[Slow Reading] Seabed, Part 4 (A town surrounded by mountains)
There will be spoilers contained within. Read at your own risk.
Welcome back to our slow read of Seabed. In the last scene, we left Takako and Sachiko as they clambered up to the roof of their school, with Takako showing off her (somewhat suspicious) skills at lockpicking.
But first, since I've started a small tradition of wasting time talking about the UI and such before we start, let's have a chat about the gallery. Like most visual novels, Seabed's gallery allows you to look over the CGs you've seen in the course of the story. So, right now, ours is pretty empty. The only CG we've seen so far is the one of Sachiko lying in bed.
But, it's not the only one we can view in the gallery. Hidden right at the end is this:
 |
| A reward for the inquisitive |
I do like that there's a little bonus picture there from the start of the game, for anybody silly enough to click through five pages of NO IMAGE to find it. Since it's not a part of the main story, I won't bother analysing it like I do everything else. What I will say is that there are 93 slots for CGs, of which we have filled two. Strap in, because we're probably going to be doing this for a while.
Back to the story. We're greeted by a white background -- likely a representation of blinding sunlight -- and the sound of the wind. Sachiko remains our narrator. She describes the wind caressing her hair, but she's unable to stand the brightness -- an interesting sentiment, to be sure. 'Caressing', as a word, carries connotations of love, whether familial or romantic. It's a very intimate way of being touched -- which, I suppose, is appropriate, because if you wanted to get closer to the wind and the sky, going to the top of a roof is a good way to do it. To be honest, I would be surprised if the wind itself doesn't become a more major theme, since the sea and the sky are linked symbolically in many cultures, and the wind contributes to the formation of the waves. Sachiko being unable to stand the light might be a comment on her own love of gloomy places, the fact that her eyes are bad (at least, enough that she needs glasses), or something deeper. Light and darkness, by themselves, are already powerful themes that seem to be being tapped from time to time, so I'll have to keep a closer eye on them.
As Sachiko's own eyes adjust, we get treated to a CG -- and music! Honest-to-goodness, non-distorted music! After the less-than-friendly welcome the game has given my ears so far, it's honestly a relief. The song, as best I can describe it, is... the kind of song you might hear in the elevator of a tropical hotel. It definitely brings to mind sunny places, and the beach. In fact, I would probably compare this song to the Costa Del Sol theme from Final Fantasy VII. It does a good job of relaxing the reader (as well as being a break from the entirely silent scene we just read).
That's Takako right there, who we haven't 'officially' seen apart from the title screen. So that's the 'skimpy' uniform, huh? Seems pretty standard to me, unless that skirt cuts off exactly where it does in the CG. Still, it's lovely to see Takako smiling and carefree, since when we left her in the present, she was anything but. She has a much sharper kind of feel to her than pictures of Sachiko that we've seen, though -- perhaps to match her tongue.
One interesting thing I'd like to note is her hair colour. Obviously it's very green, to which it's very easy to shrug and say 'well, that's anime hair for you', but part of this series is that I have to overanalyse everything, and this is no exception. In particular, that specific shade of green reminds me very much of seaweed -- an image that's complimented by the way her hair is shaped and flows. I've genuinely seen pictures of seaweed fronds that look very much like it. The question is whether that's an interesting design tidbit, or it means something -- perhaps a testament to her ability to survive or belong underwater, whatever 'underwater' will eventually mean. Also worth noting is the colour composition of the piece in general -- it's very strongly biased towards green, blue and white, which are all colours associated with the ocean (white being the foam caps of waves).
The very first thing that Sachiko sees when she opens her eyes is Takako looking around the roof. Notably, she doesn't mention doing that herself -- she's focused more on Takako. The fact that Takako herself is 'looking around' is odd, though. If she's been to the school roof before to scout it out as a quiet place, why does she need to look around? To be fair, she might just be enjoying the view -- or she might have just assumed she could get up there and dragged Sachiko along without checking.
Takako immediately seeks Sachiko's opinion on the new spot -- like a puppy that wants praising. Sachiko seems reluctant to feed her ego -- "It's not bad, that much I can give you". But then immediate reverts to worrying about whether anyone else will come.
