Middle school students Nishikata and Takagi sit next to each other in class. Takagi, who is in love with Nishikata, enjoys teasing him with embarrassing pranks and jokes. In response, Nishikata creates plans to get his revenge, but they always fail when she identifies his weaknesses and capitalizes on them.
Schedule
Week
Start Date
Chapter
Page Numbers
Page Count
Week 1
July 24th
Chapter 1 (10) - 雨宿り
5 - 20
16
Week 2
July 31st
Chapter 2 (11) - テスト勉強
21 - 36
16
Week 3
August 7th
Chapter 3 (12) - テスト返却
37 - 52
16
Week 4
August 14th
Chapter 4 (13) - 手紙
55 - 70
16
Week 5
August 21st
Chapter 5 (14) - 掃除当番
71 - 86
16
Week 6
August 28th
Chapter 6 (15) - 二人乗り
87 - 102
16
Week 7
September 4th
Chapter 7 (16) - 腕ずもう
105 - 120
16
Week 8
September 11th
Chapter 8 (17) - 夢
121 - 136
16
Week 9
September 18th
Chapter 9 (Side Story) - 番外編席替え
139 - 146
8
Week 9
September 18th
Bonus - おまけ
148 - 153
6
As noted in the table above, given how short both the final chapter and the bonus chapter are, we will be reading both chapters the final week.
Discussion Guidelines
Please don’t hesitate to ask questions, even if you think it’s a silly question. Helping each other learn is what book clubs are all about!
When asking for help, please include the ‘ chapter page number ’. This makes it easier for others to help you and it makes the information in this thread more searchable. The ‘chapter page numbers’ are the ones in between the panels on every page, not the ones that occasionally appear at the bottom of the page (those would be the volume page numbers).
Please blur out major events in the current week’s pages and any content from later in the book/series by using spoiler tags: text here.
(Thanks to @Phryne for the text for this. I would have written my own out, but this applies perfectly still, and I’m tight on time with the aforementioned power failure on my laptop!)
Where To Buy
Placing this in this thread also, in case anybody else sees this thread before the thread, and still needs to purchase the book!
Glad to be back to reading about these two! The first chapter here seemed longer than the chapters from the first volume, but maybe it’s just my imagination.
From my first quick read of the chapter (I haven’t done my more in-depth passes yet, and might not have much to contribute until later today/tomorrow morning depending on how much my day gets co-opted by others), the page numbers are the same, but it was a lot more text heavy this chapter.
Probably the amount of text… and depending on the level of difficulty it can feel longer… have that with some other stuff I’m reading…can sometimes breeze through 6 pages and then hit a wall and spend 20-30 min trying to figure something out (thankfully found it after figuring out the right way to search and then using weblio) [not related to this manga though so…no derailing…]
I certainly enjoyed seeing Takagi and Nishikata again. I thought one book of adolescent embarrassment would be more than enough for me, but those two always find a way to be amusing. Fun chapter overall.
Oops, I didn’t bother counting the pages. Maybe it is due to more text as @anon99047008 said. Or maybe I missed these two so much that this felt like a feast of a chapter
Just got finished with the chapter myself - got to echo all of you in saying that it was nice seeing the duo again.
Full chapter spoilers:
My theory that Takagi is some sort of elder god continues with her now displaying a control over the weather… We should all know how bets with Takagi go by now
Got a small point I want to just put in here for the sake of anyone who might be confused like I was, at a few points Nishikata uses 観る. From what I could see looking stuff up this is very similar to 見る but carries more of a connotation of watching something than simply looking at it
What a weird way to phrase it, when we’re talking about a movie. I had seen the definition but never even bothered to look at the example sentence, thinking it had nothing to do with what I was looking for. Like @VikingSchism , I saw it was another form of 見る and surmised it had to do with watching. I’d definitely hate to “meet with misfortune” while watching a movie .
Yeah I definitely think this is a case where the definition in the bilingual dictionary falls short so I went to do some further googling and most results I found seem to agree that 観る in this circumstance is more related to viewing (as in a movie, a vase) while 見る is more simply seeing - though it seems like 見る is commonly used for both meanings anyway
Just to add to this - the entry in Jisho seems to just show 観る as an alternate form without much further explanation
doesn’t mean you will meet with misfortune… keep in mind it’s the experience itself … maybe I shouldn’t have posted that jisho def…didn’t mean that anyone should focus on the misfortune aspect…
if you go to a movie to watch (view) it [notice the translation - “take in”]… you are going to experience it right? in any case…here’s a weblio def if that helps…
I was just joking around with the meeting with misfortune bit of course . Yes, you do experience a movie in a way, it’s just that as far as dictionary definitions go this one was somewhat misleading. Without the example sentence I would never have made the connection. Still, thanks for quoting that and the weblio one, it’s all helpful.
On page 9 西片 says バレてた。The English version of this manga translates it to “She knew”. But I guess that’s more of a contextual translation. Google translates it to “I was out”. I’m guessing it means something like “I was found out” or “I was caught”. I don’t think it’s a borrowed word from English, but maybe from a different language. What do you guys think?
You are correct. This came up in the first volume, as well. It seems that this word is pretty often written in katakana in manga, despite not seeming to be a borrowed word. Katakana is often used for emphasis, the same way we might use bold or italics in English, and I believe that’s where we fell on it – it’s pretty much just marking it more strongly as an exclaimed phrase.
Here is the word on jisho, if you are interested, where they show it in both hiragana and katakana forms.
various ways to translate that…literally means nakedness / nothing concealed…
so can say I was exposed / I was found out / I was caught… all should be good
And I have officially done my final pass of the chapter, now that I had time to properly sit down and read instead of getting pulled away every couple of seconds to deal with this or that.
I didn’t run into anything this time that tripped me up, personally. I think that I’m starting to just see repeating grammar patterns from the first volume, nothing too out of the norm just yet.
I would definitely describe this manga as a “comfort manga.” It’s just so sweet and chill, with a cute humor that isn’t over the top. I think I mentioned before that when I joined the first book club, I really didn’t expect to like it all that much (I thought the middle school second-hand embarrassment would just not be enjoyable, to be frank), but I really do find joy while reading it. That’s especially becoming the case as I’m having to look up fewer and fewer words (I barely even looked at the vocab sheet for this chapter), and I’m not tripping up on grammar points.
I would like to thank everyone again for participating in these book clubs; I truly feel like I wouldn’t be nearly as far (which, to be clear, isn’t THAT far, but it’s miles ahead of where I used to be) in my learning journey if it weren’t for all the wonderful people here asking and answering questions. This is a much more enjoyable way of learning grammar than just hitting my head against Genki again and again, and hoping it sticks.
As for this chapter, my favorite moment was absolutely the cat coming up and shaking water all over the place. As a pet owner, I know exactly how poor Nishikata feels being drenched because an adorable anime decided to share the love. This panel especially made me laugh. Takagi peering over the bag/binder at Nishikata’s dejected face was just great.
Thank you very much. That’s a much more detailed answer than I had hoped for. I’m going to try to pay attention and see if I can hear it in animes also…
I’m feeling similarly with respect to this becoming something of a comfort manga to me now. And likewise I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I have - I feel like partly it’s that though Takagi teases, there’s often a fairly sweet aspect to a lot of it that makes it more tolerable than just “person teases another person”
Including a cat is an instant win to me - S-tier chapter right away
同じページですね。
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