I thought that it was very illustrative of the laid-back nature of this manga that that first chapter ends with いきなり、にぎやかな日. If that is their idea of a lively day…
No idea what is going on there
A small language question from that first chapter: on p. 12, when they’re talking about Kokone staying over, Alpha says:
ええ、せっかくこっち来たんだし、ゆっくりしてこうかと
I’m not sure what to make of the こうかと at the end there…
I was wondering about that too. In the end I took the らしいといえば to add extra emphasis to the second らしい. Something like “Speaking of typical, Alpha’s room was very typical (of her)”. But if anyone knows better, I’ll be curious to know!
I had a question about p. 26:
なにかコトッとはまった感じがして
I don’t know what to make of this sentence…
All in all, I personally didn’t find these chapters all that interesting. Lots of nice drawings of Alpha and Kokone, but that’s not really what I’m here for. The field with fish-kites and the dreamy atmosphere were nice, though.
Looking forward to the next two chapters though! Those are looking good from what I’ve seen leafing ahead.
I thought chapter 18 had a really nice atmosphere and I like the contrast between Kokone’s more urban (or urban wasteland) surroundings with Alpha’s wilder area.
I did find the grammar a bit harder in this chapter and after reading through it three times, I still have a few parts I could use help with:
p. 43: 自分が器用に「ロボットっぽくなく」ふるまうのがみえてしまいました
I still have trouble with 自分 sometimes. Is Kokone referring to herself here or to Alpha?
The way I read this sentence is that on p. 42 she said that she was always trying to be more human-like and here she says that at Alpha’s cafe she either discovered that she herself was skilful at behaving un-robot-like or she saw that Alpha was skilled at that. Or maybe I’m reading it completely wrong
p. 45: 私たちがどれほどものなのか
The infamous もの… is this もの as in 物, 者, or just part of a grammatical construction? (“To what extent are we things?” or “To what extent are we persons?” or something else?)
p. 46: でもそういうののってない
This is where she is reading the books about the Alpha series (which I thought was a nice detail). With the lack of kanji, it’s a bit hard to tell, but I took this to be 載る so that this is saying something along the lines of “such things are not published” (the books don’t contain information about such things).
I liked Alpha’s reaction to the letter なんかふかーく考えてるらしい indeed (maybe I’m also thinking too deeply about these sentences).
Chapter 19 and 20 were also nice. What’s with アヤセ‘s beard and moustache, though? They seem to be gone again in chapter 21 and for a minute I wasn’t sure if he was the same character…
So Alpha also remarks that アヤセ talks the same way as the old man. I’m not sure if we discussed this already in earlier threads, but is this speaking style specific to a certain region of Japan? (Or is something else implied here )
I just had one language question: p. 63 near the top: not sure what to make of 元フィールド.
うるせえやつだな is a pretty good description of Alpha in this chapter
Those were a couple of beautiful chapters closing off this volume.
The scene with the streetlights ただ光るためだけに光る was touching. And ミサゴ enthusiastically bounding over the trees when she thought she spotted タカヒロ was great. The little wrapped crab at the end was very cute.
I’ve come to think that what I also like so much about this manga is that there seems to be so much love between the characters. They all seem to care deeply about each other, each in their own way. Even the ミサゴ, as we saw in that last chapter