空の軌跡 // Trails in the Sky ⚔ Story Club・Week 27

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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Week 27 6th January 2025
Last Week Week 26
Next week Week 28
Home Thread 空の軌跡

Finishing chapter two. There is a long scene. Stopping before this long scene would have been too short, but so this week is long like most weeks have been. So uh let me know what you’re all thinking about the pacing because being consistent is apparently not in my skillset.

Side Quests

None.

A hidden book is now available, but it has a very short window in which you can grab it. Where to find: Immediately go to Ruan and talk to マチルダ on the bridge.

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. How many of you saw this coming?

  5. How long did it take you to beat bleeping Fango and Bronco? (I started that battle over an hour a go. I am tired. I am sorry if this is all a mess.)

  6. Boat scene, yay or nay?

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 have no issue with the pacing personally, or at least whatever issues I might have are with the game, not your choices of end points.

Since we’re now finishing another chapter we might want to consider speeding up once more? Personally I’m ok with the current pace but it’s also true that we have a long way to go still.

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Pace has been chill for me, but I’m at a point now where most of the time this is comfortable reading, the lookups that I need to do can happen very fast. If the week is mostly all story stuff I can blow through it in an hour or two, it’s only heavier gameplay segments that slow me down, the same way they would everyone. If it was me alone I’d bump it up for sure, but I think I’m comfortable to go at any pace that works for the people playing along and especially that remains reasonable to catch up for you, @RebBlue , for hosting this for us.

If we end up staying together as a club for sequels, I think we’re going to reach a point where I feel the need to push for speeding up because there are a lot of games in this series, but we can have that conversation when and if we get there.

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I fell behind a while ago so if I do catch up it’ll be when this club is done or doing the second game possibly. I can’t really say anything about the current pace, but I want to thank @RebBlue for starting this club and keeping up the threads every week even if you’ve fallen behind on the game. I’ve read some in your study log that keeping up with this is a difficult goal and it takes effort to keep the club running. I hope you keep it up but if you need a break or to adjust the pace, I think people would understand.

I couldn’t make time for the club consistently at the beginning and when I did try to play I felt like it was slightly above my comfortable level. It’s possible I would have gotten used to it over time and kept up, but that wasn’t what happened.

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I’m going to try to keep the pace as it is. By which I mean I’m aiming for 7.5k characters but most the time I go over. Maybe if I aim for that as a minimum so it’s not too little and then focus on choosing a point that is good to stop at? There will be some amount of something each week.

I don’t want to take a break before this game is finished. If I stop in the middle I will not be getting back to this for a long time. So at the very least, I want to see this through to the end of the game. I was thinking that once this game is finished I would take a break for like a month before starting the second, supposing people wanted to continue.

Other Games? (mild spoilers behind tags)

空の軌跡SC - absolutely want to run
空の軌跡 the 3rd - will probably run if people are interested, the game is a lot more dungeon crawly than the first two so not actually sure how that will work

零の軌跡 & 碧の軌跡 - have not yet decided, they are great games but I don’t want to commit to them while we’re this far away

閃の軌跡・II・III・IV - less willing to run, these games are were I first started to notice the issues with the series, mostly in the romantic subplot area. Earlier games I could dismiss stuff as unintentionally coming across wrong, but as we go on it becomes more clearly intentional and game IV in particular removes all doubt.

創の軌跡 - still haven’t finished this in English

黎の軌跡・II - desperately trying to avoid spoilers
界の軌跡 - found out this existed today as I went to double check which kanji to use

(ramble) I'm not optimistic that I'll catch up considering I'm ten weeks behind.

I’ve shoved this behind a hide details because it is very much a me issue so like skip this if you don’t want to hear me whinge.

Why am I so far behind?

I am not at a high enough level for this game. Not like battle wise but Japanese brain wise. I still haven’t finished studying N4 grammar. I’m getting through solely on memory of the localisation (which I’ve played through twice and watched many other people play) and the glory that is kankan.

