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Spoiler Courtesy
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For the Bookwalker version of this manga, the page numbers in the panels and the page number in the UI are always 2 apart. If you subtract 2 from the UI page number, this will give you the accurate page number!
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?
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So the first time I read this, my Japanese skill was a loooot below what it is now, so I was so focused on the Japanese and clearly missed some of the finer details, like these shadows in the first panel:
ここ is of course, “here”, and does actually have its own (very rarely used) kanji.
It is not 屑篭 (If you plan on playing Persona in the near future the real kanji for ここ is 此処)
屑篭 is in fact, wastebasket, or the name of the forest. This is a pretty common thing in manga to give pronouns and similar phrases the kanji of what they refer to
I missed that too and I’ve read this week’s pages twice! They are some very interesting shadows, I wonder what this girl’s back story is. And already thinking I might need to read past volume 1 if I want to find out!
Other chapter thoughts
Nice start to a manga. I immediately love the relationship between the old dragon and the young girl. It even nourishes her back to health with its own blood!
And she calls the dragon ネム because it’s so sleepy
Also interesting that the narrator uses a more unusual (literary?) form for 棄てる, whereas the dragon uses the more normal form 捨てる.
that was easier than expected it got so little text? short sentences, and not too many look ups. so far it feels easier than a lot of lower graded stuff, will it pick up a bit?
l enjoyed those “unusual kanji readings”, i wish you could do those in other languages, too but can anyone explain the わたしreading of 俺 for me? giving a first person pronoun a different first person pronoun reading has to have a special meaning or feeling i just dont get ^^
I really enjoyed the opening views of the dragon. The ultra-low-angle, darkened images made it look really imposing, especially because I’m reading slowly enough to really take them in. The dragon looks smaller after its introduction, and I wonder if that’s just a trick of perspective or if it really is smaller.
Also, as someone with some familiarity with the Bible, that snake next to Eve on page 20 is amusing.
As for language, I’m still struggling with a few endings, but mostly understood the story the second time I read it. 20 pages went by fast! The one thing I hadn’t seen before is the fancy font on page 3. Can anyone explain what I’m looking at?
I’m guessing よく might be tripping you up. I have noticed it used when someone has done something impressive/unexpected/a “good job”. Like “good job sleeping through that racket”/“I’m impressed you could sleep through that racket”.
The other thing is こんなの. If I tell you that that refers to the dramatic situation that has just occurred, do you think you can figure it out now?
It took me a while to parse that sentence myself, but here’s my understanding :)
If you wanna think about it first using what @MaraVos said then don’t open this >.<
Sentence Breakdown
こんな の is referencing the sentence beforehand → こんな の 柔らかい = “so tender/soft”
で is a particle, marking the thing before as the “how” something is
So in summary for the first part: こんな の (柔らかい) で = with being so (tender)
よく = “good job” / “nicely done” in this context, but generally the adverb form of “good”, so “nicely”
生きて いられた = “to live” + “was able to” (いる in potential form and past tense) = “managed to live”
もの だ is used to state fact (it technically translates to “the thing is that”, so it’s kind of empty as far as concrete meaning goes)
So in total: こんな の (柔らかい) で よく 生きて いられた もの だ。= “good job for managing to survive while being (so tender).”
Which is less common than the regular one in handwriting, but still reasonably common there. It’s almost never written that way in computer fonts though unless they’re trying to look like handwriting.
The な just seems to be emulating lazy handwriting where the cross extends into the hook.
The き really annoys me as my brain always does a double take and goes “Is this a ま?”, but it and the そ both have this kind of “nearby curves collapsing” thing, which I mean, also happens in sloppy English handwriting too - r, c, ɑ and e are pretty hard to mix up in most computer fonts (doubly so since most computer fonts render ɑ as a) but handwriting can really blur the differences.
I just finished the pages for this week and I wonder that too. Level 25 seems high right now for something this easy. Surely, it gets more difficult later. I could check, but I’m trying to be a good noodle and not read ahead.
Oh! Handwriting!
My first thought was it was an old-fashioned form of the characters, which turned out not to be right. Thanks for the rundown; I felt the same way about the き. I wonder who’s supposed to be handwriting those characters
The Skull Dragon’s Precious Daughter Book Club!
it got so little text? short sentences, and not too many look ups. so far it feels easier than a lot of lower graded stuff, will it pick up a bit?
