かがみの孤城 🪞 Week 10

Intermediate Book Club: Intermediate Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: TUGUMI・Next: おばちゃんたちのいるところ
かがみの孤城 Home Thread: かがみの孤城 (Kagami no Kojou) Book Club

Week 10

Start date: January 22th, 2022

This week we are reading to the end of the 八月 chapter!
End page (bunko): 259
End percentage (bunko): 63
End page (tanko): 187
End phrase: 髪を染めて現れたのだ。

Previous week: かがみの孤城 Week 9
Next week: かがみの孤城 🪞 Week 11

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter and any content in future chapters.
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number. If you are reading the ebook version mention the percentage.
  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
  • To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun! :durtle:

Read Aloud

We will be reading on Sundays at 10:30PM Japan time (reading the previous week’s content). Here is the time in your local time zone:

2022-01-30T13:30:00Z

Participants

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll.

  • I’m reading along (up to this week’s end page)
  • I’m already reading ahead (beyond this week’s end page)
  • I’ve read this book already and I’m here for discussion
  • I’m still reading the book but I haven’t yet reached this week’s starting page
  • I’m no longer reading the book

0 voters

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This week's spoiler

This week’s reading was pretty short.
I wasn’t expecting that Leon was from Hawaii. There were lots of hints that I never saw.
Then Ureshino being angry and leaving was not expected too but it does make sense. He was macked a lot. Tbh I never saw a problem with it before Ureshino said it ha ha. The author is pretty good. I’ve taken a huge interest in this book in the last few weeks. Surprisingly the search for the key is put in the background and now the reason why these children were chosen to play is back to square one. Maybe it’s just random. Seems like my dead game theory was wrong.

Sorry for the name I probably butchered again.

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Hooray we have a thread-title Emoji now!

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Yes, I felt that something was missing for our :mirror::european_castle: :books: club :smiley:

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This was a really enjoyable week. The utter shock over Subaru’s change in appearance, Ureshino finally bringing up the unspoken truth, and Leon’s big reveal made for an action-packed 24 pages. There have been hints about some of the other characters’ backstories, like Subaru mentioning “That Woman”, and Aki’s absolute refusal to acknowledge the fact that she nor the others attend school, that make me really interested to keep reading.

Some theories:

Perhaps Aki was some sort of bully? Perhaps the Sanada of her own school? Perhaps she stopped attending school due to a fall from grace when some other students got wise to her character or manipulation. Aki’s clearly charismatic, and she also has a worrisome mean streak that shines through when others don’t act the way she wants them to.

Is it possible that Subaru is a girl? There’s clearly something mysterious about him. For one thing, his brother and That Woman (Mother perhaps?) don’t seem to agree with the way he comports himself. The way they forced him to change his hair and pierce his ear seems outrageous. From the beginning, he and Kokoro have gotten along surprisingly well. And Aki decides she likes the way the de-colored hair looks to the extent that she decides to do it herself (to the best of my knowledge girls don’t typically use guys as fashion inspiration). Maybe this theory is way off the rails. We’ll see.

Also, I’ve gone back to the beginning to read along with the audiobook. It’s one of the best-produced audiobooks I’ve ever listened to and a really nice way to start some of my mornings. Until now I haven’t incorporated much active listening into my studying, and it might be too soon to say but I think this method has been helping my listening comprehension quite a bit. This book is also so nicely written that I really don’t mind rereading the same material a few weeks later.

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I haven’t fully reread this week’s section yet, but when does this happen? Are you referring to 兄ちゃんと、その彼女? Doesn’t that just mean “my brother and his girlfriend”?

I was thinking about doing this as well at some point. How do you listen to the audiobook? I’m a little bit worried about buying an audiobook that’s only available in a specific app, so I’m hoping it’s possible to get the audiobook in mp3 or some standard format. Do you know if that’s possible?

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Just reread those pages and it seems you’re right. That also changes how I viewed the conversation with Subaru a bit. Less mystery and more just a bully of an older brother. Thanks for pointing it out.

Unfortunately I haven’t found another way. The app is, at least, quite good from my experience so far.

Edit: Wait scratch that. It’s entirely downloadable from the audiobook.jp website in MP3 format after purchasing.

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Nice! And it’s playable in whatever program you want? No DRM check? If that’s the case I may buy it myself.

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It appears so!

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Yes, this seems to be a book full of little hints that might enable you to figure stuff out on your own probably only if you’re really, really smart :sweat_smile:.

Yes. I have mixed feelings about how that went down. He had it coming that he would be treated badly, but treating someone badly is still a bad thing to do. There are no winners in this situation…

Wow, that’s quite the theory :thinking:. I wasn’t quite getting that vibe from her (she did seem very supportive when Kokoro told her story) but on the other hand, I did think that she was very harsh towards Ureshino at the end there (the 行きなさいよ speech). Maybe she has a specific thing against boys?

Wow, that’s quite the theory :thinking:… I’m going to reserve judgment on that for now :smiley:

I’m also still reading along to the audio book and it’s pretty great indeed! My only gripe at the start was that Kokoro’s voice actor was being a bit too depressed (it started to grate a bit when I tried some repeat listening for practice), but that obviously gets better as Kokoro’s mood improves.

My aim is to spend about an hour reading and listening every week, but usually I can’t find the time (of course…) so I’m pretty far behind with the audio book, but like you say, it’s also kind of nice to revisit the previous chapters.

Quite. So this was the end of the first part, the “Wait and See Semester”, and that title seems quite apt because not a lot has happened :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: With regards to the search of the key, we’ve only heard that they went searching for it sometimes, but no details on how it went, and there was that one scene where Kokoro found something in the fireplace, but the book hasn’t come back to that at all

We did learn about the characters, but quite a few of them are still a mystery. I guess that’s what you get with so many protagonists.

I am hoping a little bit that the plot will pick up a bit more, going ahead. I saw that the months are going to fly by in the next few chapters and then in the second volume time is going to slow down again, in that last March chapter in particular (which is to be expected, I guess), so we’ll see how it goes.

And then there is also オオカミさま that we haven’t seen much of, and there haven’t been that many scenes with Kokoro’s parents, etc, etc. There’s just too much to pack into this book :smiley:

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I was really happy when she and Fuuka were supportive following Kokoro’s story. The first big red flag though was when Fuuka left to get water for Ureshino’s flowers, Aki said [あんなだから、きっと友達いないんだろうな] under her breath as Kokoro was leaving. I suppose that could also fit with an extreme dislike of boys.

I think I’ve given up on that theory since @seanblue pointed out my misunderstanding.

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The week 11 thread is live, but the last three comments in the home thread are mine, so I can’t post it there :smiley:. Maybe someone else can add a comment in the home thread? (Or is there a way to lift that restriction?)

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