So, this was already a multiple hours a week project. And then I fell behind, and I didn’t catch up. At the point where I am now, my stamina is much better and my grammar still isn’t quite where it should be but, again, getting by on memory and kankan. So, theoretically, there’s no reason why I can’t at least keep pace.

The main issue is just opening the game. Like, once it’s open I can read for a couple hours, make some progress, it’s great! But I’ve got some kind of mental block where just opening the bleeping thing is a gargantuan effort. I have this mental block about many things in my life, from starting to cook dinner to watching anime. (Not even in Japanese, just regular eng sub anime). Once the thing is started, great I’m doing it. I just struggle to start.

The secondary issue is a cyclical one. I’m behind so I feel bad, thinking about the game reminds me that I’m behind so I feel bad, so I avoid it and don’t play to avoid feeling bad, and then I fall further behind and I feel worse.

Third, I will finish this game eventually. I have to. But because I “have” to my brain thinks this is a chore. And we do not like chores. We would rather literally pull our hair out than do chores. (Actually, this might just be problem one again? This might be the mental block.) This is a problem. I need help. I am in the process of getting help. It feels stupid to need help because I can’t open a game. See problem two being cyclical.

So no I’m probably not going to catch up with the club. I need to keep the threads steady because if that falls apart I don’t know if I can build it up again. I do not feel okay. My lack of okayness will not go away if I stop this. Therefore I should continue.

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I think I was at roughly your Japanese level back in 2023 and yeah, sticking to this schedule would have been overwhelming I think. Back then I played easier games at a slower pace.

It’s also not good to make it a punishing experience, consuming Japanese should be fun, not immensely frustrating.

Maybe one thing to consider would be to continue with a different arc when we’re done with this game? Given your description of the other games you seem to like some of them a lot less, in particular 閃の軌跡 (Trails of Cold Steel). Maybe those of us who want to continue the Trails saga could play those and that would give you some time to catch up and improve your general reading skills so that we can tackle the rest of 空の軌跡 later?

I have no idea how closely related those games are though, maybe it would be very spoilery?

Or we could also play a completely different classical RPG series. I’ve been meaning to play some Grandia…

I feel bad having you run such a club (especially given the care you put in documenting the various subquests and missable items) and not actually get to enjoy the game itself.

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I am not opposed to the idea of someone running a different game in between. However,

Yes, very.

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I think we’ve said it a few times now, but I just want to reiterate that playing with you leading the club has been a great experience. A little extra advice from you when I was struggling with the chain statuses a while back probably helped keep me going and I’m really having a great time now, so I appreciate that a lot. At least when it comes to this kind of thing I’ve gotten better over time at forcing myself to get doing things, but I’ve experienced at least somewhat similar problems in the past so I understand, and I remember when reading this sort of thing felt way more like work. I hope it gets easier on you. From the opposite perspective, challenging a thing like this at the early level you sound like you’re at is really quite impressive. Usually the issue is getting people willing to step outside of comfortable, so if you keep wanting to learn Japanese I’m confident you’re gonna make it given the sort of things you’re already doing.

Obviously I think we’re too far for you to change where you’re playing it, but if you’d be interested at all there IS a way to get texthooking working with at least this first Trails trilogy, which might substantially ease the burden of looking up unfamiliar things? It just isn’t possible without emulating so it’s bumping up against forum TOS maybe. But if you think that might help you in the future, the Agent texthooker can do it. I do think from what I’ve heard I don’t want to do this series out of order at all, but one way or another I’m personally on board to see it all the way through if I don’t start getting sick of it. But so far I’m getting more and more into it as time goes.

Wow a lot happened

It’s such a funny classic JRPG experience – 2 villains who might not be at the top of the chain but are certainly built up and pulling off quite a few crimes behind the scenes, including that high level hypnosis? They hit hard but not too bad to rush down. 2 dog monsters that appear from behind a wall suddenly? Say your prayers. I did beat them first try but it was slow going on the second one as it kept chain stunning everyone and only taking small chunks of damage. Battle of attrition. In fairness to the game though, we had a more experienced guild member helping us with the former fight, so it works.

