Yeah, I loved it too. I loved how dazed and confused Ray was through the whole thing, having been used to being the one in charge all the time. Dazzled by what the younger children have achieved without him. But he still gets to step up in a key moment and help the scared girl across.
The last section was great. It really looked like Mama was going to get to them before they finished crossing, but when she gets there all that is left is the cords flapping in the wind.
It’s a shame they had to leave evidence of which way they went but I don’t think there was any way to avoid that. They still seem in a whole heap of trouble with those forces from HQ after them, some mean looking demons there!
Did we know for sure Isabella was a child from a farm house before? It was pretty obvious by the numbers on her neck and everything but I forget.
I do wonder how they choose which children to eat and which to use as shepherds. It may be that the ones that escape and get caught again get tris treatment? I feel like they might have explained this and I also missed it lol
I think we did know that both Krone and Isabella grew up in plants themselves. I don’t think we have much insight yet into what might make a child suitable to be a mama. There seems to be a suggestion that they need to be a girl, but I’m not sure that is explicit. I think Isabella suggested to Emma when she was sad about Norman’s departure that she could potentially be a mama in the future. I thought that was a bit odd, as Emma is a perfect score 11 year old, and therefore the highest quality food stock - that would seem a bit of a waste to then turn into a mama? But then I guess if the mama’s are the genetic mothers of the children, perhaps high quality stock is what you want for mothers to ensure the highest chance of high quality babies? Or Isabella could just have been lying.
What I did think was new information this time was that Isabella is Ray’s mother. We certainly knew she seemed to have a soft spot for him, but I don’t think we knew she was his mother. In fact I’m not sure if we knew that the children were born through growing inside a mother. I’d kind of had the feeling they were grown through some sort of lab process, but I might be mixing up my dystopias! Would be interesting to know if she was genetically his mother, or whether she was just the surrogate for an IVF style pregnancy.
Chapter 38 - Interesting seeing them out of the house and into the next phase of the story. We’ve learned so much about the secrets of the house, but we know so little still about the outside world. The reveal of the pen was good, we’ve had hints that it was important for a while. Good ending - no rest for the wicked!
After taking a long break from reading, I’m back! And I’ve now caught up. And actually read 2 chapters ahead by accident
The escape from the farm was great! I’m excited to see what happens from here. I watched the second season of the anime, but it was so abbreviated, I’m sure there will be differences showing up soon.
Great to have you with us again! So anime season one concludes with the farm escape, that’s the start of manga volume 5. And there are 20 volumes in total. So season 2 covers 16 volumes! No wonder they had to cut big sections of the manga out!
