Absolute Beginners Book Club // Now Reading: Granny Girl Hinata chan!

It’s not an x, but a ×. It’s a multiplication symbol. :wink:

It’s essentially just a stylistic choice, by my understanding, put there so that people wouldn’t think it’s Hunters hunting other hunters, but just the word Hunter repeated twice (seems that didn’t work out, eh? :laughing:). It’s not even intended to be said when you say the name aloud.

But that’s not necessarily a hard and fast rule. Some manga/anime have the same symbol and intend for you to pronounce it, such as ロミオ×ジュリエット、where it’s pronounced as と (meaning “and”, obviously).

So, the tl;dr: it doesn’t mean much here besides to show that it’s not a “Hunter” hunter, but just the same word twice; and it’s not intended to be pronounced.

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Another example of random(?) × usage: SPY×FAMILY

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Random usage, and funnily enough, inspired by Hunter × Hunter.

Per the editor:

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ふだつきのキョーコちゃん

Summary

Availability

Physical: Amazon JPCDJapan

Digital: KindleKoboBOOK☆WALKER

Personal Opinion

As an earlier work from the creator of Teasing-Master Takagi-san and When will Ayumu make his move?, this series has a similar charm. For fans of those series, I feel this one will be a good fit.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Similar difficulty to other works by this mangaka that were well received in the ABBC.
  • Has recurring themes from chapter to chapter.
  • Uses furigana.
  • The series is complete at seven volumes, so if you want to keep reading, you don’t hit a drought waiting for releases.

Cons

  • Heavier in dialogue than the noted other works.
  • Longer chapters mean every chapter would be split across multiple weeks.

Pictures

First Three Pages of Chapter One

Additional Pages

Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Moderate effort
  • Substantial effort
  • So much effort my head might explode :exploding_head:
  • I don’t know
0 voters
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I halfway feel like I’m cheating a bit by voting in this difficulty poll; being so familiar with Yamamoto-sensei’s writing style at this point, that “minimal effort” vote might even be a bit of a stretch… :wink: Maybe I’ll take my vote out when it’s time to do the averages. :laughing:

And now I can’t help but wonder if you are about to nominate くノ一, and that’s the typing I’m seeing… :wink:

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ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん

Summary

There is a small forest on the outskirts of a village. That place has been feared by people since a time long past. Within that forest is a strong(?) and scary(???) wolf.

This series follows the daily life of the kind and hardworking オオカミちゃん and the animals she lives among.

Availability

Physical: Amazon JPCDJapan

Digital: KindleKoboBOOK☆WALKER

Personal Opinion

An adorable and easy-going series. Situations and dialogue in this series are fairly simple while still being enjoyable as a slice-of-life series.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Simple situations with easy dialogue.
  • Slice-of-life.
  • Uses furigana.
  • Large resolution images for digital readers.

Cons

Pictures

First Three Pages of Chapter One

Additional Pages

Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Moderate effort
  • Substantial effort
  • So much effort my head might explode :exploding_head:
  • I don’t know
0 voters
15 Likes

Just wait until you see the difficulty of my second nomination there as a comparison.

Nah, if I waited so long to start reading it due to outfit designs, I wouldn’t nominate it, due to outfit designs. But if someone else nominated it and it was picked, I’d follow the club. (And I’m still going to continue reading the series.)

4 Likes

…point taken. :rofl:

Yeah, definitely fair. Fwiw, that keeps me from nominating it as well (I also haven’t read any of it to confirm that the content itself is fine, though I’m sure there’s nothing beyond the questionable outfit designs).

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From what I’ve seen so far, the content is fine. Aside from the aforementioned outfit designs, there isn’t really anything much worse than comes up in the author’s other series.

Disclaimer: Wait until we get to the next volume of Ayumu before making anything of that. The next volume thread will include a content disclaimer.

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Well, that seems surprising for that series. Now I’m curious… :rofl:

Maybe the internet is wrong, but it seems as though the series has finished its run? Or is that simply referring to the run in magazines, and they are still publishing the volume collections?