Now, if I had to write a yuri-themed romantic moment based on this, Sachiko would return to the roof at some later stage and once again look around to make sure nobody was coming -- not because she prefers to be away from other people, or because she's there illegitimately, but because the roof has changed from 'a good spot to read' into 'a important place where I spent time with somebody I love' in her mind, and she hopes that it will remain private. Of course, I'm not yet super sure how in-keeping that would be with her personality, but as a fanfic writer, that's probably where I would take it.
"I moved to the deeper end of the roof, closer to the area behind campus" -- here, even though Takako has dragged her to a new and brighter place, Sachiko instinctively moves back towards a place that is darker and more familiar to her before she continues reading. Of course, we have the use of the word deeper here; I almost feel like Sachiko is a deep sea creature herself, and removing her from her natural habitat, while well-intentioned, is a potentially destructive action -- which might relate back to Takako being unable to really help either the plants or the goldfish.
From their perch atop the roof, the sea is visible. A line here -- "the blue sky extended from one edge of the sea to the next" -- is very interesting on religious grounds. The sea and the sky are often linked together, especially in terms of western religion -- in Christianity's book of Genesis, for example, the sky is considered a partition between two bodies of water, one above and one below. Kind of like a sea-sky-sea sandwich. Together with the mountains, we may also be seeing the land, sea and sky set of themes.
Well, hey! It's our first traditional sprite! Her hair still kinda looks like seaweed or kelp at the ends... Again, lots of blues, greens and whites in this image, even apart from Takako herself. (Whenever I think green-hair school uniform, I always get reminded of Mion/Shion from Higurashi first...)
The effect this has on me, as a reader, is hard to quantify, but I feel... vaguely reassured? So far, the game has made a point of always being in first person, either not showing characters or showing them exclusively in CG, with dark, blurred backgrounds and somewhat disconcerting soundtracks. Here, with a more bright setting and a relaxing BGM, the appearance of a sprite calms me down even more, since I feel like sprites the the more 'usual' method when it comes to VNs. It's more familiar, and thus more comfortable.
Takako, after a brief glance at the sports field, begins to tell Sachiko a story about the soft earth in front of the pitcher's mound. So far, Takako does actually seem like the type to be really interested in odd or weird stories, since she also went out of her way to look for Sachiko's 'psychic' cousin. Well, I suppose this is a mystery themed VN, after all, and that would hardly be a rare character trait for a mystery novel protagonist.
Sachiko seems less than enthused -- although her narration says that Takako is about to start a 'really amusing' story, she dives back into her book anyway, so she's almost certainly being sarcastic.
"We all tried digging up that ground yesterday. What do you think we found?" Again, Takako is quietly defining 'us' as her and her classmates, with Sachiko being 'you', the odd one out.
Apparently, the cache was... a huge amount of milk cartons? The characters seem a little bemused, and to be honest, so am I. This is a little bit out of left field (haha, baseball puns!) Sachiko doesn't seem to be a fan of milk herself -- "who buried all that crap there?" -- so maybe she's got Edward Elric syndrome, and the reason Takako seems so tall is because Sachiko herself is a smol little bean who has yet to sprout. "You can just flush it down the toilet or something. Why go through all the trouble of burying it?" While this seems like an offhand comment, you could say it's a nod to the purifying power of water, as opposed to burying a problem only to have it resurface later.
(Something I remembered upon talking about this is alchemy. Originally, one of the things alchemists were looking for was a universal solvent, which doesn't exist. But among the solvents that do exist, water itself is supposedly a pretty good fit.)
Takako thinks it's a trap, because it would be funny for somebody to fall in and be 'covered in white goop'. Stay classy, Takako. (A little thought says that the milk is almost certainly past its expiration date, and anybody who's had to deal with properly spoiled milk will know the experience is not pleasant, and the goop becomes more yellow than white. Maybe that hints at a weakness in properly considering the future/ the effects of aging on Takako's part.)
As they discuss the hypotheticals, Takako casually drops 'Sachi' as a nickname. Plainly they're on pretty familiar terms, although we might have assumed that already. Sachi doesn't protest, instead musing on the possibility of a 'ritual to express one's hatred of milk.' That definitely sounds like projecting to me.
