This is the thread for chapter 13, 第三部：エピローグ, a part of the かがみの孤城 book club.
As this is a read at your own pace club, please be sure to have your discussions in the correct thread, and don’t discuss anything that has not occurred by the of the chapter in this thread. As always, please also be considerate about spoilers and put anything that feels like a spoiler behind spoiler tags or in a drop down.
To be completely honest, this novel was unremarkable to me that I forgot whatever comment I promised to make. Generally, I liked the beginning better than the end. I found it really repetitive and a slog to get through, which at first I didn’t mind as much because a. I thought it would ease up not get worse and b. I felt initially it added to the psychology of kokoro. But if anything I felt it get worse and was at its worst at the ending climax.
The final twist of them being from different times really stretched my suspension of disbelief. I just can’t accept that they wouldn’t have realized that. It must have come up - in fact it does multiple times, but its just handwaved away. The whole narrative rest on them not realizing this, which I don’t buy. which was really annoying to me.
I knew this twist was coming because early on someone in the wanikani book thread guessed it, and once the seed has been planted in your mind its obvious. But I think even without it, the reveal would have annoyed me.
I rated it 3 stars but looking back maybe my feelings are more in the 2 star range now.
the anime is probably better for having necessarily streamlined the story, though idc enoguh to watch it.
Yeah, that made me go crazy and I am very confused as to how other people can look past that. Even their language alone must’ve been a giveaway. The oldest guy must have sounded very oldschool to the youngest one.
Also I can’t remember the book that well, but from what I remembered the ending also felt kind of pointless in regards to every character besides the ponytail girl, Kokoro and the guy with the sister. It felt like the other character’s lifes didn’t really change that much?
While reading the book I was also thinking about what could be the twist and how would it be possible that they could help each other though not really meeting is other. I liked the idea of parallel words when Masamune thought of this, but as this turned out to be wrong, I also thought of the different times.
I was a bit surprised by the huge time frame from about 40 years from the oldest Subaru to the younges Ureshino. Having this huge difference in their ages I also wondered why they did not recognize it. Like the slang words or their clothes. Sometimes we got Kokoro to think that something was off, but she could not point to it. Maybe so much focused on her self and her life that she was not able to recognize this.
I liked the end how everything was connected. It all made sense (except for them not to recognized something more earlier) and I liked that Fuuka was connected to everyone. A little bit sad though that nobody (?) remembered.
Overall I liked the beginning of the story and the end. The middle part was really hard for me to keep up. The pace was too slow.
I did watch the anime to challenge myself on how much I would comprehend and also I was curious about it. The anime itself was nice to watch. As mentioned in another thread the anime was really high-paced, which makes sense with having a book with so many pages, but I was still surprised as reading through the middle part took me too long.
Book finished!
Ok I did enjoy how everything came together in the end and seeing everyone’s povs! I guessed at some point that Aki would be the 喜多島先生 character but it was still really heartwarming to see her ending of rising beyond her circumstances and helping other kids 
I agree that the timeline thing requires a bit of suspension of disbelief but oh well 
I think this book could also have used some stricter editing, because I think the pacing would have been much better if the other POVs were spread out throughout the book and we had less of Kokoro, I really was left wondering why Kokoro was the viewpoint character at all because the other characters seemed much more interesting!
I might watch the movie and see if it’s better paced Overall despite my quibbles I think it had some good stuff in it so I still enjoyed reading it, but I think it def. requires some patience to get through like 400 pages before the book gets good
It was funny reading this book next to the wanikani book club (I read it after they finished the book, I just went through their threads while I was reading myself) where @Naphthalene suspected the twist really early on and from then on I just worked through the pages already being aware that they are in different time lines and I guess that makes it feel even more slower 
I enjoyed the book overall, but yeah, it did make it extra painful. And at the same time I kept hoping it was all just a red herring, considering that surely they must have told each other something that gave it away. One of them even guess parallel universes at some point. You’re almost there!
I remember that at some point, they had dropped so many hints that I could almost guess which years they were from
I thought of it super early and dismissed it bc of all the reasons they’d realize it. And then in the last chapter everyone is like “oh I noticed it all, I just thought, ‘oh strange’”. 
I really enjoyed the last 3 chapters, except for this particular detail.
I spend the rest of the book hoping you were wrong because to me it’s way too annoying to suspend all my disbelief here and just accept that they didn’t figure that one out for such a long time. 
I am fine with doing so if a book doesn’t take itself too serious, but this one took itself very serious and then to have such a glaring plot hole (for the lack of a better expression, I just can’t think of any situation in which teenagers wouldn’t figure that out by themselves by, like, a few days), it just makes me really dislike the whole thing. And then even write in a teen who brings a game console or another one brings a walkman? 
I mean, obviously the author did it to foreshadow, but all her foreshadowing just make it even more unbelievable that they didn’t figure that one out. Maybe if she kept it a bit more subtle and have it less obvious or if the timeline would’ve been smaller and not several months of hanging out together, it would’ve hit a bit harder.
But I also don’t really enjoy books that build up to a big plot twist in general, so this book never had a chance I guess.
