@暁のルナ @pm215 How are you guys’ copies of トーマの心臓 laid out? Natively says what I imagine is the bunko version has 461 pages. If I add together all the main story pages of my three volume set, I got 306 pages. If I add in the unrelated other shorts also in my volumes, I get to 570 pages.
Do you guys have extra stuff in your volumes?
I have the 小学館文庫 edition (isbn 9784091910134), which is a single volume of 461 pages. The table of contents lists only トーマの心臓 starting on page 3, and an エッセイ on page 457.
On a quick flick through, I find what I guess to correspond to the starts of volumes 2 and 3 at pages 173 and 343 (they’re not labelled, it’s just that the preceding page is blank except for a little endnote illustration, and p173 on look like the black and white reprinting of an originally colour set of pages, like pages 3+ are).
The 試し読み on Shogakukan’s website matches my paper copy as far as it goes (16 pages), in case you wanted to check for page layout rearrangement.
Mine is Kindle, and almost identical to @pm215 but no essay.
I’ve been reading in sections that correspond to what’s on Mangadex, which also has 3 volumes (with chapters). I assume that’s how it was originally serialized?
What are the names of the shorts listed in your volume? Curious what I’m missing
Everything looks the same as mine from that sample, at least.
With the risk of spoilers, these are the first pages from vols. 2 and 3 for me:
Mine’s not broken down into chapters as far as I’ve seen, for whatever that’s worth. 
Volume 1: 千本めのピン and とってもしあわせモトちゃん
Volume 2: ビアンカ
Volume 3: 小夜の縫うゆかた、秋の旅、白い鳥になった少女、and みつくにの娘 (トーマの心臓 only takes up about half of this volume)
interesting, ビアンカ(1) | L24?? got its own book it seems, but didn’t find the others on here. (The <1> is referring to the collection it’s a part of, it’s not a series itself)
My impression was that it wasn’t quite that clearly defined – they made a bet about getting Yuri’s attention and interest, and to what extent it was just a game and to what extent it was serious (to them, to Yuri, to the various spectators) varies. If it’s only a game you don’t have to decide for yourself or admit to anybody else that this might imply anything about your sexuality. (Oscar says on p23 あれならさいしょはゲームだったんだろうさ, so he thinks that Tom only really fell in love with Yuri part way through, and probably that Ante never did in the first place.)
Mmm, not one but two characters with weird parental backgrounds. You’d think the boarding school would be an isolated environment where the boys interact with each other with no outside influences, but no.
He’s definitely the easiest character to like so far – Tom is very gloomy and tormented, Ante we don’t have enough of his internal motivations yet so he seems rather odd, Erik I sympathise with but he’s very short tempered. Personally Oscar made me think of Oscar Wilde, especially the way he’s first introduced to us, with long floppy hair, sitting on a window ledge in dressing gown and slippers and smoking.
The other thing in the section that I found odd is in the dinner fight that the teaching staff are all in the same dining room, but it’s Oscar who breaks up the fight and sends everybody off to bed without dinner. We learn later that he’s some kind of prefect for the middle school dorm, but half the participants in this fight are high school students, I think.
(I liked the little between-panel Oscar reactions on p67.)
Chapter 3 done… Some of the sentences in this are really killing me - between vocab that’s easy to overlook, occasional grammar, speaker & context identification. Even setting aside that I wasn’t feeling well for a portion of it, I’ve been having to check the translation constantly - either bc I just didn’t get something, or bc I misinterpreted it.
It’s hard to even know what to say with a 90 pg chapters 
but here’s some out of order thoughts:
My main thought is it’s too bad Oscar doesn’t like Erik - they seem like they’d make a really good couple (yes I’m this チョロい).
This scene where Erik almost fell off, and Oscar saved and kissed him was so sweet 
I guess all these kids are both situationally(?) homosexual and into girls. The whole “you can only leave school on Saturdays, with permission” thing is pretty intense! That’s definitely different from any of the private schools in yuri or Class S… Tho 白い部屋のふたり 山岸凉子作品集3 | L21 (set in France) is similar - so maybe it’s a Europe thing
Unsurprisingly, the upper classmen were super predatory. Also that scene with the one chasing the thief kid - yeah I’d probably be traumatized too.
I was a bit confused what happened here… If I got it right, it’s: Teacher struck Erik, who caught the lash, and was going to retaliate, but Juli held him back? The adults at this school really seem pretty terrible all around.
There’s a scene in マリア様がみてる 1 | L30 where Yumi is asked to hold out her hand, palm faced up - and she panics, thinking of this kind of thing. Thankfully it’s nothing of the sort, it’s Sachiko giving her candy, but it’s a very telling scene in many ways
I guess タイが曲がってる isn’t just a girls’ thing. Accompanied with a murder threat… How romantic . (In case anyone’s unfamiliar fixing tie = expressing romantic/S relationship interest is a yuri trope that マリみて solidified, and it’s referenced or parodied by many series)
I gather Juli was the one having the dream, but the way it transitioned to Erik was beautiful
The way Juli disarmed this attack was so 格好いい！ But looks like it’s gonna cause him, Oscar, and Erik some trouble. Poor Oscar’s ship is never gonna sail like this
I really wanna know what’s up with this whole monitoring/protecting Juli thing… From who/what??
I can’t believe that it’s only the 38% mark now… So much has happened!!
I’ve started, but I’m not very far in. 
Sorry for my slowness, guys; work’s been really busy, and I’ll be traveling for the next week anyway. Plus,
I can never identify what it is that gets me with some of these manga; こいものがたり is the same where they shouldn’t be difficult reads purely from a vocabulary/grammar standpoint, but I have to really concentrate else I have an unusual amount of difficulty parsing what’s going on. Maybe there’s a lack of contextual subject, and that’s what’s getting me?