Beshrew thee, milk, harbinger of woe," is Takako's response. That's some interesting vocab for a schoolgirl to drop -- I knew roughly what it meant, but felt obliged to crack open a dictionary to check.
The discussion is interrupted by a 'clamour' of students from the athletics ground. Sachiko really does seem to like her peace and quiet. ('Clamour of students' feels like it would be a pretty sweet group noun, like a murder of crows).
"Ah, our class is using the basketball hoop. Don't you want to play with us there sometime?" Takako asks this without Sachiko actually remarking on the noise -- evidently, she's paying close attention to her friend and what she's thinking about. But again, there's that use of the alienating 'us', even as she makes a friendly invitation.
Sachiko begs off, because she doesn't like getting sweaty or dirtying her clothes. Usually when I hear that, it corresponds to characters who are meant to come off as doll-like. Strongly correlates with goth-loli fashion in anime as well, at least in my jumbled recollections.
Takako offers a an alternative exercise venue, but Sachi uses it to suggest hide and seek, apparently the only game she's willing to play -- because it's an excuse to retreat back to somewhere dark and gloomy, Takako seems to think. To be sure, she's already showed hints of doing that by sitting closest to her old spot, so there's probably something there.
Then -- after one and a half scenes of Sachiko doing nothing but reading -- Takako finally asks what she's reading. It seems to be a little late into proceedings for that kind of thing, but whatever, I suppose. Apparently, it's something old, and that's typical of Sachi's reading habits -- Takako remark that she doesn't go for recent best-sellers. Again, this feeds into the fixation with the past that seems to be a theme all of its own so far -- in the flashbacks, the recollections, the way Sachiko seems to want to slide back to where she was even though (to the reader, at least) the roof seems like a much more pleasant place.
Sachiko then goes on to talk about her mother's family home, which had a shelf full of old books that one day disappeared. Once they were gone, Sachiko wanted to read them even more badly, but couldn't remember the titles or the authors -- they've been lost to her, effectively. The message might well be that, even if you look back fondly at the past, you can never get back the things you had. What's lost is lost -- this ties into the 'grieving' theory I discussed earlier, as well as Takako's goldfish.
There's a funny little part here where Takako asks Sachiko -- an old friend, whose interest in reading was presumably already known to her -- what types of books she likes. That, uh... seems like the kind of thing you should already know, Tako. Obviously it's for the reader's benefit, but it does make our seaweed girl seem just a little bit dense. Sachiko's first thought is "The kind of thing that makes you want to keep reading even if something had gotten into your eye", but she disregards this answer as too vague... even though Takako responds with exactly that when the question is reversed! Maybe these two goofballs are more alike than I figured.
The conversation returns to what Sachiko enjoys about old books. The two agree that it's their atmosphere, and Takako (I think -- it's still sometimes difficult to tell who's saying what) says something interesting on the matter -- "the world they take place in is different enough from ours to be fresh." To me, that sounds very much like a semi-famous literary quote, "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there." It's a fairly interesting perspective to take, since the world of the past is fundamentally unreachable in physical terms, and thus we can consider it to be as fantastic as any wonderland or fairy world, only observable in the way it affects the world we currently live in -- again tying into Takako's tendency to seek what is mysterious and fantastic. But the idea that the present world isn't 'fresh' also implies some level of ennui, a desire to see and experience new things that isn't being fulfilled by school life, and serves to contrast the way that Sachiko consistently returns to the familiar and the well-worn.
But then she goes on to say that she feels "they had more things back then [...] like politics and economics and movies and music, I guess.", attributing the proliferation of different ideas to the chaos that existed in the past. While Sachiko rebuffs this with a fairly mature perspective -- "I'd say the world is just as chaotic right now. We probably just don't know it because we're still children" -- Takako's sentiment still acts a huge hint, to me at least, that loss is going to be one of the themes that defines her. As time goes on, things die or are destroyed, and therefore there is 'less' remaining in the world; or, to put it another way, as time passes, the world itself is diminishing in lustre and content. Sachiko's more mature perspective is that the amount of things in the world remains roughly the same -- that new is replacing old, jumbling together to make the world just as chaotic as it was. But it seems like Takako gets hung up on the idea of what is gone, just like how she never got another goldfish after Bell died; her worldview seems so preoccupied with the past and what's been lost that she fails to acknowledge regrowth or rebirth as a possibility.
