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.
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.
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).
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
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!
What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
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?
Was the person we helped the person you were expecting?
Did you enjoy the onsen?
Obligatory third question?
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
0voters
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!
Things come and go, and I’m overall doing better today. Thanks for the support, friends
Spoilers
Fighting with only Estelle and Joshua again is a drag! Leads to this game having an interesting ebb and flow of difficulty often correlated to what the party size is right now. If they’re trying to sell me on the importance of cooperation and not going alone, it’s working.
When I heard we were helping some woman who arrived I immediately guessed/hoped for Dorothy because she’s great and it’s been too long. If I knew onsen week was also Dorothy week I would’ve been excited too!
On that note, I have a feeling some people here might not like how the onsen scene was pretty much all about Estelle and Joshua’s relationship again, heh. I at least think watching them argue after it and all is cute, just cause they’re both good characters. The role Joshua has in the dynamic works better for me over time as I see more situations and people play off of him. The development for Tita is even better, very cute little scene I thought.
I have a feeling this is probably where I’m going to end up on the relationship the devs REALLY want to push for these two: The adopted thing gets into some weird ground for sure and I wouldn’t blame people for feeling ways about that, but thus far it reads to me like entirely not what the story wants it to be about so I’m just kinda overlooking it. The writers feel like they’re compartmentalizing it hard and don’t want to be commenting on that aspect too much, but we’ll see as it goes. Like I’ve said before, I’d probably rather they didn’t pair them as a couple because it’s more novel and interesting to just have a boy and girl journey together and be really good friends, but oh well. The two are great as characters and their dynamic, in a vacuum, is cute so I’m probably still gonna think they’re being cute together when we get to it. I hope as the other party members get more development, and future games add even more, we can get more interesting non-romantic dynamics to make up for what we didn’t get here, too.
Anyway, skipping past dinner and onsen with Dorothy is 酷い
As a general comment, to me, this game really does the laid back stuff remarkably well. It’s just cozy, good vibes, and I love how despite a few timing issues maybe (like IIRC running around for side quests when the orphanage was in trouble), doing the side quests makes sense. We’re here to do stuff like that and aren’t rushing to one goal since we have no leads to go off for Cassius and the like. I think from what I’ve generally heard the stakes ramp up as the series goes, and I’m sure that’ll be cool but there’s something pretty unique and special about the vibes right now imo. A lot of RPGs put in some type of downtime like this onsen trip but I’m not sure any nail the consistent pleasant feeling I’m getting with this game. Big fan.
My bartender was invisible, too!? It’s especially weird that you have the option 話しをする but all that happens is the menu disappears.
Dorothy’s back! I thought we’d be getting a new npc when the customer was mentioned, but I’ve been wondering what she was up to since we’ve seen so much of Nial without her. How could we leave her hanging, drinking fruit milk all by herself? And she still ditches her job to come back to town with us after that. Ayyy.
Of course the onsen turns into a lot of Joshua/Estelle teasing. Y’know I’m not as opposed as I used to be. I enjoy tropey romance subplots, generally, and being adopted siblings for several years is weird but not inherently a dealbreaker. The thing that gets me is how strongly sibling-coded their interactions start out, with early game Joshua lecturing Estelle a lot, and Estelle grumbling about it but not really pushing back. I guess you could look at it as just a playful way of Joshua giving information to the player, but it’s been hard to shake that strong first impression of brother-sister bickering. Still, as we get farther and farther away from the prologue where that impression was strongest, I feel better about the romance overall. It helps that we’re playing so slowly that the prologue was several months ago
Had a little laugh because Estelle’s onsen flashbacks were in English in my game, though.
I enjoyed learning a little more about ティータ, too. I was honestly expecting her parents to have died in a tragic accident or something similarly dramatic but nope, they’re just working abroad. Not everybody has to have a devastating backstory, brain! Her scene inspecting the pump for problems also led to a wikipedia journey, and now I know why my heating pipes are noisy
Oooh that’s what it was, huh? I happened to talk to them and bought the food, no problems on my end.
