THIS IS A MANGA ONLY DISCUSSION POST. DO NOT DISCUSS ANYTHING BEYOND THIS CHAPTER.
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Thoughts on chapters 7-9:
These were some heavy chapters. As if the school sign wasn't enough, the solar eclipse and the gravestone have now just about proved definitively they are far in the future, that the school jumped to a time that the earth was on the verge of its death. Seeing your own name on a gravestone is cheesy, but that must be terrifying to be in a situation like that.
Not only this, but this means there is no radiation and that the outside world is fine to explore. And what this means is that the students, teachers, and even sister of Takeshi watched him die meaninglessly. He really collapsed due to sickness and everyone assumed it was radiation. They let him die.. that's brutal. Sakippe looked mentally crushed. This lack of radiation also makes the robbers escape into the wasteland make more sense. That was some nice foreshadowing.
The teachers all going insane is an example of my biggest problem with this story. Unless it was somehow driven by the eclipse driving them mad against their control that is. That being said, from past examples like Sekiya I don't think this is the case. We have the teachers live one night in this wasteland and see an eclipse and one passes out with insanity, one kills himself, and one slaughters the rest. This almost seems like a joke with such hysterical behavior. Of course they witnessed some horrible things too like children death and they were set on fire so perhaps this complaint is overblown, but I wish we saw the moments they were driven to insanity rather than just seeing them absolutely insane. I think the manga would be much better overall that way.
And then after that we got a seriously crushing scene of children burying their friends and teachers.. this manga doesn't hold anything back. They're learning to deal with loss and move on in a very forceful manner. I'll miss Hata honestly, seeing his goofy face was always a blast. Child graves and cigarette incense... Also, for Shou to leave Yu-chan with such a mentally broken down Sakippe, that may not have been the best decision.
Nishi gave a weird exposition dump on her meeting, who starts with a life story like that? Anyways, assuming she's not from their school, I'm curious as to where she came from. It should be meaningful because this means there may have been more places that were warped in time along with the elementary school. I'm a little surprised it wasn't the first thing that she mentioned, the whole interaction was odd. She had a good spear toss to get her crutch directly into the windshield.
I think Shou's a weird character since he's always been shown to be absurdly immature and unnaturally mature at different times. In this case he defended Nishi with his own life even though he told Sakippe earlier he wouldn't help her no matter what. However, action speaks louder than words and we've already seen him take responsibility for protecting Yu-chan and his approach to Nishi doesn't seem that different. When push comes to shove it seems he'll try his best to help. That seems to be the inner struggle of Shou, he knows how to be mature but he's emotionally immature and gets discouraged from life's cruelty such as the car running over the watch he got for his mom. I suppose this is partly a journey of learning to deal with life's cruelties.
I don't have enough proper speculation for the future so I'll hold off on predictions, but for Nishi and Shou to find an artificial cave is interesting. I wonder, if they take care of Wakahara, who the next antagonist will be. |