Meanwhile, despite not sharing Takako's view that the world is more diminished in the present, Sachiko does agree that she's curious about the world of the past, and that she loved listening to stories from her grandparents because "...Even if I listened to that song now, I wouldn't be feeling the same things my grandparents did in their time."
For me, this touches on a very important (if sometimes frustrating) thing: the role of context in storytelling and how the reader reacts. It's something that the writer can't control or even really predict outside of a very limited time span, but the state the reader is in when they first receive a story can have a profound impact on how they view it.
My own experience with this actually comes from an anime, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso (or, Your Lie in April), which I ran across by complete chance. I'm not the biggest fan of anime; I only ever watch when the mood takes me, maybe once or twice a year, and that mood usually evaporates before I've finished a season. But Your Lie in April really resonated with me because, at the time, I wasn't writing, and hadn't been writing for two or three years. I've written since I was a child, at whatever quality -- at first for fun, and then to improve, and then it became a part of my identity that I couldn't just discard, even if life had intervened. At that time, I had genuinely lost the spark to create fiction; I felt like a failure, because I had given up or been used up, and would never grow into whatever little potential I had possessed. Your Lie in April, without being too spoilery, is about a pianist who has stopped playing the piano, but who manages to reassert himself and reignite his passion for, and talent in, his craft; as a result, I ended up connecting very deeply with the character emotionally, perhaps to the point where I felt I myself was not beyond hope. Of course, I didn't magically regain the ability to write because I had watched an anime, but I feel that -- on some level -- if I hadn't seen it, I might not have later found the resolve to drag myself along the road of recovery. I still haven't seen the last episode, because I know for a fact that it would break my heart.
Things like that are rare cases -- most of us will not react that strongly to every story or media we happen across -- but they still happen. Context can work a kind of magic that even passion and craft have difficulty matching.
Well, anyway, that's enough of that tangent. After Takako again shows off her coarse side by likening Sachiko's hobbies to rotten milk, we find out that Sachiko occasionally lends books to her. Takako seems a bit sketchy about how much she's actually read of it -- maybe half, maybe a quarter. Apart from the dates that stuck in her head in the flashback, it seems like Takako is really sketchy with details -- more of a big picture girl, I suppose.
Eventually, Takako 'withdraws her face' from Sachiko's -- exactly how close were they sitting? -- and looks up to the sky, to see something flying.
It's a black kite, as Sachiko helpfully informs us (after Takako somehow potholes herself into thinking somebody is flying a kite). It's a bird of prey that's fairly common in Southern Asia, but also in various other places, and has attracted a few less than savoury names as a result of its fondness for carrion. Takako wonders whether it's going to fly over the mountain, and uses that to initiate another Takako-Brand tangent on a dream she recently had, where she went beyond the mountains surrounding the town and all she found was an endless marsh.
Sachiko puts it down to Takako never having been outside the town, even though... she has? She definitely mentioned moving from the countryside to the town in her flashback to when she first met Sachiko, although she might have forgotten about that. But, knowing that we're in a mystery novel, it's hard not to at least acknowledge that 'an endless marsh outside the mountains' would be a lovely opportunity for a closed circle setting. Takako also explicitly refers to the mountains as being like "prison walls holding us inside". So, yeah, she definitely has a level on ennui at her current location and lifestyle, at the very least.
Sachiko gives her a little encouragement, in her own way -- "Go wherever you want once you grow up" -- and Takako's first response is to say "Let's go overseas." She doesn't even seem to consider the idea of a future that doesn't involve Sachiko, and even tells her that she's coming too. It's quite sweet, in a way, although also very forceful and a little presumptuous, since Sachiko doesn't seem all that sold on the idea -- although it seems like she's just being a little coy:
"I know you actually want to go."
"And why would you think that?"
"Well, I've known you for a long time."
...a sentiment that Takako immediately rephrases because she wants to sound cooler. Well, I suppose things like that seem important when you're younger.
