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Listed price is about 12,000y for 27 volumes. If you’re reading this you probably already own vol 1, so it’s more like 12,000y for 26 vols (461y a volume compared to about 550y per otherwise), but with the 40% coinback you get back 4,300y so that makes it 296y a volume - a better proposition. Of course, you have to be sure you want to read the whole thing… and that you’re going to spend coins on more bookwalker books
I struggled to understand the dialogue between Edward and Mustang, they like to speak about abstract concepts with words I’m not familiar with and don’t fully grasp in context even after looking up the definition. As I said in the volume 1 thread, it’s a bit too hard for me to read comfortably at this point.
From what I understood Mustang was basically trying to relativize Tucker’s actions by saying that Edward is no better, being a member of the army in order to further his own selfish objectives and therefore he shouldn’t “clutch pearls” over such a small thing in the grand scheme of war crimes.
To which Edward basically replied “yo bro wtf that dude merged his daughter with her dog like comes on are you for real right now?”
And then the pope arrived and skull crushed Tucker in the name of Jesus.
I think one of the reasons you’re confused is that you’re only just starting to encounter the very fringes of something that will, in due course, become one of the major themes of the manga. I won’t go into it any further, because things will be revealed when the time comes, but I will point out that there’s a reason that even just five chapters in, Edward has already encountered more than one person who hates him simply because he’s a State Alchemist.
In the bubble on the right: which meaning for どうこう is used here? When I look at the matches on Jisho (or my other dictionaries), then nothing really seems right for this sentence. The best match I could find was an example sentence in one of my dictionaries where どうこうする (also written with kana in that sentence) seems to be translated along the lines of “to determine what happens with …” but that example sentence is for a different headword so that doesn’t really help…
In the bubble on the left: how should I break down 大人ぶってはいても? I understand that it’s ぶる as in “acting like”, but how does the rest of the okurigana break down?
And, am I understanding it correctly that all the speech bubbles on this page (and the bottom of the previous page) are a conversation between the 大佐 and his companion about Edward? So, the あの子 here is Edward, right?
I’m also not sure but my best guess is that it’s 動向: trend; tendency; movement; attitude.
I really find these “philosophical” musings hard to parse but I understood this as “When it comes to the way we treat human life, there is not a lot of difference between us and Tucker”.
I’m also not entirely sure who he’s talking about here. I came to the same conclusions that it’s the 大佐 talking about Edward to somebody else.
I think maybe in this case the meaning of 理屈 is the 2nd one: (unreasonable) argument; strained logic; excuse; pretext.
In which case it would be (translating very liberally): “Adults make up excuses to justify this disregard for human life. Even though this kid pretends to be an adult, he’s still a child.”.
My yomitan tells me that もうた is Osaka dialect/kansai-ben for しまった which would make some sense here. No idea if that’s the right interpretation however.
That’s not how I read it (I thought it meant “we are gods” or something like that) but this whole religious sermon was pretty tough for me to follow. I just decided that they were the ramblings of a zealot and it didn’t matter much what he was saying precisely.
EDIT: on this last point actually you’re probably right, it’s “our”, there’s even a dedicated entry in jisho: 我らが.
It’s Hawkeye talking to Mustang. About Edward, yes. Mustang’s usuing casual form, Hawkeye is using polite. She’s speaking to a superior officer, after all.
Definitely. In many manga, sometimes the only way to tell which character is speaking in which bubble is to match the registers they’re using with the characters.
I’m not sure. I didn’t think he she means that he was making excuses. I think he really literally means that his reasoning is the grownup way to think about this (in his view). I think she just means that Edward, being a child, probably wouldn’t follow this grownup reasoning. (Edited because it’s Hawkeye who is speaking here.)
But so far, I think that what I’m finding particularly difficult in this manga is to judge whether characters are being serious or ironic when they are speaking and I guess that has to do with not knowing enough about their personalities and the backstory yet.
Yes, I understand that it’s 大人ぶる, but what’s the はいても that comes after it? Is that also some kind of grammar point?
Same. I hope we’ll finally get some more details on Edward’s position in society and how and why he ended up here. There’s a lot of implying but bit a whole lot of explaining so far.
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