空の軌跡 // Trails in the Sky ⚔ Story Club・Week 25

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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Week 25 23rd December 2024
Last Week Weeks 23&24
Next week Week 26
Home Thread 空の軌跡

This week ends when the festival begins.

Side Quests

There are three hidden quests. The will start being available after the lengthy cutscene that ends with the rehearsal The hidden quests will expire when you talk to Joshua and Hans choose to order food.

  • 校庭の飾り付け

found by talking to 用務員パークス

  • 研究資料の収集

found by talking to . If you want to you can read the books, but only before you return them.

  • 旧校舎の魔獣退治

found by going to the 旧校舎

Screenshot

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Vocabulary

Vocab Sheet , thank you to everyone who has been helping with this.

We also have an arts sheet if you’re struggling with the in-game version.

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

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!

If necessary, include an explanation of any discrepancies in the Ebook page numbers from physical page numbers. If there is an easy shortcut for some ebook versions to relate back to physical page numbers, it would be worth it to include it as a third bullet here, or if you want to use chapter page numbers instead of volume page numbers, as is the case with some manga. For example:
Example

For the Kindle version of this manga, the page numbers and the location number are always 3 apart. If you subtract 3 from the location, this will give you the accurate page number!

OR

Please use the chapter page numbers, instead of the volume page numbers. These are located in between the panels!

Discussion Questions

  1. What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!

  2. What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?

  3. Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?

  4. What did you think of learning some more of クローゼ’s backstory?

  5. How did you find battles with the new party set up?

  6. Which part of the festival are you most looking forward to?

Participation

Will you be playing along with us this week?

  • I’m playing along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still playing the game but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m playing this game after the club has finished
  • I’m no longer playing the game
0 voters

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

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

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I’ll tolerate the Estelle/Joshua ship only if they’re also gender-bent.

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w25

I didn’t expect this school festival arc to be such a big deal and last so long, both in terms of gameplay time but also in-universe time (Estelle and Joshua basically become 留学生 for a little while it seems).

I find this a bit weird in terms of the overall story structure. I think having the characters living a typical student life for a while would make sense if they had been cheated of a normal childhood somehow and they were “catching up” in a way and got to live a normal kid life for some time, but that’s not really the case here. Estelle and Joshua did get education and, seemingly, a fairly normal and happy childhood. Joshua may have a dark past but we don’t really know much about it at this point and the game focuses on Estelle anyway. I guess it’s nice that Joshua made a buddy.

In Final Fantasy VIII there’s a similar long-running 学園祭 arc but it’s mostly side-content that occurs in the background of the main plot and as a result I find it a little more enjoyable. Here Trails just seemingly pauses the plot for a while. I’m sure there’s going to be some big development soon to bring us back on track.

I’m also a little annoyed that pretty much every time Estelle gets some “girl time” in the game, the discussion immediately shifts to Joshua. Beyond the fact that I think that this particular ship is gross and unnecessary, don’t they have any other topic of discussion? Trails doesn’t pass the Bechdel test.

The feminist, gender-bent play was pretty unexpected and funny though.

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The music on the way to the school is really nice!

This week

性差別からの脱却！ ジェンダーからの解放！

It is the height of humor for JRPG writers to put a boy in a dress. Joshua’s looking cute though! I loved seeing them in new outfits in general.

Yeah they’re definitely setting up Joshua and Estelle to be a couple eventually. I do agree with what was said before about how it’d be nice if that wasn’t perpetually the default relationship, so we could have some good platonic friendships, but otherwise I don’t feel that strongly about it. I was thinking while Estelle’s conversations definitely get pointed to Joshua immediately, that if we were controlling him it would probably all be about Estelle… then I found that if you select the door to the room he’s in with the guy setting up the play, yeah, he’s being asked about Estelle the same way (and our new party member, just any girls I guess).

This part similarly confused me, they go to class for 2 days or something? Not sure how that’s necessary, but hey, I did find this segment very cozy so I’m inclined to go easy on it. There’s a nice mood to it all, with a warm yellow glow in a lot of the rooms. It’s definitely spinning its wheels on plot, but I enjoy the vibes a lot.This game feels pretty episodic and rambling to me and I’m trying to take it as that for the benefits it has.

The help finding side quests is appreciated as always, thanks. That book one is kinda cruel; I shamelessly looked up where they were instead of scouring every table across the whole campus.

I get that this sort of writing breaks a lot of rules of politeness and I don’t intend to talk like an anime character (or call anyone this ever), but I was surprised to see アマ in a semi-playful way when Estelle is talking to the other girls. I’ve only seen it used a couple times in pretty hateful ways and had thus far mapped it closer to the harsh English curse equivalents.

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The one of the old building is my favorite so far, very old-school RPG with the synth voices.

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I actually found the one in the teachers’ room but I think the prompt to take it only triggers in a fairly specific position because there’s a NPC next to it so at first I thought it was not one of them since I couldn’t interact with it. After 10 minutes of aimless wandering I gave in and looked up a guide…

Also I tried reading the book but it was a bit too dense for me… I appreciate that the devs made the effort to include that however.

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hidden quests

I easily found 上 and 下, but walked around the whole campus like 2 rounds, and still couldn’t find 中. Until I need a guide…

Decoration quest seems hard to find where, but already cleared by the time I tried to find the books.

The notebook doesn’t list those quests as separate pages, however.

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Quests

Oh yeah, I definitely noticed that, cause I thought the old school building quest to kill the spiders was a little more vague about if you had actually initiated a quest / if clearing it was the goal, so I was checking for them in the notes.

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Next week is up