The conversation winds down a little, and the two start talking about what they'd like to do after school -- karaoke and movies. Takako mentions a movie but forgets the title. Again, she doesn't seem great with details. Sachiko apparently has a sore throat from the last time they went to karaoke -- maybe she gets into it a lot more than it seems like she would. Takako finishes up by telling a story about how she accidentally started singing the last song of their set in public, prompting the following exchange:
"Is that so? But I'm not going to karaoke today -- I have a sore throat."
"I wasn't trying to say I wanted to go."
"So you just wanted to tell the story?"
"Yeah."
"I see. Good for you."
It seems that 'good for you' is going to be a recurring Sachiko catchphrase, doesn't it? But personally, I'll be a little surprised if we don't hear "So you just wanted to tell the story?" or some variation of it again. That also feels ripe for a recurring element.
With that, the scene ends -- and we unlock a TIPs segment, entitled Narasaki Clinic. I've been told that the TIPs are fairly variable in length, from a few lines to the length of a normal scene, so if it's short I'll bundle it together with the next scene, and if it's not, I'll give it its own segment.
One final note: since this game seems like it'll take a long time to play through (and turn into a regular fixture on the blog), I'm going to try and put it on a more regular schedule. I'll do the initial note-taking on Mondays, and post the write-up on Tuesdays (or, at least, the early hours of Wednesday).
See you next time!
As Sachiko's own eyes adjust, we get treated to a CG -- and music! Honest-to-goodness, non-distorted music! After the less-than-friendly welcome the game has given my ears so far, it's honestly a relief. The song, as best I can describe it, is... the kind of song you might hear in the elevator of a tropical hotel. It definitely brings to mind sunny places, and the beach. In fact, I would probably compare this song to the Costa Del Sol theme from Final Fantasy VII. It does a good job of relaxing the reader (as well as being a break from the entirely silent scene we just read).
 |
| A lively girl, relaxing on the roof |
One interesting thing I'd like to note is her hair colour. Obviously it's very green, to which it's very easy to shrug and say 'well, that's anime hair for you', but part of this series is that I have to overanalyse everything, and this is no exception. In particular, that specific shade of green reminds me very much of seaweed -- an image that's complimented by the way her hair is shaped and flows. I've genuinely seen pictures of seaweed fronds that look very much like it. The question is whether that's an interesting design tidbit, or it means something -- perhaps a testament to her ability to survive or belong underwater, whatever 'underwater' will eventually mean. Also worth noting is the colour composition of the piece in general -- it's very strongly biased towards green, blue and white, which are all colours associated with the ocean (white being the foam caps of waves).
The very first thing that Sachiko sees when she opens her eyes is Takako looking around the roof. Notably, she doesn't mention doing that herself -- she's focused more on Takako. The fact that Takako herself is 'looking around' is odd, though. If she's been to the school roof before to scout it out as a quiet place, why does she need to look around? To be fair, she might just be enjoying the view -- or she might have just assumed she could get up there and dragged Sachiko along without checking.
Takako immediately seeks Sachiko's opinion on the new spot -- like a puppy that wants praising. Sachiko seems reluctant to feed her ego -- "It's not bad, that much I can give you". But then immediate reverts to worrying about whether anyone else will come.
Now, if I had to write a yuri-themed romantic moment based on this, Sachiko would return to the roof at some later stage and once again look around to make sure nobody was coming -- not because she prefers to be away from other people, or because she's there illegitimately, but because the roof has changed from 'a good spot to read' into 'a important place where I spent time with somebody I love' in her mind, and she hopes that it will remain private. Of course, I'm not yet super sure how in-keeping that would be with her personality, but as a fanfic writer, that's probably where I would take it.
"I moved to the deeper end of the roof, closer to the area behind campus" -- here, even though Takako has dragged her to a new and brighter place, Sachiko instinctively moves back towards a place that is darker and more familiar to her before she continues reading. Of course, we have the use of the word deeper here; I almost feel like Sachiko is a deep sea creature herself, and removing her from her natural habitat, while well-intentioned, is a potentially destructive action -- which might relate back to Takako being unable to really help either the plants or the goldfish.