It’s like we’re going on a real time journey with them.
Oh I also didn’t have that, haha. Memories sure get warped in weird ways; that’s it.
Yeah having not done that I was like, well, I’m not having issues with Japanese but definitely having general knowledge issues. A term or two there I didn’t even recognize at all in English so I skipped mining unknown words for once
She’s so flustered that her memories came back to her in a language she doesn’t know! This is a much better explanation than the flashbacks being pre-rendered images that my creative script tampering couldn’t touch
Ooo let me guess: 水撃 and キャビテーション? サージング was another odd one because it could mean literally surging or it could mean a compressor stall?? They definitely lead you to a whole new frontier of technical terms! Don’t blame you at all for skipping it. Besides, you can’t really trust a video game writer to use these kinds of terms accurately anyway haha.
It’s funny because in when I don’t know things in English I just write them off as technobabble, but in Japanese I’m like, I feel the need to know the words but looking at the English definition does not help.
@Sasabonsam Yep, you nailed it with the terms, haha.
Yeah I’ve settled into basically having levels for how much I want to know a word to just match my knowledge in English more or less. Like I’m decently knowledgeable about, for example, brain parts, so I try to actually remember my 新皮質 (neocortex) from my 脳梁 (corpus callosum). Weird set of 2 to compare but they’re just the 2 I remembered I actually have Anki cards for haha. But I do find it amusing when I come across, I dunno, financial stock market type words and I don’t want to trip over them as a word I don’t recognize at all, but in English I’d basically have my eyes glaze over and go “ok yeah you’re doing big money things, have fun guys.” So I’m essentially studying how to say the word and recognize it as a word that I don’t really know beyond the basic vibe.
I feel the same way, but I think in Japanese it’s worse than in many languages because if you know the kanji it feels like you ought to understand the word, but sometimes you don’t. Like 新皮質 in your example, based on the kanji it looks like an easy word so I feel like I ought to understand it. If I encountered it in a game I’d probably stare at it in disbelief for like 10 seconds trying to figure out what the hell a “new skin quality” is.
For sure, that’s a weird one and they definitely do that to you at times. I will say sometimes you really can just tell more easily too, at least. I’ve found a lot of medical vocab I’ve come across to use fairly descriptive kanji for the condition.
I’m drifting further off topic but I remembered and want to share the trivia for those who don’t know, a C-section in Japanese is called 帝王切開. The emperor incision, after Caesar lol.
I could not tell you why amniotic fluid, 羊水, is sheep water though.
I had a literal shower thought right now that French “écorce” and Portuguese “cortiça” which both mean the bark of a tree come from Latin cortex, whence the word we were discussing earlier. I had never made the connection before.
Yeah I would hate to sleep on those beds in the middle of the room. They could just distribute them on all 4 corners and put the table in the middle for instance. Maybe add folding screens to give everybody some intimacy.
You also literally only have two small drawers for everybody’s storage. Not even bedside tables.
What are you thinking, 婆さん? Giving rooms fancy names doesn’t make up for the terrible amenities. I’d sooner sleep in the pump room, looks cozy af, if probably a bit noisy.
By the way, Tita mentions that the reason that the rooms are 東風 is because 婆さん was born in the east. From this I gather that the cultures of the game are meant to loosely mirror ours and Liber is meant to be The West (maybe more like Europe?).
I’m curious to see if they stick to the idea in future games, having the various regions have strong cultural identities mirroring real-world cultures. That sounds pretty fun to me.
Short answer is yes, each country is at least vaguely based on one from real life. Some more so than others.
The company’s president said what some of them are? Cannot find the source but my googling skills aren’t great especially when I’m trying to avoid spoilers.
Countries that have definitely been mentioned in this game
Crossbell = Hong Kong
North Ambria = Russia?
Leman State = Switzerland?
Arteria = Vatican City
Other countries I’m a lot less sure on, and some of the above might be more headcanons than actually confirmed.
Like an uncouth lodging?