Yes. I haven’t even gotten around to starting this week’s section yet, but I still have Feelings about it from the last time I read it. Trying to decide if I want to express those in this thread, or save them up until the grand finale.
Welp, I somehow managed to do the whole reading in one sitting (oof, the feelings), and yeah, I’ve decided that most of the specific things I want to express about it are tied up with the things I want to express about the volume as a whole, so I might hold off on expressing them until the end.
I do want to make one smaller observation, though: Yupa’s final words to Nausicaä at the bottom of page 81 exactly match the final words of the last priest of the old gods waaay back in volume four, page 97 - いとしい風よ. Not entirely sure what parallels Miyazaki is trying to draw here, though. If any. Especially considering it is immediately bracketed by the callback to the Mani tribe elder from volume two. (The English translation renders them differently - “dear wind” in volume 4 versus “my darling wind” here - though whether they thought Yupa would use more familiar language, or whether they’d just forgotten the line had come up before, I’m not entirely sure.)
Also, I’m guessing that Asbel showing up in the gunship at the start of the section means they landed at the battlefield between scenes and swapped Kurotowa for Asbel…
I also read the whole thing in almost one sitting and even read past the end without noticing even though I had looked up where I had to stop just before, so yeah, couldn’t stop reading.
Yeah, the next natural stopping point is over on page 101, and it’s where I would have put it if I’d gone with the four-week split, but I felt it was a bit too far to move it for the five-week split.