From their perch atop the roof, the sea is visible. A line here -- "the blue sky extended from one edge of the sea to the next" -- is very interesting on religious grounds. The sea and the sky are often linked together, especially in terms of western religion -- in Christianity's book of Genesis, for example, the sky is considered a partition between two bodies of water, one above and one below. Kind of like a sea-sky-sea sandwich. Together with the mountains, we may also be seeing the land, sea and sky set of themes.
Well, hey! It's our first traditional sprite! Her hair still kinda looks like seaweed or kelp at the ends... Again, lots of blues, greens and whites in this image, even apart from Takako herself. (Whenever I think green-hair school uniform, I always get reminded of Mion/Shion from Higurashi first...)
The effect this has on me, as a reader, is hard to quantify, but I feel... vaguely reassured? So far, the game has made a point of always being in first person, either not showing characters or showing them exclusively in CG, with dark, blurred backgrounds and somewhat disconcerting soundtracks. Here, with a more bright setting and a relaxing BGM, the appearance of a sprite calms me down even more, since I feel like sprites the the more 'usual' method when it comes to VNs. It's more familiar, and thus more comfortable.
Takako, after a brief glance at the sports field, begins to tell Sachiko a story about the soft earth in front of the pitcher's mound. So far, Takako does actually seem like the type to be really interested in odd or weird stories, since she also went out of her way to look for Sachiko's 'psychic' cousin. Well, I suppose this is a mystery themed VN, after all, and that would hardly be a rare character trait for a mystery novel protagonist.
Sachiko seems less than enthused -- although her narration says that Takako is about to start a 'really amusing' story, she dives back into her book anyway, so she's almost certainly being sarcastic.
"We all tried digging up that ground yesterday. What do you think we found?" Again, Takako is quietly defining 'us' as her and her classmates, with Sachiko being 'you', the odd one out.
Apparently, the cache was... a huge amount of milk cartons? The characters seem a little bemused, and to be honest, so am I. This is a little bit out of left field (haha, baseball puns!) Sachiko doesn't seem to be a fan of milk herself -- "who buried all that crap there?" -- so maybe she's got Edward Elric syndrome, and the reason Takako seems so tall is because Sachiko herself is a smol little bean who has yet to sprout. "You can just flush it down the toilet or something. Why go through all the trouble of burying it?" While this seems like an offhand comment, you could say it's a nod to the purifying power of water, as opposed to burying a problem only to have it resurface later.
(Something I remembered upon talking about this is alchemy. Originally, one of the things alchemists were looking for was a universal solvent, which doesn't exist. But among the solvents that do exist, water itself is supposedly a pretty good fit.)
Takako thinks it's a trap, because it would be funny for somebody to fall in and be 'covered in white goop'. Stay classy, Takako. (A little thought says that the milk is almost certainly past its expiration date, and anybody who's had to deal with properly spoiled milk will know the experience is not pleasant, and the goop becomes more yellow than white. Maybe that hints at a weakness in properly considering the future/ the effects of aging on Takako's part.)
As they discuss the hypotheticals, Takako casually drops 'Sachi' as a nickname. Plainly they're on pretty familiar terms, although we might have assumed that already. Sachi doesn't protest, instead musing on the possibility of a 'ritual to express one's hatred of milk.' That definitely sounds like projecting to me.
Beshrew thee, milk, harbinger of woe," is Takako's response. That's some interesting vocab for a schoolgirl to drop -- I knew roughly what it meant, but felt obliged to crack open a dictionary to check.
The discussion is interrupted by a 'clamour' of students from the athletics ground. Sachiko really does seem to like her peace and quiet. ('Clamour of students' feels like it would be a pretty sweet group noun, like a murder of crows).
"Ah, our class is using the basketball hoop. Don't you want to play with us there sometime?" Takako asks this without Sachiko actually remarking on the noise -- evidently, she's paying close attention to her friend and what she's thinking about. But again, there's that use of the alienating 'us', even as she makes a friendly invitation.
Sachiko begs off, because she doesn't like getting sweaty or dirtying her clothes. Usually when I hear that, it corresponds to characters who are meant to come off as doll-like. Strongly correlates with goth-loli fashion in anime as well, at least in my jumbled recollections.