So now we have an idea of what happened to the pirates, and that both of the big cases we solved are very closely connected. I actually kind of liked the idea that they were going to say we couldn’t touch the mayor right now because of his position of power which felt very real, but the scene cornering him was a lot of fun too. Nial showing up might be very convenient but him lurking around places like this is VERY true to his character, too. I kinda wish the mayor could’ve just been a terrible greedy guy and not also under the same suggestion power, but we’ll see how it ends up because that situations is very much still developing. Anyway, I (maybe others too?) called it being the mayor and I think a couple of us jumped on the will to blame the warehouse gang, so points for us! That does ultimately revert to making them not as bad as the rich guy… but they also half absolve the rich guy via hypnosis so I dunno.

I’m gonna miss the party member we had; her high art using ability and nice heals were pretty cool. Maybe next time we finally get Agate for real. Or not, he’s very aloof. Very excited to travel and see how the next area is; I thought this chapter was paced well with the quests and all and now is right about when it feels right to be moving on. Enjoyed the whole thing quite a bit.

I feel like after posting this a bunch more ideas of things I wish I had commented on will pop into my head, but we’ll see. Dense week!

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Oh, one big spoiler I forgot!

A big thing I wanted to discuss is Joshua’s threat when they’re all frozen. On one hand, yeah, him being very protective of Estelle is totally natural, not surprising in the least. But I do feel (especially with the voice acting) that the writers wanted to draw our attention to just how… cool and threatening he snaps over to being? Like there is an enormous difference between the way he says he’s gonna mangle the mayor and Estelle’s usual 許さない type response to Joshua being in danger. This feels to me like the beginning of a peek into exactly what I was looking for with Joshua, some development that breaks away from his consistent good boy Bracer character. Not to be totally reductive cause I don’t think the writing in regards to him has been bad, but I’m interested to see where this goes if I’m right about the significance there. When the stakes are truly high, and the villains bad enough, he might be willing to go further than the Bracers are meant to? Or it’s a good front he was putting on, because it really did rattle the mayor, but I think the former just might be the truth…

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First of all, you’ve been a fantastic host for this club!! I also think it’s absolutely fine to be behind, particularly since you’ve played the game before and know all the plot twists. Still, if being behind feels so bad, would you consider skipping ahead to where we are now and then coming back to the other parts you missed later? Breaking the rules a bit might also help it feel less like something you “have” to do.

In any case, I’ve had a great time with Trails so far and I’m grateful to you for starting this all up! お疲れ様!

I’ve been quiet lately but the 7.5k pace is good for me atm. I did fall a little behind but plan to finish catching up this week. Figures life things would start to pile up just after we decided not to take a week break, aha. That’s my poor foresight. I’d definitely be interested in taking part in a club for SC or 零の軌跡, also.

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w27

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You need to play more RPGs, Estelle! We all saw it coming.

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chapter 2

I don’t know if you read the description but one of them I weak to arts and resistant to special attacks and the other is the other way around.

I destroyed the arts one first but then he gave increased agility to the other which caused all my attacks to miss… Still a relatively easy fight with Croze healing everyone.

At least they had him hang near the mansion earlier while we were doing the side quests so they somewhat established him snooping around these parts.

Absolutely. Him being under mind control kind of cheats us of the satisfaction of 折角 catching him after all these hurdles. But surely all the embezzlement and real estate stuff started before the mind control?

Also what was this strange room with the computer thing in the secret passage under the 魔術’s cage? Just a communication device?

I DIDN’T FORGET ABOUT THE 温泉！

HYPE!

Forgive me sensei but I must go all out, just this once… unsheathes katana

Unfortunately I think this got spoiled for me before the club even started by a careless comment in the home thread, so I’ll refrain from speculating.

A very fun and very dense week! Definitely a massive change of pace after the 学園祭 arc…

Oh and also what is Croze hiding exactly? She seems more important than she seems, having connections with the military… It’s now the second time she pulls the “I’m not who I seem to be” on us!

Oh and revisiting the mansion and seeing the stolen candelabra made me wonder if the mysterious silver hair guy might not be related to the mysterious thief?

