Week 7 葬送のフリーレン ・Frieren 🧝‍♂️ (Beginner Book Club)

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

Welcome to Week 7 of 葬送のフリーレン ・Frieren :man_elf:

Learn more about the Beginner Book Club here
Visit the home page for this manga here

Remember to set this thread and the Frieren home page to watching to receive notifications!

image

Week 7 31 May 2024
Start Page 92
End Page 110
Chapters Finish Chapter 3
Last week Week 6
Next week Week 8
Home Thread Here

Page numbers are the ones printed on the bottom of the pages. These may differ from the numbering in digital versions.

Last panel image - end of chapter

Vocabulary

Vocabulary spreadsheet

Names and places
Many characters have katakana names that derive from German words.

Japanese German English role first appearance
フリーレン Frieren Freeze main character Ch 1 p 3
ヒンメル Himmel Sky or heaven Frieren’s comrade Ch 1 p 3
アイゼン Eisen Iron Frieren’s comrade Ch 1 p 3
ハイター Heiter Cheerful Frieren’s comrade Ch 1 p 3
フェルン Fern far away Frieren’s companion Ch 2 p 42
シュトラール Strahl sunlight holy city Ch 2 p 42
ターク Tag day region Ch 3 p 78

Discussion Guidelines

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.
  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

Participation

Will you be reading along with us this week?
  • I’m reading along
  • I’m still reading but haven’t reached this point yet
  • I’ve already read previously but I’m here for the discussion
  • I’m reading this after the bookclub has finished
  • I’ve stopped reading this book
0 voters
10 Likes
2
Page 93

image

I suspect there may be a mimic hiding in that bush.

Page 95

Top panel 「あなた達が村に来て随分になるわね。」

「あなた達が村に来て」
That first bit is simple enough. You guys come to the village.

「随分になるわね。」
The second half is confusing. To become very? 随分 can also be an adjective that means terrible or remarkable. So, “to become remarkable” I think makes more sense given the context.

“You guys coming to the village was remarkable.” They came to the village half a year ago, but this sentence isn’t past tense so not that. They’re already here so it’s not that they will become remarkable.

So, it is remarkable (present tense because while it was, it also still is) that they came to the village.

I think I answered my own question but please can someone confirm?

11 Likes
3
Page 95

I can’t quite explain it, but it feels to me like the meaning of 随分に here seems to be the ‘normal’ one, “quite/considerably.”
=> You came to town and it becomes quite [an amount of time]." or in better English “It’s becoming quite a long time since you came to our village.”
As I said, I’m not sure where the “amount of time” comes from in the sentence, but my feeling tells me it might be the combination of 来て with the sentence that follows.

12 Likes
4

Agree, “it’s become considerable” [the amount of time you’ve been here]. Japanese loves to leave things out which are implied from context.

10 Likes
5

I swear this whole missing context thing is actually going to be the death of me :sweat_smile:

13 Likes
6

Don’t worry, you’ll learn to read minds eventually. Right after learning how to read the air.

15 Likes
7
P.92 & p.93

Haha I also thought that there must be a mimic in the bush.
And naturally that’s how you sleep when your back has been broken by being trapped in too many mimics.
image

6 Likes
8

The end of this chapter was a bit more difficult than the start! I’m going to have to take another pass at Frieren and Fern’s conversation at the end. But I have a few questions about the conversation between Fern and the old woman:

p.95

image
Am I correct that the old woman is asking (coyly?) “[since you’re returned alone] perhaps you’ve found the flowers?” and Fern is replying (rudely?) “you think we’ve found them?”. From what I can tell this is the literal translation but I’m trying to figure out the implied emotion. I can tell from the subsequent panels that Fern is extremely frustrated with Frieren.

p.96 (top)

image
Just a minor grammar question, but why does Fern say「多くの人」? It’s an い-adjective so wouldn’t it be simpler to say「多い人」? Is it a style thing?

p.96 (bottom)

image
I’m a bit confused as to what the old woman is try to say with 大人. Is she trying to politely say that Frieran is older than them and is therefore more “grownup”? Or maybe that Frieren is more mature?