Takako offers a an alternative exercise venue, but Sachi uses it to suggest hide and seek, apparently the only game she's willing to play -- because it's an excuse to retreat back to somewhere dark and gloomy, Takako seems to think. To be sure, she's already showed hints of doing that by sitting closest to her old spot, so there's probably something there.
Then -- after one and a half scenes of Sachiko doing nothing but reading -- Takako finally asks what she's reading. It seems to be a little late into proceedings for that kind of thing, but whatever, I suppose. Apparently, it's something old, and that's typical of Sachi's reading habits -- Takako remark that she doesn't go for recent best-sellers. Again, this feeds into the fixation with the past that seems to be a theme all of its own so far -- in the flashbacks, the recollections, the way Sachiko seems to want to slide back to where she was even though (to the reader, at least) the roof seems like a much more pleasant place.
Sachiko then goes on to talk about her mother's family home, which had a shelf full of old books that one day disappeared. Once they were gone, Sachiko wanted to read them even more badly, but couldn't remember the titles or the authors -- they've been lost to her, effectively. The message might well be that, even if you look back fondly at the past, you can never get back the things you had. What's lost is lost -- this ties into the 'grieving' theory I discussed earlier, as well as Takako's goldfish.
There's a funny little part here where Takako asks Sachiko -- an old friend, whose interest in reading was presumably already known to her -- what types of books she likes. That, uh... seems like the kind of thing you should already know, Tako. Obviously it's for the reader's benefit, but it does make our seaweed girl seem just a little bit dense. Sachiko's first thought is "The kind of thing that makes you want to keep reading even if something had gotten into your eye", but she disregards this answer as too vague... even though Takako responds with exactly that when the question is reversed! Maybe these two goofballs are more alike than I figured.
The conversation returns to what Sachiko enjoys about old books. The two agree that it's their atmosphere, and Takako (I think -- it's still sometimes difficult to tell who's saying what) says something interesting on the matter -- "the world they take place in is different enough from ours to be fresh." To me, that sounds very much like a semi-famous literary quote, "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there." It's a fairly interesting perspective to take, since the world of the past is fundamentally unreachable in physical terms, and thus we can consider it to be as fantastic as any wonderland or fairy world, only observable in the way it affects the world we currently live in -- again tying into Takako's tendency to seek what is mysterious and fantastic. But the idea that the present world isn't 'fresh' also implies some level of ennui, a desire to see and experience new things that isn't being fulfilled by school life, and serves to contrast the way that Sachiko consistently returns to the familiar and the well-worn.
But then she goes on to say that she feels "they had more things back then [...] like politics and economics and movies and music, I guess.", attributing the proliferation of different ideas to the chaos that existed in the past. While Sachiko rebuffs this with a fairly mature perspective -- "I'd say the world is just as chaotic right now. We probably just don't know it because we're still children" -- Takako's sentiment still acts a huge hint, to me at least, that loss is going to be one of the themes that defines her. As time goes on, things die or are destroyed, and therefore there is 'less' remaining in the world; or, to put it another way, as time passes, the world itself is diminishing in lustre and content. Sachiko's more mature perspective is that the amount of things in the world remains roughly the same -- that new is replacing old, jumbling together to make the world just as chaotic as it was. But it seems like Takako gets hung up on the idea of what is gone, just like how she never got another goldfish after Bell died; her worldview seems so preoccupied with the past and what's been lost that she fails to acknowledge regrowth or rebirth as a possibility.
Meanwhile, despite not sharing Takako's view that the world is more diminished in the present, Sachiko does agree that she's curious about the world of the past, and that she loved listening to stories from her grandparents because "...Even if I listened to that song now, I wouldn't be feeling the same things my grandparents did in their time."
For me, this touches on a very important (if sometimes frustrating) thing: the role of context in storytelling and how the reader reacts. It's something that the writer can't control or even really predict outside of a very limited time span, but the state the reader is in when they first receive a story can have a profound impact on how they view it.
