the song so far. The math riddle was a classic, but weirdly fun to solve again just because it was in Japanese, lol.
So nothing really to comment on, yet.
But I got one question: @Redglare , could you consolidates the name lists from the different weeks, so that we get one growing table of names that gets copied over to each new week? I think this has proved to be best practice on previous IBCs. When Monica arrives at the school, we’ll probably get bombarded with new characters, so it might get confusing otherwise.
I was hoping that we’d skip straight to the school but instead we had to stop by Louis’s house for more physical and verbal abuse. I know I shouldn’t take all that too seriously and literally given the format, but it’s still wildly unpleasant for me.
Even Isabel being all nice and fawning over Monica felt a bit bitter because she also effectively ignores her and just projects her hopes and made up version of the 沈黙の魔女 while Monica’s actual feelings and opinions are once again completely ignored by everyone and she’s being passively pushed from place to place.
I hope the dynamics will change when we get to the school and Monica and Isabel learn to know each other.
Also we got the story of Monica defeating the dragon for the third time now. I wonder if we’ll get it every chapter.
ロザリー’s bedside manner could be… improved. Let the poor girl enter the house first, maybe? And don’t do this in front of someone else? Poor Monica
夫が夫なら妻も妻である。
Yep!
Yeah, I’m starting to get a bit annoyed by that too.
At least our main character has plenty of room to grow despite being really, really powerful…
That part I’m actually okay with at this point in the story. It fits the “finally meeting your idol” situation and there is no ill will; it’ll probably improve when they actually form a relationship.
Since it made sense it all places it appeared so far: Probably not?
Idk, whatever you like best. The organizers of the recent clubs always left it open, and I think that was ok, too. Can’t remember ever finding it annoying, not even the one for せーラー服と機関銃, which probably wins the longest list award for the clubs I’ve read with.
This week
I understand completely, even though the wacky parts in this chapter mostly worked for me as humor. The one exception was Rosalie. God, what an annoying character, I wish I dared to hope that we never see her again. I’ve had too many incompentent but arrogant doctors in my real life.
Yeah, same. Also, in a way, I think it would have been even worse for Monica if Isabelle had been interested in getting to know her better straight away. At least this way Isa was fine with monologuing about the battle and didn’t expect a coherent response.
I know that there are a lot of homophones (words with same reading but different meaning) in Japanese. Normally the context helps to determine which one of the meanings is wanted, but how can you make the difference between
公爵 (こうしゃく - prince, duke) and
侯爵 (こうしゃく - marquis, marquess)
when you are only listening to someone talking about a prince or marquis? The context doesn’t help here, unless you know the person who is being talked about.
Louis cites these titles in his list of the 5 degrees of nobility, so there should be a difference, one こうしゃく has a higher rank than the other こうしゃく.
I wondered about this as well and even looked up the tone patterns but they seem to be identical as well. Perhaps an indication that the characters in the book are speaking some language besides Japanese to each other?
Eta: based on the fact that all the characters have katakana names, this doesn’t seem like much of a stretch.
It’s the same pitch accent too, proving once again that pitch accent is useless and youtubers need to cope harder.
I searched around and found this Yahoo answer asking the same question. I copy the text here since you can’t access it from outside Japan without a VPN:
回答
公爵と侯爵。
両方とも読みは「こうしゃく」ですよね。
呼称として使う場合はどうやって区別していたのでしょうか。
返信
「おおやけ」爵、「そうろう」爵と呼んで区別することもあります。正確には「侯」と「候」は別字ですが。
So it’s a similar situation as with 私立・市立 where they just force non-standard kun readings when there’s an ambiguity that can’t be resolved from context.
To add my 1 1/2 cents: In the audio book both Monica and Louis use the same reading for both words. (Maybe assuming that nobody would mix up the order when one of the roles is “prince”, i.e. literally royal blood. Which of course nobody would do, except maybe *checks notes* Monica.)
At the end of the chapter, it’s explained that Monica only went to fight the dragon because Louis dragged her out of the mountain shack to get exercise. Monica seems to think the entire assignment of credit to her is just a misunderstanding—she’s too shy to explain, and Louis seems to want to simply take advantage of the misunderstanding, since it’s useful for him here.
Does this mean that Monica is not the all-powerful witch who single-handedly saved the kingdom? Is the implication that there is some other part to that story that we don’t know about yet, and indeed it is just a big misunderstanding? Or am I reading too much into this?
I thought you were wrong about that, but reading the relevant sentences again I see that you are correct. I’m very confused because I was under the impression that Louis visited the cabin for the first time after the dragon had been chased, since he arrives after the discussion with the merchant girl recounting the events. But then if he had been there before why did he ask for the path to her hut in the village? I’m confused.
No I think she did do all that and is all-powerful, the thing that Isabel doesn’t realize is that Monica only went to fight the dragon because Louis forced her hand and that she didn’t attend the banquet not out of modesty but just because she’s super shy and awkward. It’s not her powers that are in question, it’s her character.
Actually, I think it is a figurative speech. He didn’t drag her literally, he probably just gave her an assignment somehow. IDK, if she receives a lot of tasks from her colleagues, maybe there is a postal service or some other way of communication?
BTW, I thought it was cute that Monica calculated Fibonacci numbers. I wonder if there will be more mathematical references in the story, considering she is good with numbers.
By the way I want to point something out which is the most insane feat of Japanese spelling I’ve seen so far, and the bar is high. If you look up そうろう on jisho.org for instance you find this:
Which looks absolutely wrong and I assumed that it was just a mistake in JMdict. But then I decided to look it up in various Japanese dictionaries and it is in fact accurate:
Basically it comes from さうらふ but in modern Japanese the pronunciation shifted to そうろう and they didn’t update the okurigana. Absolute madness.
This week felt like the main points were 1. Rin is creepy as heck 2. Rosalie has a funny/awkward way of expressing love or care for other people 3. Isabel is adorable. Plus the ever-present fact that Monica devalues all her own achievements and character traits. She actually pretty much is exactly as Isabel says she is, she just hasn’t realized that yet. I hope she does (at least a little) by the end of the book!
Week 4 and I was still finishing ip the previous week’s checkpoint when this one started, but now I am completely caught up!
So far I like it. I don’t mind any of the repetitiveness because yay for built-in SRS . I do worry that I’ll forget a lot of these characters’ names though.
But this is definitely not what I expected a book about a witch to be about so I’m intrigued.
Still getting used to all the titles, so I know how she feels
Home Thread
Just for saving space. It’s getting long already.
. I do worry that I’ll forget a lot of these characters’ names though.