魔女の宅急便 (Kiki’s Delivery Service) Discussion Thread: Chapter 11 [Final Chapter!]

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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For the home thread for 魔女の宅急便, click here!

Join our Beginner’s Book Club here!

image 魔女の宅急便 image

:arrow_left: For the Chapter 10 discussion thread, click here!

Starting date: May 20th
Finishing date: June 9th

:arrow_down: Start of the Repeat Club Discussion

Resources

Vocab Sheet: Original Club

Characters
  • キキ - a young witch
  • ジジ - Kiki’s black cat (黒猫)

Discussion guidelines:

  • Please use spoiler tags - [spoiler]like this![/spoiler] - where appropriate; anything from later chapters or the anime, and any major or interesting information from this chapter.

  • When asking for help, search the thread before posting to see if your question has already been asked, and write out the relevant text so that others can find your question (don’t hide Japanese text behind spoiler tags).

  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarassing at first. All of us are here to learn.

  • Have fun :slight_smile:

We’re discussing grammar, vocab usage and its context, checking if our reading comprehension is right, interesting plot/character development, etc.

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I’m so sad that I wasn’t able to join in :sob:

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If you still want to read the book, you could always do it at your own pace and check the previous discussion threads and still feel free to ask questions if you’re having trouble with something ^^

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I’ll probably do that once I get through the Yotsuba stuff, it looks cute! It’s a lot more fun when you’re reading alongside everyone else :slight_smile:

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I’m so far behind now I probably wont be able to catch up in time (unless I just read the others in Swedish and just do the last chapter… tempting…but I do prefer reading the Japanese version first, to see how much I understood without knowing what is going on, so I probably wont)
I have been feeling like picking it back up again though! Now that we are doing manga next I will probably finish it while we do Aria =)

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Perhaps we could organise a sort of official ‘necro run’ some time in the future?! I missed out on doing it at the time, and I’m still not sure how well I’ll cope with all the hiragana and so on, but if you wanted to do it together at least we’d have some company and could both take responsibility for reviving the old threads!

Anyway, no problem if you don’t, but I wonder if there are a number of people planning to read along with these threads after the fact :thinking:

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Absolutely! It would be great for people who couldn’t join in at the time to have company and to keep each other accountable in a way!

Truthfully, I felt a little deflated at the idea of going through old threads all alone, so this suggestion seems wonderful to me!

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Yay :blush: yep, same. Well if you ping me a message when you think you’re ready to start tackling it we can see about organising a start date! I’m in no rush.

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Sounds good! Just want to confirm though, which title were you referring to? Kiki or Yotsuba? I’m good for both (or others!)

Just didn’t quite understand which you wanted hahaha

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Haha, I was referring to Kiki, though I’m happy to do Yotsuba as well / instead if you’d prefer ^^

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Kiki would be preferable hahahaha. I can get the e-book whenever, so what do you suggest we do? Do we prepare a plan of some sort?

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Well it sounded like you were doing Yotsuba anyway and so couldn’t do it right now? I’m happy to start, like, now (I’m waiting to start Aria with the beginner’s book club), or wait until you’re done with Yotsuba, or until the book club is done… Whatever works for you.

We should probably move to PMs to organise it though cos we’re filling up the chapter 11 thread with this :grin:

We could kind of announce that we’re doing it when we’re ready in case others want to join in.

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I now own a fully annotated copy of Kiki, so happy to answer Kiki-related questions at any time (a.k.a. “revision”).
Plus it will make me feel good about how much Japanese I thought I knew before I started Hataraku Maou-sama :scream:

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Thank you! :purple_heart:

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Ok! Moving onto PMs! :slight_smile:

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I still own a completely unwritten in copy of Kiki because I could never bring myself to write in a book! But at least it’s clean in case I want to reread it later on.

By the way, have you already finished the last chapter? I just got back from vacation, so I plan to start tonight or tomorrow.

Side Question

How much more difficult does はたらく魔王さま seem compared to Kiki based on your brief looks?

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Welcome back! I hope you had a great time away.
I’ve updated the vocab spreadsheet for about half of the chapter, and read a few more pages that I haven’t looked up the words for yet. But I’ve not finished.

Side answer

Disclaimer: I’ve only read 4 pages

  • grammar not any harder so far
  • loads more kanji & vocab that I don’t know. This may be much less of an issue for you given you are further along with WK.
  • smaller font and less space between lines = nightmare for someone with bad eyesight who likes to write in furigana and meanings! Also, more words per page means they take longer to read than Kiki.

