Orange 🍊 Book Club // Reading Volume 1 // Volume 2 Starting August 13

[MissDagger]

Welcome to the Orange Book Club!

Orange is 7*-volume manga series about a high school student that gets a letter from her future self.

高校二年生の菜穂に届いた未来からの手紙。そこには未来の自分の後悔がつづられていた。
はたして菜穂は手紙を読み「後悔しない未来」を作ることができるのか？切ない思いが交錯するタイムパラドックスラブストーリー。(From Amazon)

My translation with some help from jisho and such (should be roughly accurate):

Second year high school student Naho receives a letter from her future self. The letter is full of her future self’s regrets. Can Naho read the letter and create a future without regrets? A time paradox love story with painful/sad feelings.

Level 22 on Natively

*This series was complete at 5 volumes, but a 6th and a 7th volume were released later (the 7th in April 2022). Info from Belthazar.

(Volume 1-5 of Orange each includes one chapter from 春色アストロノート (5 chapter story) at the end)

Sample pages

First four pages

A dialog heavy page a few pages later

Note: This was probably the most dialog heavy pages I saw in the first little bit, so it doesn’t seem to be the usual amount. But there seem to be quite a bit of text on many pages.

The whole first chapter is available as a preview here.

Where to purchase

Digital: [Amazon (volume 1 is in KindleUnlimited) · Bookwalker · Kobo]
Physical: [Amazon · CDJapan]

Schedule

Volume 1

Start Date	Chapter	Page Numbers	Page Count
Jul 2nd	Letter 1 - Part 1	5 - 31	27
Jul 9th	Letter 1 - Part 2	32 - 56	25
Jul 16th	Letter 2	57 - 100	44
Jul 23rd	Letter 3	101 - 146	46
Jul 30th	Letter 4	147 - 188	42

Volume 2 - Preliminary schedule
We are voting for speed here.

Start Date	Chapter	Page Numbers	Page Count
Aug 13th	Letter 5	5 - 51	47
Aug 20th	Letter 6	53 - 84	32
Aug 27th	Letter 7	87 - 129	43
Sep 3rd	Letter 8	131 - 172	42

Page numbers are from the ToC because this manga doesn’t print many page numbers. So title pages are included in chapter lengths.

Vocabulary

Orange Volume Vocabulary

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

Trigger Warnings

I’ll put the trigger warnings under the detail tag below. Checking them gives spoilers for the story. (Might seem obvious, but I thought I should add that.) The main one already shows up within the first couple of chapters, so minor spoiler from a story perspective.

Trigger warnings

Suicide
Emotional abuse of parent-on-child

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) need to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as such.

Membership

Will you be reading with us?

• Yes
• Yes, but I might start late
• Maybe
• No

Which version will you be reading?

• eBook
• Paperback

If you participate, don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to be notified when weekly threads get posted!

[MissDagger]

So we have a few different things to decide.

1. When to start
2. How to read, aka weekly schedule or more rough volume reading
3. Weekly threads or volume threads (probably depends on #2)

There are 34 chapters over 7 volumes, ca 30-50 pages each. (The extra pages in volume 1-5 is one chapter of 春色アストロノート in each.) All volumes also have an あとがき.

When would be a good time to start (for you)?

• As soon as possible (aka early July)
• In about 6 weeks (ca July 30) (aka need to get the physical book option)
• August
• September
• Other (please leave a comment)

The examples for the poll below are not binding, instead we will decide more specifically after we know which option we want to go with (weekly/volume/no schedule). It will depend on the Japanese level and time of the participants how quickly we will read the material if we pick weekly/volume.

How would you prefer/like to read it with the club?

• Weekly schedule (example: 1 chapter per week)
• Volume schedule (example: aim for one volume per month or something)
• Whenever, just set up all the threads

[Hantsuki]

I’ve seen the anime, and I believe I have the 1st and maybe 2nd and 3rd volumes of the manga. I’d be interested in reading at some point even if I’m absolutely late to the party. Happy to hear about the new volume anyway!

One potential trigger and a spoiler if you want to go into the manga completely blind: suicide.

[ChristopherFritz]

@MissDagger

I do not know of any trigger warnings that might be needed.

Does the struggle between buying the volumes separately or combined count?

This is going to sound like a totally arbitrary, self-made problem, but buying them separately means that other story is spread throughout the volumes rather than all compiled together. But buying the compilation puts everything in one massive folder.