6 Likes
9
p.96 (top)

My (limited) understanding is that 多い is a special case:

Japanese い-Adjective く Form as a Noun

7 Likes
10

To add to that I don’t think 多い人 is correct Japanese. This discussion seems to confirm this: 🆚【多くの人】 と 【多い人】 はどう違いますか？ | HiNative (the first answer appears to be in Chinese for some reason, but the rest is nihonguese). Apparently you can say “人が多い” however. My intuition is that 多い describing people is weird because you can have plenty of people, but a person can’t be plenty so it’s not really an attribute of 人. But that’s just my intuition as a novice, so take it with a big grain of salt.

If you look at usage patterns of 多い in sample sentences, it’s very uncommonly used to modify a noun directly on its own: 多い #sentences - Jisho.org

I did also encounter 大勢 regularly to refer to crowds of people. It’s a pretty common word with an annoying reading!

9 Likes
11

Oh very interesting, thank you both for the links! Is this a situation where たくさん could be used in place of 多くの or is there an additional subtlety between these two adjectives?

5 Likes
12

The first answer here addresses the nuance between 多くの人 and 沢山の人/人がたくさんいる:

(That’s why I like reading these threads even if I don’t read along, I would never have thought to look into that myself and it’s pretty interesting!)

9 Likes
13
Page 96

I believe she’s saying that Frieren has been an adult for longer than both of them. It feels a little different from just saying that she’s older, to me at least.

6 Likes
14
p. 95

There’s nothing necessarily coy about the old lady’s question, and there’s nothing rude about Fern’s response. The old lady’s speech pattern is just a bit different, but she’s sincerely asking the question. Fern’s overall demeanor does imply a certain degree of frustration, but she’s definitely not being rude. That’d be very un-Fern-like anyway.

p. 96

The ずっと is important here. In a literal sense, she’s saying something like “more than us, she has continuously been an adult” - so like @RebBlue said she’s essentially saying Frieren has been an adult for longer than either of them.

In a roundabout way that might mean she’s older, but 大人 carries an implication of wisdom and maturity more than one of purely reaching a certain age - so it’s not so much just older as it is older and wiser than the both of them, in a sense.

11 Likes
15

Another very interesting reference, thank you so much.

But there’s an alternate interpretation for the third sentence: 多くの could simply mean “a lot”, but it could also mean “a large proportion”. It’s this idea of largeness in proportion or ratio that たくさん does not have.

Based on this, I don’t think 沢山の could be used here? My reading of what Fern is saying here is (roughly) “Frieran has the power to save so many people with her magic” where that 多くの人 has the nuance of “so many more people compared to anyone else”.

5 Likes
16
p.95

Thanks for the clarification! Maybe “rude” didn’t have the meaning I intended. I interpreted Fern as being a bit incredulous in her response.

p.96

This makes a lot of sense - you’re correct that I was overlooking the ずっと. I almost didn’t ask about this one, but I’m glad I did!

5 Likes
17

That was my initial understanding and I almost wrote it in my comment but then I had a doubt. I think you could read it as an absolute quantity not compared to anything, in which case たくさん could work too I think. “She has the power to help so many (たくさんの）people”.

Absolutely not sure though. I wish we had a native speaker to work it out for us.

5 Likes
18
pg. 97

noseless
image

pg. 99

LOL

image
image442×626 109 KB

pg. 101

AWWW cuuuute

pg. 106

:pleading_face:

MY HEART that was so cute. At the start when Frieren said she wasn’t doing it for Himmel she just wanted to collect the magic I was like yeah right, then she goes and gets his field of flowers and his flower crown like he gave to her aaaaaah I wish we could have seen more of Himmel and the rest of their party interacting with Frieren

11 Likes
19

image

Cute!

10 Likes
20
Summary

This one was so sweet! The conversation between Fern and Frieren was difficult, but I think I understand the important parts.

6 Likes