#abel day

[mothanise]

Idk

[bestbonnist]

Volume 22 Extras

[kafkaoftherubble]

New to your eternity chapter sure was something

Yea! I mean, me investing in Abel Day stocks and reaping returns? Fuck yea! I definitely feel like I won something! And I'm gonna keep winning. I've also invested in the Doll-san stocks!

It actually gave me a Ramble Essay idea, but I'm kinda busy with work and some other things at the moment. The mood for rambling is also a little low right now because...

What do you think though? Liked the chapter? Some of our fellas have begun thinking that Abel might be the reincarnation/rebirth of Hana, ya know! For that MizuHanna continuation. It's mostly the glasses, I think, 'cause I don't think Abel looks like Hana or Parona. But I'm never good at recognizing faces or semblances both in manga and real life anyway, and maybe one of the characters will point out that Abel looks like Hanna again?

What are your thoughts?

[bestbonnist]

Chapter 174

The big question for this chapter is why AD helped the doll escape. My theory is that he's trying to keep Anton, specifically, away from her, but it's worth noting that a lot of people think he and the doll/32 have some sort of special connection.

I don't think that's very likely. His parents are 4-star or 3-star, not allowed on the fifth level, and there was an eight year time-skip between when the doll was thrown into the garbage shoot (and presumably when 32 died) and when she woke up. AD was about eight years old at the time Andy was born. The Mizuha clones were in a lab on the highest level. Although AD has an uncle—Rabbit—who is a Kaibara employee, it's very unlikely that he was up there without a tag-chip at eight years old. It's possible, I guess?? But it doesn't make much sense.

AD was also looking for the doll on Rabbit's orders the first few times we saw him. He even successfully captured her at one point. But clearly something's changed. Between then and now, the new variable that's been added to the equation is Anton. In Chapter 170.4, AD had Bon in his hands but voluntarily let him go when he saw that Anton was in trouble. Helping the doll might be an attempt to undermine Anton's reign of terror for his own good.

Or, actually? The doll is the one who suggests that AD may have come to warn them, because she wants to believe that she has a past and that there are people out there who care about her. But it might just be that she spared his life and he wanted to repay the favor. He would probably prefer capturing an immortal to capturing someone who's lacking like him.

Fushi's still doing their best to respect other people's resolve. Maybe not the right call for this specific situation but good on them.

If AD never had a chip embedded to begin with, that means his mom gave birth to him, meaning—by Fushi's logic—that his parents loved each other that much. And it's true, when they have Andy made they do seem pretty lovey-dovey. But having the first child born naturally and the next child created exactly how they like seems to imply that there's something unsatisfying about AD. Something "lacking," as it were. Sorry.

Although AD is literally from both of their DNA, they created Andy to match the two of them. Literally, his eye colors were chosen to look like theirs. From an outsider's perspective, AD must seem like the odd one out.

Despite that, AD and Anton's relationship looks pretty good. Anton used to look up to him, we can tell that much from the way he idolized the pick-up hunters and went off to help them the instant he was old enough. Now he's patronizing AD because he's suddenly so much stronger. So... it's a little bit tumultuous. Nothing big, just something tiny that might blow up later.

Just want to say, at this point Fushi's friends die all the time. Gugu just said so on the previous page. Tonari died earlier this morning. It's such a common occurrence that everyone thinks it's a little strange that Fushi's protesting. @kafkaoftherubble pointed out (or I pointed it out... I genuinely don't remember) that they probably don't want their friends to see anything they shouldn't as ghosts. So that's... interesting.

[bestbonnist]

What's with all the bird women

What IS with all the bird women. Unknown.

The second bird teacher has paws, not talons, which I think is kinda interesting. She's more like a gryphon. Except a gryphon would have talons up front and paws in the back, so maybe not.

I can't imagine a practical reason for having all the teachers be birds, but analytically, you could say it's to show that they're like parrots. They mindlessly repeat what they've been told and teach students to do the same.

Yeah... what we can infer is already pretty bad. I mean, right now it looks like his parents sent him to get fixed by Kaibara when they found out he was lacking, and they're taking him back now that he has a tag chip? What the fuck. Well, there'll be more to be terrified about next week. Look forward to it.

[bestbonnist]

Damn. I think I'm actually hella invested in AD's whole character package! A Lacking pretending to be Not Lacking (I think he wears a fake tag chip, right? Until he gives it away to the Doll? Memory's a bit hazy). And that he has a Rising Star brother who clearly idolizes/loves him & yet doesn't seem to really know *all* about him... His relationships with his bro, uncle, Doll & Kaibara pose so much intrigue. If the Future Arc is about what it means to be human (as exemplified by... [1/2]

Well, he's not really pretending. The tag-chip only works if it's embedded in someone's arm. At a glance, anyone who sees his necklace would know that he's lacking. I think the tag-chip is real, like the doll's, but how he ended up like this is a complete mystery... I speculated that he was born this way but then how did he get the tag chip? Was it a factory malfunction? Is it because of his family's connection to Kaibara? Who knows.

The point you make about the lacking being disabled opens a whole new discussion. I had this thought, too. A dead giveaway that a supposedly utopian society is actually a dystopia is the lack of disabled people, or their complete eradication. Or a society that fixes disabilities instead of accommodating them. In the wish era, people with tag-chips have complete control over their bodies, and are born as GMO designer babies who I’m assuming have had any potential genetic disabilities bred out of them. The irony is that it’s the tag-chip doing all the work. Humans are the same as they ever were, but if they have a tag-chip they mistakenly attribute their abilities to Darwinist evolution.

So yeah! The lacking in this society are disabled. Not just disabled coded, within the parameters of this story, they are disabled. The world was built for people with tag-chips, and the people without it get nothing. The situation doesn’t line up one-for-one with real world disabilities, but that's fine. In my opinion, I think being able to see a connection between a dystopian fantasy and real life is just what makes it a dystopia. Because it reveals something about our society through allegory.

It’s also worth noting that our protagonist Fushi has a lot of autistic symptoms, Eko is nonverbal, if people don’t know that Bon can see ghosts they believe he’s hallucinating, and Gugu… what can I even say that would describe his situation succinctly? He’s disfigured and he has an extra, artificial organ that distills alcohol and can explode at any time. The immortals don’t fit neatly into society at large. Even in the present era, they stuck out. Fushi wanted a world where no one had to suffer like their friends did, but now that it's come to pass, no one understands them.

[bestbonnist]

A little late to the new chapter cause I've been busy but!!! ABEL'S RELATIONSHIP WITH 32!!!! Tbh first thought was that he's some kind of science experiment to recreate Mizuha to be bigger and stronger than previous Hayase descendants, but then it wouldn't make sense for him to be a guy

The knocker in Mizuha's arm already bolstered her strength like tag-chips do now, which is why she was so good at everything she did, but now I have the image of a buff Mizuha in my head (like, Anton buff) and I can't get it out.

I thought that there was no way Abel could get to the fifth level, or that 32 was allowed to leave the lab, but I guess she did sneak out with the doll or something and that's how they met. And I'm really happy with this chapter too! Seeing Abel's face and hearing him speak when he's not in battle mode makes me like him a lot more. Like, how when he slicks his hair back it makes him look stern and serious but when it's unstyled it makes him look younger, like how he looked when Anton was born. It helps me connect Abel as a kid to Abel the stoic pick-up hunter.

[licensetocannibalize]

i relate to abel gideon in the way that i too want to dissect frederick chilton