On the flip side, the Flo-Flo site has a vocab list (mostly accurate) for this book. That is perfect if you remember the word after you’ve used it once, or can make a learning set out of it. But I foresee lots of looking up repeat words, as I tend to forget vocab I don’t use much myself.

Here are some screenshots via a site called booklive.jp

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Screenshot%20(129)
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Screenshot%20(130)
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Yay, it’s always easier when some vocab is already filled out. :blush:

Side Response

I’m not going to participate in はたらく魔王さま, but it’s good to know that the grammar doesn’t seem much harder. Knowing more kanji is definitely helpful, but my experience reading ご注文はうさぎですか has really shown me how many kanji I still don’t know.

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For old time’s sake, I have an actual question (many in fact). On page 221 of the blue book, there’s a long paragraph where Kiki is expressing her worries about if she really made it out on her own. I’m getting the basic idea, but very little of the specifics.

The paragraph starts with お母さんの跡継ぎ and ends with 気がしきりにするのでした.

First specific question:
「お母さんの跡継ぎという、どの女の子も考えそうな道を、キキは選んだのでしたが、…」

What’s that supposed to mean? I can’t really figure out how you’d modify 道 with 考えそう. And I’m not sure if キキは選んだ is referring back to お母さんの跡継ぎという or something from the middle.

The rest of that sentence (after the が、) seems to say "after that, using her own judgement, Kiki decided on the town Koriko and after thinking about it (考えた挙句) started 魔女の宅急便.

I think I have that part mostly right, though I’m not sure about 考えた挙句.

それなのに、今ごろになって、「あたし、ほんとにできたのかしら」という、予想もしなかった不安にキキはおそわれていたのでした。

I’m having a lot of trouble with the 予想もしなかった不安 part. Is this saying that Kiki is being tormented by anxiety over not expecting to say/think “did I really do it”? That doesn’t seem right to me… Though maybe it is close given that in the next sentence Kiki is thinking about how the old her would have just said/thought “I did it! Aren’t I great?”. I don’t know.

Also, how does the も work in 予想もしなかった不安?

Lastly, I’m confused by the 上等 thing. In her sentence, Kiki seems to have taken that statement from Jiji positively, since it’s saying that she lost her confidence again even though Jiji made the statement 「上等だよ」. The くれても makes me think that Kiki considers it a positive statement. I’m confused because Jiji’s original statement was 「まあまあ、上等じゃないの」. Was he just saying “Now now, weren’t you excellent?”? If so, that’s a pretty half-hearted compliment to begin with.

And that’s it! Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve had such a large set of questions all at once. I’m counting on you @Kyasurin and @LucasDesu! :slight_smile:

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Yay! (It’s been way too quiet in here recently!)

Red book p243 for anyone else reading later.

I read this as: Kiki had chosen a path which any girl might consider, namely, to follow in her mother’s footsteps, but

…その後は自分の判断でこのコリコの町を選び、考えたあげく、魔女の宅急便という仕事を始めたのです。

Yes, I’d agree with that. I believe 考えた挙句 indicates “after a process of consideration” as opposed to just making a snap decision.

それなのに、今ごろになって、「あたし、ほんとにできたのかしら」という、予想もしなかった不安にキキはおそわれていたのでした。

Despite her own awareness that she’s tackled all the challenges of the year to the best of her ability, Kiki is troubled by doubts that she never even anticipated, namely “Have I really done it? (become independent?)”
The も in 予想もしなかった不安 provides extra emphasis. This might not be the best explanation, but hopefully it provides some idea.

My take on this: Kiki asks Jiji if he thinks they’ve achieved their goal of independence, and his first reaction is to retort “what are you saying?” because it’s clear to him that they have, but then he realises she needs a different approach so he asks “Haven’t we been excellent?” (or maybe “Hasn’t the year been excellent?” )
I think he’s inviting her to reach the same conclusion, but it is still a compliment. Kiki thanks him but, in her current state of self-doubt, can’t bring herself to accept that she is/they are/the year has been excellent, even from her closest ally, and feels strongly that she needs to ask someone else for their perspective on how well the year has gone.
I don’t think it’s saying she lost her confidence again, but rather that Jiji’s compliment hasn’t had any positive impact on her current feelings of self-doubt.

Phew, that was a mouthful… hope it makes some sort of sense!

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