Chapter 8
Start Date: October 05
Participation
Mark your participation status by voting in this poll. (You can change your answer later if you’d like.)
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5 Likes
I was travelling the last few weeks and didn’t have as much time for reading 
Anyway! I posted a poll in the home thread about volume 3, please check that out.
3 Likes
I just cannot look at Armstrong using 吾輩 without immediately thinking of 吾輩は猫である…
Fun fact! This panel:
is the manga’s only mention of any real-world locations (though some place and character names that’ll show up later are certainly inspired by real-world names).
7 Likes
I followed the notification and I thought I was in the とんがり帽子 thread (because 吾輩 features prominently in this week’s chapter) and the idea that it would take place in our world broke my brain for a second.
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とんがり帽子 is the 帽子 that has been passed down the Armstrong family line for generations.
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Why does the author spell からだ with 身体? Is there a nuance with just 体? Is it less about the physical body and more about the person?
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This page says that 体 is just the physical body, while 身体 refers to body and soul. It’s definitely not something that Hirakawa-sensei came up with - it’s extremely common.
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Ah thanks. I remember encountering this a few times before but I couldn’t remember if it was all in this manga or not.
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For a minute there I thought this was going to be a short week, but that should be 185, right? 
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Yeah it’s a pretty fat chapter.
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@Belthazar ’s explanation of yonkoma in the Bocchi thread was very timely Now I was actually able to recognise the omake as yonkoma (including their structure) and now at least I know what that ツッコミ joke is all about 
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Yah, though Viz apparently didn’t realise that ツッコミ所 is a word in its own right, and translated the line as “The punchline is in the wrong spot…” in the English version.
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chapter 8
More mysteries! I’m pretty excited to see where this is all going.
This volume was a lot less action-packed than the first one, fight against Scar notwithstanding.
Difficulty-wise I found the first half of the chapter fairly easy to read but things got harder during the discussion between the stalker woman and the doctor. If I understood correctly she used to be human but did something (the 人柱 thing) and acquired Wolverine-like powers? Until now I thought she and her clique were demons.
Very minor thing but why is this exchange duplicated?
2 Likes
Summary
That’s Lust. We’ve seen her before.
No, he is the 人柱. As for who or what she is, no comment. 
Unclear as to what part of the dialogue leads you to think she used to be (or isn’t) human, though.
Comedic effect? I dunno.
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人柱
I’ll have to reread this part when I’m less tired, I was under the impression that he already knew her and expected her to die and was surprised when she survived his attack and recovered, which led me to believe that he knew her when she was a human and something happened that turned her into something else.
I did remember that she’s Rasuto and obviously that’s a very demonic name (along with her sidekick gluttony) but then if the doctor knows that why would he be surprised that she’s basically immortal?
If this manga would stop teasing and actually explain the bloody backstory I wouldn’t struggle that much 
Oh also I forgot to mention in my previous comment that the running visual gag of Alphonse hapless in the crate being carried (and sometimes thrown) around by Armstrong is priceless.
4 Likes
I can’t really seperate out my foreknowledge of FMA from the eng version (and I haven’t started vol 2 yet), but I think it is explaining the backstory right now but in a way that builds dramatic tension, which is an issue if you don’t already know the backstory because even in Japanese it’s probably being communicated in oblique hints etc.
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Summary
He was working with her, or under her, or somesuch, and thus hadn’t previously attempted to kill her. "賢者の石の製造のノウハウを教えてあげたのは私達だ - we were the ones who taught you how to make the philosopher’s stone.Maybe some of your co-workers would survive being impaled. Have you ever asked them?
5 Likes
Sorry, I just fixed it Not the first time I made that mistake, I hate that numbers are read in a different order in German
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Fun fact: in Arabic, numbers are written little-endian style - that is, the smallest digit comes first, so “a hundred and eighty-five” would be 581. However, Arabic is also written right-to-left, and thus being little-endian puts the largest digit on the left and the smallest on the right, the same as English, so “a hundred and eighty-five” would still be 185. Or rather, ١٨٥.
2 Likes