時をかける少女: Week 12 Discussion (Chapters 20 and 21)

I mean I guess at this point anything can be explained with “i did it with magic from the future™”

Now that you mention it, it did talk about a chain reaction. I interpreted as a literal “people near you at that moment” kind of thing but I guess it could be just anyone at any time?

I just imagine them feeling kinda weird, like something is missing. I guess maybe after just one month it is not so traumatic but idk.
What if he erases them wrong so they sometimes have flashbacks of having a kid.
Okay now I’m just trying to make this book more interesting than it is.

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Well, a potion anyway. I actually think it’s an interesting take, you just have to make certain assumptions. Because the idea is that this is just something humans can do (rarely), and this chemical concoction brings it out and lets you control it. I don’t find that totally unreasonable… these days we’re more likely to say that all people (or a few people) have some psychic power, but you need some kind of mechanical assistance, an amplifier surgically implanted into your brain, to make it happen, like the psionics in Mass Effect. It’s just the case that everything was elixirs earlier last century (see lots of old Pulp stories) and everything is machines now. Our sci-fi sensibilities have changed.

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Yeah, I wasn’t sure which was implied either, honestly :grin: but unless he rounded up literally everyone I think it makes more sense to think of it this way (and it’s a bit more generous to the book :wink: ).

With the parents… yeah, I dunno. He makes it sound convincingly like everyone will totally forget, but I agree it’s hard to imagine that being perfect.

Oh I totally appreciate this! It’s just that… they have, and so it feels weird to me :grin: the idea that a chemical concoction would bring out a latent ability like that just seems so unlikely, but I suppose you can imagine some very powerful or specific stimulant, or just, like… something really trippy :sweat_smile:

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As i was reading this, i was actually just thinking about how much more of an interesting book it would have been if it was about his parents and how they cope with this strange feeling they get aroubd their “son”… or maybe even a multityde of people around him… kinda like the film/book confessions if anyone has seen that.
And of course thus is provided it’s well written…

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Wow chapter 21 was easy \o/

Sure Kazuko is being rude, but I think it’s excusable. She has just learned that she and everyone else have been lied to for what feels like a lifetime to her. She feels shook and betrayed! And she has no time to process it. Literally :joy:

At least she didn’t hypnotize a couple into thinking that she’s their child just so that she could harvest their lavender! I have to wonder why that was necessary when he could have just used time-stopping tech to steal as much as he wanted without getting caught. Was it because he had no lavender/time-travel-potion left to fuel the device? I guess whatever he did to hypnotize people didn’t require lavender :joy:

So apparently the smell of the potion has very different effects than whatever Kazuo does with it, because he’s able to jump around without inhabiting his body. He went back in time to before he was born without an issue, and there had to be two of him when he made the potion in the lab because he also was washing his hands with Gorou. But wait, he had enough potion left to do that? Why didn’t he pause time, grab a bunch of lavender, start time, go to the lab, pause time, make the potion, and then jump forward? Maybe the time-travel potion cannot be created in a zone where time isn’t flowing normally! I like trying to figure out how fictional worlds work. I wonder if the author thought about this stuff

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Oh, I was specifically referring to her response to his confession of love.

At that point she doesn’t know all the stuff about hypnotising people, or the fact that they’ve actually only known each other a month. In fact, she mostly seems really drawn in and fascinated by his story!

I guess he has to live with someone, so it might as well be somewhere with a source of lavender??? I think he drinks the potion rather than just smelling it, hence Kazuko’s limited abilities in comparison.

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^^^ This!!! I can cope with all sorts of weird stuff from the future, but the internal inconsistency is so annoying!

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Actually it did specifically mention him parting from Gorou before this, so that’s up in the air.

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I just finished chapter 20, and ok, what the heck. Kazuo’s only been around a month?! He brainwashed everyone into believing they’d known him for years instead of, oh I don’t know, pulling the mysterious transfer student trope?!

And sarcastic!Kazuko is my favorite Kazuko. Much better than being frozen, or confused, or hysterical.

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I just finished chapter 20 too, and I think Kazuko has every right to be rude, sarcastic, and mean towards Kazuo in this scenario. She has no reason to trust him. He’s been dishonest with her throughout their time together, he’s holding the potion/medicine he needs to leap back to the future, and he’s just confessed to her. He’s a stupid boy (I know he has all that knowledge from his period, but he’s still reckless in some ways), and he may very well do something with her that he shouldn’t, especially considering what he’s already done (with her memories). Frankly, she needs to GTFO before this gets worse.

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Nearly all time travel stories have their infuriating paradoxes, right?

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I just read it, and it really was! \o/ For the first time I’m not catching up, but just calmly reading!:DD

About the story I am really used to and just love to accept everything in stories “just because” it is that way, so I don’t have that much trouble with it:DD But yeeah, people from the future can do just a bit too much stuff! :joy: But I also enjoy this book because of what people thought 50 years ago about the future, it seems amusing and funny in a good way at times

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Oh my. I’ve finished on time? What am I supposed to do with myself, if I’m not making self effacing comments to hide my guilt at being behind?!

Chapter 21 was a pretty quick read, mostly because it contained gems like this:

「深町一夫っていうのは、この時代のぼくの名まえだ。未来には、未来のぼくの名まえがある。」 「その名まえは?」「その名まえは。。。」

That’s some dialogue… :rofl:

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I finished on time as well :tada:

I especially liked

「とても、いい名だわ」 「ありがとう」

That one had me laugh quite a bit…

Plot rant

For the plot, initially I thought for a second that Kazuko might go into “Oh, I love you too!” mode and we’d get this nice romantic happy-end… Luckily, the author spared us from that for the time being :slight_smile:

Also, why oh why does the author have to spoiler Every. Single. Chapter. in the headings. I really don’t get this…

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Me too!! :joy: I think it was part of the reason why this chapter (or at least that page) was easy:DD

By the way, I haven’t watched the movie and now I’m kinda interested. Maybe they expanded on some ideas a bit more or did something different? :thinking: I want to watch it after we read the book:3

So many people all caught up in time for the last week! :blush: :tada:

@FlamySerpent you should! But be aware that they did do things differently, to the extent that it’s actually about different people.

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I guessed that because of the different names and one review, that said that they were surprised by Kazuko’s personality:3 So I’m super interested!:3

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Ahaha :joy:

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I remember reading an old book (by Kipling maybe) when I was a kid, where every single chapter title was a run-on sentence summarizing every major event that happened in the chapter. If you put all the chapter titles together you’d have an outline of the whole book

Stuff like:
Chapter 2. In which Harry makes bacon, goes to the zoo, talks to a snake, and gets yelled at by the Dursleys.

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And on top of that, he was clearly plagiarizing Harry Potter :rage:

The nerve!

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