I honestly had more than enough with Subaruās shenanigans, and seeing him getting rekt both physically and mentally was cathartic.
Also, the epilogue completely changed my image of ć¦ćŖć¦ć¹. He became one of favorite characters in one shot.
Anyway, onward to a completely different set of characters as we move to the ć«ć«ć¹ćć³ estate. Hopefully they can hammer some good sense into Subaru.
Building him up in the previous arcs in such a way to grow his ego, and then to start showing us bit by bit the flaws in his character. Subaruās mindset was a volcano of self satisfying thoughts awaiting to explode in the right circumstances. And ć¦ćŖć¦ć¹ was the perfect instigator for this. (And the epilogue revealing his true intentions is great, changing the apparent meaning of his actions)
Emilia also did great here, unfazed, directly telling Subaru what he should hear. Emiliaās sentence that stuck with me the most was (roughly) āThe version of me that lives inside of your mind must be perfect.ā
Which exactly describes Subaru. He expects her to understand him even when he canāt tell her anything.
I like the scene at the end when Emilia and Subaru are talking together. Itās the clear opposite of the end of the other book with Rem and Subaru. The setting is mostly the same. Subaru is wounded and there is someone who his watching over him. In the first Rem is talking to him about his problem while he listen and help her while in the second he is the one talking about his feeling but Emilia do not give him what he want. I liked that kinda switche in role but also in reaction. On another note, I was surprise because in the anime the last scene with Julius was not there. Make me like him a little more and otās nice info.
Ok, guess I should start using the drop-down spoiler.
Summary
I felt sorry for Subaru when he was trying to explain to Emilia the reason for him always trying to repay a debt back to her, and him not being able to because of the ę»ć«ę»ć. But then, Subaru showed his true colours, and started saying āIf it wasnāt for me, you wouldnāt even be here!ā It all was to serve his self-ego. At least Subaru was admitting it in his mind, so thatās a good thing. Iām glad this is all coming out now, so Subaru can (hopefully) work on his faults and become a better person.
It was good to see Juliusā deeper intentions. It wasnāt just some vain act when he was fighting Subaru.
Also, looks like Rem is staying behind with Subaru, so at least Subaru still has a familiar face with him after Emilia leaving.
Canāt imagine what it would be like without Rem! Maybe at least that will keep him from drowning further. Rem is loving but also very rational, which is exactly what you need in this situation.
Are you perhaps new to WaniKani book clubs? The book clubs donāt read bilingual books (as far as I know). This is just a regular Japanese light novel. And itās a bit harder than the standard. In terms of WK book club difficulty, this is ranked as advanced.
Also itās not like we all read together, itās not like we āattend the readingā. We each read in our own time but we discuss the contents in threads like this. If someone chooses to read both the Japanese version, and the English translation, thatās totally up to them. There is a āreading aloudā session on discord every weekend but that is just in Japanese. Theoretically someone could join just the reading aloud session, if theyāre super advanced and could understand everything on the fly, but afaik, nobodyās doing that.
(Also Iām two volumes behind so I havenāt joined in forever, forgive me senpais).
Yeah, Iām new. Just started learning Japanese a few weeks ago.
So, Iām assuming you would need to study Japanese for about 2 to 3 years to join the book club?
Also, if this is for people on an advanced level, and all of the content in this comments section is relatively simply, then why doesnāt everyone speak in Japanese on this post?
That depends on fast you are in your studies. I donāt think I would have been able to handle this book anytime before the level I had after 5 years of study, and I only reached the level to read it comfortably after 8 years. Iām not saying itās impossible in 2 years, just some people (i.e., me) are much slower than that.
The official language of the forum is English, so outside of the āJapanese Onlyā section people tend to use English. Additionally, people are probably more familiar with producing English, so that we can write faster more nuanced and accurate posts. Finally, I donāt even think writing in Japanese here would be useful as an exercise, since there wouldnāt be anyone to help correct what we say.
I hope you donāt mind me asking, but is Japanese just that absurdly hard to write, or are you just learning at a more relaxed pace? If you are learning at a rigorous pace, I would assume it would only take 3 or 4 years at most to be able to read a book in Japanese (with words here and there that you have to look up, of course). No offense to you, just saying that most other languages seem to take way less time to get to that level of reading.
Depends on the person, depends on the learning pace, depends on what they focus on during the learning process. Itās hard to quantify it as a general rule that applies to everyone. Letās assume the theory that you need to spend 10000 hours to master something is correct.
Someone who spends 1 hour of learning per day will get there twice as slow as someone who spends 2 hours. In my first year I could spend over 5 hours a day with no problem because I had a lot of free time. Nowadays I find it hard to find 1 hour. Life does get in the way. Or sometimes you focus on the wrong thing and neglect other areas of study. Itās highly subjective.
In order to read comfortable you need two things. Enough kanji/vocab knowledge to be able to parse the content into individual words, and enough grammar knowledge to be able to understand how the words are connected (and the difficulty of this varies based on the content). If you know around 90% or more of what youāre reading and have to look up the remaining 10%, Iād call that a comfortable pace. This book being on the advanced side, just requires that much more previous knowledge in order to read comfortably.
I meanā¦ At the very least, itās a well known fact that Japaneseās writing system is quite harder than most other languages. It only makes sense. Even if youāre learning it full time, itās just hard to reach a comfortable reading ability.
Summary
Even after learning lots of Kanji, you still need to read them a lot in context. Kanji are contextualized and readings change often depending on whatās behind or ahead. Thereās also no spaces so you have to be at a decent level to even know where the words start or end.
This is why Iām shipping Subaru-Rem instead of Subaru-Emilia. Join me comrade.
I also do not ship Subaru, at least not as he is right now.