(Also, I translated the title for the second pick, but not the first, because I’m torn on whether that ふだつき is just the family name, or a pun on the word that means “notorious; infamous” :laughing:)

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It’s a web comic, so individual chapters appear online before publication in a volume.

For example, there’s a new release that came out this month.

At least, I’m assuming they’re chapters. I haven’t signed up and paid to check. I’m fine waiting to pay 600円 per volume every other year, versus 300円 to 500円 per month to see the posts.

Of course, for all I know, the series ended after two volumes, and the mangaka’s Pixiv fan page is for viewing monthly artworks =P

Additionally, 札 refers to Kyouko’s ribbon (as it’s a talisman). Now if only the つき part were written as 付 rather than 月…

If it helps sate your curiosity any, you’ll find out in a month :wink:

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So I’m looking for suggestions for the schedule

Hunter x Hunter is 8 chapters long, all of the chapters around 20-25 pages long, so whole book is 187, 140 pages of actual dialogue. Issue with the 8 chapters is that because they all have around 18 pages of dialogue (and this number never goes below 16), they are just not short enough to do in 1 week (imo, tell me if you think otherwise), but splitting each into 2 weeks results in 16 weeks, which is a bit long.

What a 16 week schedule would look like
Week Start Date Pages No. of pages Dialogue Pages Chapter
Week 1 Aug 27 5-25 21 10 Chapter 1
Week 2 Sep 3 26-38 13 11 Chapter 1
Week 3 Sep 10 39-48 10 8 Chapter 2
Week 4 Sep 17 49-62 14 9 Chapter 2
Week 5 Sep 24 62-72 11 9 Chapter 3
Week 6 Oct 1 72-82 11 9 Chapter 3
Week 7 Oct 8 83-94 12 8 Chapter 4
Week 8 Oct 15 95-104 10 8 Chapter 4
Week 9 Oct 22 105-112 8 7 Chapter 5
Week 10 Oct 22 113-124 12 9 Chapter 5
Week 11 Oct 29 125-135 11 9 Chapter 6
Week 12 Nov 5 136-144 9 8 Chapter 6
Week 13 Nov 12 145-154 10 9 Chapter 7
Week 14 Nov 19 155-164 10 9 Chapter 7
Week 15 Nov 26 165-175 11 8 Chapter 8
Week 16 Dec 3 176-183 8 8 Chapter 8

Any ideas? I didn’t think to have weeks where we read the end of one chapter and the start of the next, though maybe that’s an option? Ideally I would have either 10 or 11 dialogue pages per week, that would make the club take either 14 or 13 weeks

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I had a look at the Bookwalker preview - it looks like many of the pages of dialogue only have a small amount, with about 7-8 with a larger amount. But I’m not sure I viewed a whole chapter in the preview.

It may be worth starting off with 2 weeks for the first chapter or two, and then increasing the speed to one chapter per week.

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I second @Cathm2’s suggestion.

Easing in with the first two chapters each taking two weeks, then upping the pace to a chapter a week (depending on how everyone in the club is doing), would be my suggestion as well.

While there are some heavier dialogue pages based on the preview, they aren’t too bad, so I think once folks get used to the writing style, it should hopefully go fairly smoothly.

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I think nomination post for Hunter x Hunter has a typo regarding where to get the book. Both Amazon links are 1) the same 2) point to English edition.

I think these are the correct ones:
E-Book: Amazon
Physical: Amazon

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Good catch! I hadn’t clicked the Amazon links for that one (this is one I am skipping over. Though I will join for Cells At Work), just the Bookwalker for the preview!

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ah, didn’t notice, it points to the same link because I didn’t know, that amazon had different links for those different editions

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Thanks much for the answer!

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I have the thread up Hunter × Hunter 🐸 (Absolute Beginner Book Club) - Starting on the 27th of August

If you feel like I made a mistake somewhere or that I should change the schedule further, tell me and I’ll fix it

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Well, I don’t know if you would consider it a mistake, but it says ネトバレ instead of ネタバレ because the person who wrote the original made a typo and now everyone is copying that.

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