(Either way, my need for organization in my backup copies will be my downfall. I’ve been struggling off and on for a year whether to go through my backup copies of Saint Tail and separate out the unrelated one-off stories into their own folders…)

((If someone was looking for an example of “first world problems”…))

[MissDagger]

Obs! Have patience with me, first book club I’m setting up, so might not get it right the first time.

Obligatory tags for people who’ve shown interest: @MaraVos @lucylavelle and ChristopherFritz (who was too quick to need the tag XD)

[MissDagger]

Post #2 set up with polls for when to start reading and how to read together. If the polls are not good, let me know and I’ll make new ones. xD

@Hantsuki For the trigger warning, do you have a guess at how late of a spoiler it is? So I can potentially provide a bit more information for those wanting to avoid spoilers (obviously you haven’t read the manga, so maybe you don’t know at all and that is fine, but I thought I’d ask). ^^

[Belthazar]

@MissDagger

*This series was complete at 6 volumes (as far as I’ve been told/read), but a 7th volume was released in April 2022.

Aye, I saw that on the Japanese new book shelves at my local Kinokuniya the other week. Wonder if they’re gonna release that in English too, or whether they consider it done and dusted. Though it might be more accurate to say that it was complete at five volumes, and then they added a sixth. And now they’ve added a seventh…

@MissDagger

I do not know of any trigger warnings that might be needed. Please let me know if there are any (please put them in spoilers).

Suicide. Plus possibly a bit of emotional abuse of parent-on-child.

Been a while since I read it, though, and I only read it in English.

[MissDagger]

For the trigger warnings, do you remember how early they show up? (Please put in spoilers)

[Belthazar]

Chapter 2 is the first overt mention, but there’s things implied in chapter 1 too.

[MissDagger]

Okay, cool. Thanks a lot.

[Hantsuki]

One of the first mentions happens in episode 2 (thanks to MAL for refreshing my memory) so I’m guessing readers will probably know by the first volume?

[ChristopherFritz]

Me being someone who knows absolutely nothing about this series (seeing the the volume 1 blurb on Kobo’s listing today was my first time learning what the premise of the series is!), I’m enjoying the judicious use of pre-reading spoiler tags which I have dutifully not clicked on a single one of =D

[Sylph]

Oh, hey! I’ve been very slowly reading this manga and I’m currently on volume 5 so I might finish before the club gets there but I’ll monitor this and try to contribute to the conversation anyway. Or if the other volumes are really an add-on I might pause after vol. 5 and continue with the book club if it doesn’t take too long? I guess I’ll decide later.
In any case I can recommend the series as an easy(ish) and emotional read.

[Hantsuki]

Yeah, I recommend everyone to go into this series blind if they can help it. It will be very much worth it.

[ChristopherFritz]

I’m going in so blind, I’ve stopped buying oranges from the market for fear of spoilers

[Belthazar]

If you stop eating anything orange, you’re gonna go literally blind from the beta carotene deficiency.

[MaraVos]

I can’t make any solid decisions or promises right now on account of life for some reason being in the trash compactor. But, I will definitely try to buy the first volume when I’m in NYC this weekend, and I think it would be fine to put my novel challenge on hold for now on account of the trash compactor. An easy (if emotional) manga might be just the thing…

Suicide is a trigger for me, but if dealt with in a thoughtful way it will probably be fine. And reading with a group will probably help too. So that’s why I voted for weekly/chapter-based threads.

[MissDagger]

To all, please vote on when to start and how to read. Polls in post #2

---

@MaraVos

I can’t make any solid decisions or promises right now on account of life for some reason being in the trash compactor.

I hope it gets better asap.

[hiukan]

hey Sylph

not sure if you can actually help me with this so please forgive me if I’m being too presumptuous

I’m really thinking about just ordering the whole 6 book series (there’s a steep incline in price when ordering the 7 book set, that’s why ^^’) but I don’t really know if I could actually manage to read it…
I read Happiness with the book club (or… more… in one go on my own tbh, because I found it really very easy) and am currently reading/“translating” (just for myself) Yotsuba! which is absolutely manageable.
I can see the natively level for all three books but I find it hard to judge how much of an increase in difficulty the 4 levels are…

any thoughts on that, maybe…?

(or anyone else for that matter ^^’)

[AzusaChan]

I have been wanting to read Orange for a while now although I was thinking of the LN instead of the manga. Depending on how much time I have while the book club is running, I might just get the manga instead and read with everyone else.