Spoilers should always be hidden using spoiler blur.
When discussing a specific section, please mention where you are in the book, ideally by chapter so people reading different versions have a clear point of reference.
Feel free to read ahead if it’s exciting, but please refrain from spoiling ahead of the appropriate week.
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I also messed up and read the entire chapter (I didn’t realize we were splitting chapter 3 between weeks) so I will also only be adding my thoughts next week What I will is say is that this was a really interesting chapter compared to the last one. There’s a lot of progress in the story right from the beginning.
If you are reading the 9-volume kindle version, it’s p. 81 / 5%.
I can’t believe we’re already at nearly 50% of the first volume, it feels just like the introduction, the stage is just set… Guess that’s why the physical books are so tiny, because they are short.
I don’t know yet if I will read the full chapter, but I already listened to the full audiobook chapter
But I’ll try to keep my comment only until the break point.
Will be appended as I progress
Kinda feeling sorry for the background characters. That poor woman losing her husband and father of a two-year-old …
We didn’t know a lot about Yamase but that makes me think even more what his life had been up until this point… He was also pretty young.
I mean he did sure have some odd experiences with him working at the morgue (?) - I wonder if that was mentioned for world-building/hint-dropping purposes or if that him working there is somehow more directly related to his death or if he was kind of ‘collateral damage’ for the whoever is in control here.
There seems to be a reason that Shion didn’t go the same way (in addition to Shion being protected by plot armour). Rashi’s もったいない comment seems to suggest that we’re dealing with some kind of chosen one situation, so we’ll probably learn more about this in the future.
<will append once I get to the part after Shion’s arrest>
Swearing loyalty to the city every morning would indeed feel like cutting off pieces of your heart even if you don’t mean it when you say it. Ouch.
The whole thing about death was more detailed and more sad than I expected. Yamase being rattled from what happened (and his experience with bodies in general) set the scene and Shion’s disassociation made it.
If only… what’s that detective’s name is, Rashi? Wasn’t some evil robot guy this could’ve been useful information for the investigation, but well. Here we are.
You’ve sent me on a google spree about the differences and now I know that no-one knows what they are
Dystopia vs Anti-utopia?
So among the comments that say it’s the same thing, there was one I actually liked:
A dystopia is shitty and there is no doubt about it.
An anti-utopia appears nice on the surface but is dark underneath.
But then someone else in a different place says:
Dystopias are a place where everything may seem great from one perspective, but really everything is awful.
I thought dystopia is when main cast is like working class in a shitty situation barely scraping for their outdated stream punk stuff, while the elites are being elite somewhere in their elite regions away from common folk.
Hmm, I think I choked on hypocrisy typing that out so I’ll shut up now.
Wow, for a moment there I fully believed that Rashi indeed thinks Shion is guilty. Like the reasoning he gave is real and not a “badly written” cover story.
To the important stuff - how is Nezumi making the rat robots do what he needs them to do??? And how seriously should I take his “these guys (cleaning from the park) wanted to help save you so I took them too”?
It’s interesting to me that both Nezumi and Shion got their tempers rising a bit in this one. It is a hard stress situation, but it’s especially worrying to see Shion go '“don’t speak like you know me” to the only person that can help him now. Or, well, to Nezumi get super angry about Shion taking things too lightly for him liking.
That’s a dangerous line there - from Shion’s POV we see his awareness of consequences. Jadedness takes time to overtake empathy but Nezumi it now.
(Anyway, I feel you, Shion. Explanations would be awesome right about now)
62% in. Guys. We might need to finish the entire series to get to a reasonable stopping point in the plot. This is totally still prologue.
When Yamase and Shion were talking I thought it was pretty silly to have a such a sensitive discussion in a place owned by a high surveillance state, not to mention that literally every piece of technology they use for work has a microphone attached to it lol. I thought that was just going to be glossed over for the sake of plot progression so I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was intentional on the author’s part.
@Kroki I also got confused on the cleaning robots wanting to help line since I didn’t think they were sentient but I wasn’t sure if my confusion had to do with my Japanese level being too low to properly understand
I also wasn’t sure if they were now real mice or robot mice. They sure seemed very realistic? Or are the robots in this universe just next level?
Despite the dire situation I had to chuckle when Rashi began quizzing Shion and Shion actually answered. So far I find Rashi a bit textbook almost comically evil with his phrases and snide remarks right out of the arch enemy textbook.
Shion asking soo many questions, I totally get it, your life gets (once again) overturned in a few hours, I’d be confused as hell too. And these are legit questions, like (how) is Nezumi related to the odd deaths, it does seem too coincidental?
And for someone who doesn’t like superfluous questions, Nezumi sure likes to sprinkle in some teasing remarks. Like one moment they evaded death by a hairstrand, still on the run from the evil overlords, the next moment they’re bantering about who’s taller and how they look naked.
I liked Yamase and how Shion’s working situation was described so seeing him dying was sad. And it was disgusting when the insect was crawling out of Yamase’s body at the neck.
Same here. Interesting though was what Yamase mentioned about his work on corpses. Though he only mentioned those legal work, maybe there is a department to beautify wounds as well to make it look like a different cause of death? In the case with the insect from the man in the park and Yamase it seems the wound on the neck is vanishing by itself, but maybe there are other situations where the officials are changing the corpses?
Me too. But then again it all looked like intentional to .. actually catch Nezumi. They knew Nezumi and Shion met 4 years ago and what if since then Shion’s whole environment was observed even more to see if Nezumi come back? But since he didn’t, they set up this trap first with the innocent man in the park and then Yamase?
It also felt like Rashi - aka the old man - and Nezumi had such situations more often from the way they were talking to each other. Feels like Kaito Kid and the inspectors in Detective Conan
At least it helps that the author is describing them as 小ネズミ and not just ネズミ as well
probably the other way around as we are in an anti-utopia
so more like the detective is the bad guy and Nezumi is the good guy. I also don’t want to think about this detective as being good
I just was reminded of Kaito Kid and the inspectors in the way that they often clash and the inspectors cannot catch Kaito Kid. (and with “old man” I was thinking of Heiji when he describes Kogoro so a few associations for me)
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What I will is say is that this was a really interesting chapter compared to the last one. There’s a lot of progress in the story right from the beginning.
from the park) wanted to help save you so I took them too”?
I guess that’s a mystery for future chapters.
so more like the detective is the bad guy and Nezumi is the good guy. I also don’t want to think about this detective as being good 