That’s probably another reason - they pack a lot into a small amount of time with these older works, I’ve noticed.
That’s a large part of why I’m checking the translation - so I can identify what I’m not getting. But yeah it feels so random at times.
Punctuation beyond line breaks would go a long way… But this one also will like change subject mid-sentence sometimes
One of my favorite features - never a dull moment!
I read トーマの心臓 once a long time ago and have meant to re-read it, but got stuck in the middle.
I find this manga hard to read too. It doesn’t seem like it should be, but it is. I haven’t really been able to pinpoint why. The large amount of hiragana definitely doesn’t help (although I wouldn’t want to look at lots of kanji in my tiny print edition) but that can’t be the only reason.
But, I’m not a strong manga reader to begin with, and it can be hard to tell whether I’m having trouble with a certain manga because I suck at manga, or if it’s actually a difficult one.
I do want to get to this one eventually, but I think I’m glad I resisted the temptation for now based on all of your comments.
I am also struggling with こいものがたり. I’m currently reading Nana which hovers around 26-27 and BokuYaba which is 23-24 and both of them are significantly easier for me to read. I’m also willing to throw in Dandadan (25-26) as easier too. My original thought was the introspection in こいものがたり, but BokuYaba has a lot of introspection (although it’s always done by the same character). I guess my conclusion is sometimes manga be hard. 
I’ll have to pay more attention this week to see what I struggle with there… I know a large part is speech style - this degree of terse, rough guys’ speech is a very uncommon feature in stuff I read. Week 2 definitely felt a lot better than week 1 though. Where as w/ トーマの心臓 I don’t feel like that’s getting any better
You may be on to something here… Something about its particular style of introspection. As an aside, I think Natively levels probably skew heavily on vocab for difficulty
よく言えないかも。。。I have a feeling the thing that gets the most weight with grading/perceived difficulty in general is vocabulary, and so when something has other difficult aspects, they tend to fly under the radar a bit. So something may be “easy to read”, in the sense of not having to devote a lot of time and energy to lookups, but still hard to understand; and other things may be easy to understand, but “hard to read”, bc of all the vocab. In terms of comprehension, こいものがたり feels similar to ~L25-27 things I’ve read - though it’s far, far easier in terms of vocab.
Yeah that’s absolutely been a challenge for me here - both for unfamiliar words, and a few times with “this could be multiple words, and I can’t figure out which it is”. Definitely increases the cognitive load, and I’m more likely to miss things I might otherwise get the first time around
No worries, I’m travelling this week and didn’t bring this book, so I’m still only at page 82 and won’t be able to read any more until this weekend.
What are you using to define chapter boundaries?
Heart of Thomas - MangaDex - which matches with where the in btwn images are in my edition iirc. The scans there are from the 1995 single bunko version
Chapter 4 - finished the next 91 pg chapter - tho this one didn’t have the in-btwn images, so I started reading further on.
Anyway lots of revelations and developments plus tragedy and kissing to move the plot along. Everyone is really kinda nuts, and seriously the adults in this are so weird and disappointing. Yet again I find myself thinking this isn’t a very realistic portrayal of what happens when someone - especially a parent - dies. Also, even without Erik’s mother complex that’s such a hard thing to go through - definitely feel bad for him.
It’s interesting that Oscar isn’t totally clueless about the situation with the headmaster, even though he doesn’t know the whole story. I wonder what his trump card is. Also was really interesting to see Juli’s home environment and racist grandma. Seeing Erik tell her to fuck off was definitely satisfying too! And we got more of a hint of where Yuri’s scar comes from - seemingly a one night stand with a sketchy older guy. I wonder if anything will happen overnight.
And Yuli finally admitted his feelings for Tom to himself!! Since Erik saw through them so clearly. Also seriously fuck Ante. He’s probably the only character I have really little sympathy in all this, given how willing he is to keep messing with people’s lives, and how little he cares about the consequences, just for the sake of an unrequited crush. Not to mention breaking his promise to Erik last(?) chapter. (Good character from a writing perspective though)
The language in this still varies btwn “this is easy normal reading” and “wtf does this even mean??” for me. I’ve definitely been relying on translation a lot (probably more than I should), to see what I’m missing. It’s almost like I should take notes or something. If I was reading less other things/had more patience, I’d probably read slower and in smaller chunks. Curious if I’ll understand it better on a reread someday.
I’m currently at p150, fwiw.
(this is about the scene on p105-106)
More or less – the teacher is going to cane Erik on the hand, but instead Erik grabs the cane from him before he can do so. Erik is about to strike back, but Juri grabs him to prevent this, getting a cut on his forehead in the process.
For early 1970s I dunno about Germany but I think in the UK corporal punishment for this kind of “disciplinary” situation would not have been uncommon. In-story Erik only doesn’t expect it because he’s been home schooled up til now. So I don’t defend the teacher’s actions here but I don’t think it’s intended to portray him as particularly sadistic or out of line with typical private school teacher norms: the scene is more about Erik and Juli’s actions.
Wikipedia links to an old 1987 news article reporting a survey of Kobe junior high school teachers which found that 60% of them thought corporal punishment was sometimes necessary – and this at a time when it was nominally illegal…
Thx for confirming & clarifying
I understood that. I’m just also judging him and the other adults from my own perspective
I’m assuming things have improved since then. Alarmingly only 6 states in my country completely outlaw it (my state is one, but even then it still occurs in some private schools). All the others allow it in private schools, and about 15 or so allow it in public and private, as of 2015
