This was the first time I finished the week’s reading almost by accident. I just started reading, and when I paused I thought I’d check where the stopping point was - on the very next page, it turned out. I think it may be because there was lots of dialogue.
So, on the bubble universe theory I supported, it seems it’s wrong. And the reality not changing rule is extremely misleading too. Apparently it only refers to major facts staying the same - in order to keep those the same, all sorts of other little changes do take place, and it’s a wonder even major facts manage to stay the same given the butterfly effect all this should put into motion.
Plot wise, an intriguing start, but not much info yet. Although I knew Kei was touching her belly a little too often. Other than that, it was interesting to see time travel from the other side. How weird it must be for the cafe staff to see people appearing and disappearing in that seat all the time. Also, who travels to the past to order food? (I might. That butter is supposed to be delicious.)
I found it hilarious that, as an example of how Kei isn’t one to be intimidated, we learn that she even serves foreigners who don’t speak Japanese without any embarrassment.
Yeah, I thought that was a really great decision 川口’s part after we followed the stories of two people going backward through time.
I agree that it seems like the time travel is stuff is getting more and more flimsy, so I’m going to try to not think about it too hard.
Looks like the original play was from 2010, and the traveler had a very advanced cell phone. Do we think maybe it was Kei’s daughter? Does something happen to Kei?
Though the book was published in 2019. One wonders how much it was updated.
That feels like the obvious conclusion to me. Why else would she come back to the past just to take a photo? Though, it also feels to me like the main characters can never reach that conclusion themselves, in order to preserve the “you can’t change the past” rule.
I finally caught up on the reading today. I definitely wasn’t expecting that strange (but fun) little digression - though each of the past stories did spend some time early on setting up the next story in line, so I imagine this will all be very relevant in the final chapters.
And indeed, it’s hard to reason out all of the absurd logic in this book’s time travel mechanics. At first I figured the time travel thing was really just a (melodramatic) vehicle by which the characters got to resolve their emotional struggles, and so we wouldn’t get much information as to how any of it actually worked, because that’s not really what matters in this book. And I still think that, but it seems it will require even more hand waving than I originally thought.
Had the book gone with the bubble universe idea, a few oddities aside, it would be easy to mostly accept the premise. But since the author obviously needed this little “visitor from the future” episode to lay the emotional groundwork for some later event (or so I assume), he clearly felt he needed to provide some additional explanation. And I kind of wish this hadn’t happened. Because before this section, I felt okay giving a free pass that this wasn’t really a time travel book and so no explanation of the time travel mechanics was actually necessary. But now we that got some level of explanation, I feel more like the author put enough effort into working out the mechanics to weave in the things he really needed to happen, but not quite enough effort to actually put the whole thing into a coherent framework.
And that’s okay. Most time travel stories require a fair degree of hand waving, and this book’s character development along with its general theme of “don’t dwell on how past mistakes have lead to present regrets; reflect on the past in order to change the future” are strong enough that I don’t care that much about the actual time travel logic. But nonetheless I’m just ever so slightly more ruffled about it than I was during the first two stories where I basically paid it no mind at all.
Yeah, I just finished the reading, and… not a huge fan of how the last two pages go out of their way to establish that the “can’t change the past” rule is enforced by all reality acting to ensure that the timeline doesn’t change. It it was going to be the “whatever happened happened” stable time loop style, they should have established that as being the case in the first two chapters as well.
Side note, regarding one-piece-woman appearing from under the steam like a ninja, in the movie it’s shown that she actually gets up to visit the bathroom shortly before a time-traveller arrives, and I kinda like that version better.
That’s another interesting aspect of the time travel mechanics (such as they are) that I hadn’t considered. A traveller lands whenever they choose in the past, always in that specific seat. What if that seat is already occupied? I guess the chances are pretty slim that it’s occupied by anyone else than white dress woman, but still. Even she has been proven to be entirely solid,so what happens when two active travellers collide? That would be fun to see.
I only finished this section on Sunday evening, but I have to say I laughed out loud when the time traveller rejected Nagare’s efforts to suggest that she came to see him.
