時をかける少女: Week 13 Discussion (Chapters 22 and 23 [END])

I liked them, they were pretty weird and entertaining despite being really short. I wasn’t bored, but I don’t really get bored so that doesn’t mean much

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Just reporting in that I did finish this weekend! Even if the plot was a little…odd…it felt awesome to finally complete my first novel! Yay! \o/

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I finished this last week, but just thought I’d add a heartbreaking realisation. Spoilers for the end.

okay so Kuzuo’s not-parents never had kids which is sad but they won’t remember him anyway. However, Kazuko kinda remembered something was missing at the end. I wonder if the now-childless parents feel the same.

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Okay. Finished this book yesterday. I found it rather disappointing.

I don’t see what people found so incredible in it. After I read it, I feel like the author wanted to avoid any form of conflict, which kills the story. I feel like the whole thing could have been 30 pages long without sacrificing much.

I found the characters empty, and I think that if I wanted to, I could just assign their respective personalities two word descriptions without losing anything.

The whole thing is in my opinion an avoidable quest without any serious obstacles and with a very unsatisfying payoff. When it ends, the author plunges into abysses of exposition just to lengthen the story, only to finish with a misguided and useless romantic revelation that sputters because of its egregious context.

I think a lot in the story could have been simply dropped without consequence. 福島先生’s whole part? Out. 吾郎 as a whole? Raus. Replace him by 一夫 anyway, he’s here for that. Oh wait, his character’s being rewritten.

Also, the plot twist in this story miserably chokes at it’s very inception, because absolutely nothing announces it. I mean yeah, that character can kinda be ケン, because nothing says otherwise. Yeah, but nothing could lead tou anywhere close to predicting it, and that’s what makes a plot twist fun! Also, really? It’s the laziest twist I’ve ever seen!

In regard to its clutter, poor pacing, lack of stakes, dull characters, bad revelations and general uneventfulness, I think I wouldn’t have enjoyed this story in any language. However, the fact that I had to read it in japanese, that I couldn’t just take a few hours to read it and then never open it again, that I had to stretch this over two weeks to finish it, really, in my opinion, made it way worse.

Sorry for the strong opinion, but I had to say this.

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Well, you are pretty much agreeing with everyone in this thread, me included. :slight_smile:
I also wonder why it has such a high reputation, but I assume that we just aren’t the expected target audience. (It doesn’t help that it was written in the 60s either)

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I kind of liked it, actually

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Funny enough, the chapter or two of explanations were my favorite by far. Frankly a book exploring that would have been far more interesting…but I still maintain it’s a good book for this level of bookclub, content-wise.

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Everyone except @sigolino. :stuck_out_tongue:


@algorev We actually voted from 1-5 on how people liked it. Most people gave it a 3/5. I gave it a 2/5.

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Welp, since Wanikani isn’t letting me login for some reason, I’m just gonna go ahead and reply by email to give it a 1. Gosh was this one unenjoyable.

—元のメッセージ—
オン 2019年4月29日 3:29, seanblue via WaniKani Community < wanikani_community@discoursemail.com > は書きました。

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I think it partly depends on your expectations going in. I knew nothing about the book or movie and purely wanted to use it for reading practice, so I wasn’t particularly disappointed with all the plot issues. Those were more meh than anything. But I’m not going to judge it the same way I’d judge a new release from one of my favorite authors.

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Just finished this today–like a lot of people here, it’s my first “real” Japanese book I finished (prior to this, I finished にゃんにゃん探偵団, which I wouldn’t count as a “real” book.)

It’s been a fun experience overall. I don’t disagree that the story wasn’t particularly amazing, but I thought it was fine, especially for a story almost 60 years ago written for middle schoolers.

It was a story of a normal person’s life getting messed with by a sci-fi trope, and, pretty realistic I would say, just wishing it would go away, heh. If you went in thinking it was going to be some life-changing story, you would come away disappointed no doubt, but I think that’s more on you than the story.

In any case, I enjoyed it, and it definitely improved my reading abilities. Over the course of the book I was able to go from reading one chapter a day to easily getting through two by the last half of the book.

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Months after all you guys, but finished!

I’d love to have that true completionist feel myself but there are so many other exciting things to read! So I’ll try and squash that nagging voice :sweat_smile:

I didn’t think so poorly of the book. I guess I’m more forgiving of it for being old and probably some sort of a pathbreaker for that time. Maybe a little bit because its sort of sweet and naive. A little bit because I did feel a sense of urgency and excitement in some scenes. And a lot because the bit where the teacher is telling them about certain recorded unexplained phenomenon and the bit where Kazuo is describing the world where he came from were really fun (empowering even) for me because I couldn’t have imagined reading and understanding those sort of things in any language but English.

I loved the movie when i first saw it. Really loved it. When i found out that it was based on a book (back when I hadn’t even thought of trying to learn Japanese), I’d wanted to read it. To think that I now have is something I feel I should celebrate too! So happy :grin::grin: I hope I’m able to read along with all you guys next time!

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