohara is just a really likable person who everybody looks up to. I didn’t really see Fukami as romantically interested, but if that’s true it does seem like too many characters interested in Wadanohara. I guess it gives me vibes similar to the points about “maiden-in-distress”.

Haven’t watched the epilogues yet. I should have time this weekend.

Oh, I can’t forget to mention the artwork! The art was what got me hooked from the moment I saw the sample pages in the nomination post, and it was as good as I hoped throughout the series. Some of the full-panel frames at the end of the last chapter were beautiful. Like that full-frame of Samekichi meeting back up with Wadanohara would make a good desktop background.

I’m trying to not read so many books at once, but it’s always so tempting to continue a series, or to read along with the first volume in the ABBC! I’ll be joining in the next ABBC book (Japanese Prefectures short stories) but hopefully I can lighten my load in the near future so I can make the step to the BBC.

大海原と大海原 ・Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea Volume 3 Off-Shoot Club Last Chapter Thread