My own experience with this actually comes from an anime, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso (or, Your Lie in April), which I ran across by complete chance. I'm not the biggest fan of anime; I only ever watch when the mood takes me, maybe once or twice a year, and that mood usually evaporates before I've finished a season. But Your Lie in April really resonated with me because, at the time, I wasn't writing, and hadn't been writing for two or three years. I've written since I was a child, at whatever quality -- at first for fun, and then to improve, and then it became a part of my identity that I couldn't just discard, even if life had intervened. At that time, I had genuinely lost the spark to create fiction; I felt like a failure, because I had given up or been used up, and would never grow into whatever little potential I had possessed. Your Lie in April, without being too spoilery, is about a pianist who has stopped playing the piano, but who manages to reassert himself and reignite his passion for, and talent in, his craft; as a result, I ended up connecting very deeply with the character emotionally, perhaps to the point where I felt I myself was not beyond hope. Of course, I didn't magically regain the ability to write because I had watched an anime, but I feel that -- on some level -- if I hadn't seen it, I might not have later found the resolve to drag myself along the road of recovery. I still haven't seen the last episode, because I know for a fact that it would break my heart.
Things like that are rare cases -- most of us will not react that strongly to every story or media we happen across -- but they still happen. Context can work a kind of magic that even passion and craft have difficulty matching.
Well, anyway, that's enough of that tangent. After Takako again shows off her coarse side by likening Sachiko's hobbies to rotten milk, we find out that Sachiko occasionally lends books to her. Takako seems a bit sketchy about how much she's actually read of it -- maybe half, maybe a quarter. Apart from the dates that stuck in her head in the flashback, it seems like Takako is really sketchy with details -- more of a big picture girl, I suppose.
Eventually, Takako 'withdraws her face' from Sachiko's -- exactly how close were they sitting? -- and looks up to the sky, to see something flying.
 |
| A symbol of freedom? |
Sachiko puts it down to Takako never having been outside the town, even though... she has? She definitely mentioned moving from the countryside to the town in her flashback to when she first met Sachiko, although she might have forgotten about that. But, knowing that we're in a mystery novel, it's hard not to at least acknowledge that 'an endless marsh outside the mountains' would be a lovely opportunity for a closed circle setting. Takako also explicitly refers to the mountains as being like "prison walls holding us inside". So, yeah, she definitely has a level on ennui at her current location and lifestyle, at the very least.
Sachiko gives her a little encouragement, in her own way -- "Go wherever you want once you grow up" -- and Takako's first response is to say "Let's go overseas." She doesn't even seem to consider the idea of a future that doesn't involve Sachiko, and even tells her that she's coming too. It's quite sweet, in a way, although also very forceful and a little presumptuous, since Sachiko doesn't seem all that sold on the idea -- although it seems like she's just being a little coy:
"I know you actually want to go."
"And why would you think that?"
"Well, I've known you for a long time."
...a sentiment that Takako immediately rephrases because she wants to sound cooler. Well, I suppose things like that seem important when you're younger.
The conversation winds down a little, and the two start talking about what they'd like to do after school -- karaoke and movies. Takako mentions a movie but forgets the title. Again, she doesn't seem great with details. Sachiko apparently has a sore throat from the last time they went to karaoke -- maybe she gets into it a lot more than it seems like she would. Takako finishes up by telling a story about how she accidentally started singing the last song of their set in public, prompting the following exchange:
"Is that so? But I'm not going to karaoke today -- I have a sore throat."
"I wasn't trying to say I wanted to go."
"So you just wanted to tell the story?"
"Yeah."
"I see. Good for you."
It seems that 'good for you' is going to be a recurring Sachiko catchphrase, doesn't it? But personally, I'll be a little surprised if we don't hear "So you just wanted to tell the story?" or some variation of it again. That also feels ripe for a recurring element.
With that, the scene ends -- and we unlock a TIPs segment, entitled Narasaki Clinic. I've been told that the TIPs are fairly variable in length, from a few lines to the length of a normal scene, so if it's short I'll bundle it together with the next scene, and if it's not, I'll give it its own segment.
One final note: since this game seems like it'll take a long time to play through (and turn into a regular fixture on the blog), I'm going to try and put it on a more regular schedule. I'll do the initial note-taking on Mondays, and post the write-up on Tuesdays (or, at least, the early hours of Wednesday).
See you next time!
That's a lot of unpacking of a short school scene! Keep up the good work, looking forward to more.
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