Oh and and we still don’t know what’s the deal with Olivier! Or where Cassius is and what he does for that matter. And the mayor refered to a mysterious 彼 bidding his time… And the royal jubilee is coming soon!

So many balls in the air right now!

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That was so mean by the way. The game gives you a massive impetus not to go there at this specific moment!

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Fight mechanic

Oh, you know, it DID occur to me to check for their info but I basically just quickly scanned the relative elemental weaknesses, saw they were all standard, and moved on. This would explain why late in the fight I noticed I was getting more done with physical after defaulting to arts and killing one – by that point I was kinda just attributing it to the 1 remaining buffs. Well today I’ve learned in bigger fights to actually pay attention to that, thanks!

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What got me to pay attention is that they’re not the same color, I felt like there had to be a difference.

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There is 1 side quest this week, actually, but it’s impossible to miss.

This week

I beat them second try, because heal arts were too slow (while potions and S-craft are immediate). More defeat count in the Bracer Handbook.

The repeat was timed for healing more properly. One dead (Klose), but revived just for exp.

They have names and colors, but spread damage value is different, but I didn’t notice the specifics. (Elem % is ofc the same.) Not sure if description requires 情報 quartz (which is equipped this time, I just didn’t read).

Too bad that mayor wasn’t on hypnosis, but rather state of affairs? I wonder if Duke Durun has any value?

Estelle is too straightforward, always. Perhaps not worthy of a bracer that could work alone. Or maybe 馬鹿 could get the job done in their own ways.

Klose, what did she do? And the 親衛隊?

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week 27

The mayor was the culprit!?
im-shoked-im-shocked

The other two options seemed unlikely and it was already suspicious that we weren’t allowed to search the mansion for clues in the candlestick side quest. Among other things. How very villainous of him to want to drive poor innocent orphans out of their home so that he could cover up another crime.

I loved this chapter finale so much. The last lighthouse scene was great, the confrontation with the mayor and the 公爵 making unnecessary comments. Nial watching the gang being threatened and wanting to move his hands not to help them, but to take pictures. Suddenly we’re in a high speed boat chase. Good stuff.

Yeah, level-headed good boy Joshua going off like that caught me by surprise. Even without voice-acting, you could tell the tone was much more intense than usual.

I beat the physical one first because I had CP saved up, and it gave the other dog increased attack and defense. It was doing about 450 on a regular hit, oi. Really surprised nobody got KO’d on my run. クローゼ’s orbment loadout is going on Estelle for chapter 3 because I don’t know how to live without those area heals anymore

I’ve found that the 駆動 quartz is really helpful for this. With the level 2 version, it’s rare that you don’t get healing arts off immediately.

This is my opinion, too. Just like the pirates were still doing crime before their boss was mind controlled, the mayor was still embezzling money. The cartoonishly evil stuff like giving an order to burn down an orphanage with children inside, the glee over killing the gang with his own hands, I’d buy all that as being mind control. At first I thought he was just faking it to get out of more severe consequences, but it’s hard to gauge when the interrogation happens offscreen.

It’s probably significant that she summoned the royal guard, specifically. I have a new target for my secret princess theories :eyes:

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秘めた姫

I definitely considered it but then how would she end up at the orphanage?

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秘めた姫

She spoke a little bit about her backstory during the school festival mini-arc, but she was vague enough about it that the theory could easily fit. Her family was scattered because of the war, her parents died while separated, and then Teresa and her husband took her in for a while before wealthy relatives picked her up.

The whole reason I came up with the secret princess theory was because it was mentioned early on that the queen had a granddaughter. Now this guy デュナン公爵 (I don’t know whether to translate it as Prince or Duke tbh) has been running around chapter 2 all this time saying he’s going to be the next king, but why would he be the next king as the queen’s nephew? What happened to the queen’s kid? If クローゼ is a secret princess, we can assume they died during the war based on her explanation.

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Yeah I suppose that adds up. Then again, didn’t you say the same thing about the girl who ended up being a sky pirate?

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