Aria the Masterpiece: Chapter 36 Discussion

[seanblue]

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Aria the Masterpiece Chapter 36: オレンジな日々

Start Date: April 6th
Previous Chapter: Chapter 35
Next Chapter: Chapter 37

Vocabulary List

Aria the Masterpiece Volume 4 Vocab

Discussion Rules

• Please use spoiler tags for content that would be considered a spoiler.
• When asking for help, please mention the page, panel, and speech bubble. Be sure to mention if you are reading a version other than Aria the Masterpiece.
• Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.

Participants

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll.

• I’m reading along
• I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this chapter yet
• I’m no longer reading the book
• I’m skipping this book

[Belthazar]

Hah. The furigana on the chapter title is interesting.

Page 184, it bugs me a teensy bit that they’re sitting on cushions Japanese-style with their shoes on. It looks… weird.

Paga 191, that’s the same pizza shop from two chapters ago, innit?

Also page 191: I don’t quite get the meaning of Akira’s operation name, aside from establishing that perhaps she’s not great at naming operations. According to Wikipedia, Catenaccio is a soccer tactic ephasising a strong defence. Tokyopop has decided to sidestep the issue, continuing their trend of weird localisations by calling it “Operation Uncover Undine”. A scanslation I’ve found calls it “Operation Love Defence”, but then there’s a footnote blaming the Chinese translation they started with, but honestly, that kinda works for me…

The soundtrack for pages 198-200 is the same one we had a few chapters ago.

[Naphthalene]

Aaaand that’s it, we reached a part I do not have.

We are down to a single @Belthazar reading along…

I’ll try to go to book-off sometime this week, but no promise.

[Belthazar]

We are down to a single @Belthazar reading along…

Oh, noooes.

(Fun fact: this volume is the last one that Tokyopop translated into English. I did spot the new English Masterpiece edition in Kinokuniya the last time I was there. Didn’t buy it, though…)

[hachiken]

I’m still here! Just a little late as sometimes happens.

They were the best of times, they were the worst of times…
I noticed a couple of variations to Aika’s catchphrase.
Actually I don’t have too much to say about this chapter.
it’s still good reading practice though.

[Belthazar]

I’m still here! Just a little late as sometimes happens.

Ah, I was almost pondering polling the home thread on whether we needed an extended pause to let people catch up…

[Kyasurin]

Nothing to see here… move along!

[Naphthalene]

Wasn’t that from last chapter though?

[Kyasurin]

Oh hilarious! Moving it now!

[Kyasurin]

So this time I’m actually in the right chapter thread
But I’m going to post in stages, as I don’t have time to get through everything at once.

Things I enjoyed so far in this chapter

• p185 the girls worrying that Athena is angry, when in fact she’s shaking with laughter
• the fact that Athena is actually laughing - the way she is drawn, she seems to be permanently depressed

Questions so far

• p187 top frame あいかわらず一人でシケた練習してやがんなあ
  I’m not sure I get this. Does しける mean gloomy? Is Aika being ironic?
• p190 lower right. The face plant! Is it just out of embarrassment? Or because she needs food? And what is ゴケ?
• p192 Seriously, what is going on with the straw? Is she trying to share her drink with Aria社長？

[Belthazar]

• p187 top frame あいかわらず一人でシケた練習してやがんなあ
  I’m not sure I get this. Does しける mean gloomy? Is Aika being ironic?

She’s being つんでれ, I reckon. “Oh, you look so miserable, I guess I’d better join you. It’s not like I want to be friends or anything.”

• p190 lower right. The face plant! Is it just out of embarrassment? Or because she needs food? And what is ゴケ?

She face-planted because she was just involved in a head-on collision. I figure 顔面ゴケ means “face-plant”, but both Jisho and Google are coming up blank for me…

• p192 Seriously, what is going on with the straw? Is she trying to share her drink with Aria社長？

She’s doing this:

[Kyasurin]

OMG, I have never seen that before.
Have I been living under a rock or something?! Did everyone else know what was going on??

[Belthazar]

Did everyone else know what was going on??

I suspect I only knew it because she does the same thing in the anime - last I checked, straw wrappers aren’t really all that common around where I live. Yet(?)

[hachiken]

Did everyone else know what was going on??

I thought Alice was just wiggling a straw and Aria was just… being a cat.

[Kyasurin]

So I finished this chapter without any more confusion (or maybe ignorance is bliss!) and I think it would be one of my favourites for this book. The poignancy of realising that the time you can spend together with people you really care about isn’t necessarily going to last forever really resonated with me.

[Naphthalene]

I… I’m here!

And with respect to this chapter:

[Kyasurin]

Exciting news all! I found a straw in a wrapper, and sometime over the weekend I’m going to see if it will do that trick for me!
This is what my life has become, oh my goodness…

[seanblue]

Best part of the chapter right there. Aika’s so speechless she can’t even say her whole line.