For me it would be reasonable that after 60 Moms either die or become Grandma. But I'm not sure how this system works. 😅
No. It feels like it could be a thing, given the conditions we see the sister candidates in and the violent fates many meet that Shirai purposely brings to our attention.
(Chapter 170 | Chapter 181.2 | TPN Light Novel 2: Moms’ Song of Remembrance - “Searching for the Skies of Freedom”)
But despite the oppressive nature of the farm system easily lending itself to the idea, there's no mention of a hard age or time limit for moms and sisters. Assuming they don't make any grievous mistakes, it seems like they're allowed to live as long as they're useful.
(Chapter 165)
Unless they're set up to take the fall for someone else.
The second light novel goes into further detail about how due to the very limited number of positions outside of headquarters, some sisters choose to retrain and pursue other roles in the system.
But even then, it doesn't seem like they're allowed to pass away peacefully in their sleep due to old age and have that be the end of it. Under this system, their ultimate fate is to become food.
On the flip side of things, Krone specifically mentions Isabella becoming a mom at nineteen is an extraordinary feat.
(Chapter 181.2 | TPN Light Novel 2: Moms’ Song of Remembrance - “Searching for the Skies of Freedom”)
This happens when Krone is thirteen or fourteen, and while we don't know exactly when Sarah became grandma between Isabella entering headquarters at twelve and becoming a mom, I default to her assuming the role when Isabella is around eighteen or nineteen and installing Isabella at plant no.3 being one of her first major actions as grandma that would best serve herself.
(Chapter 181.3)
Though with Isabella's scores she had enough justification to frame it based entirely on merit and beneficial to the bottom line of the farms if she booted out another mom prematurely.
I can't stop myself to wonder if Isabella often wondered how was her child during the first 6 years, before discovering that it was Ray. Did she feel sad at the birthday date, did she something wonders "they can't be shipped anytime now" after the 6th birthday and being even more sad about it? Did she wonder if they had her smile, her eyes? Did she miss her baby?
Isabella is the queen of compartmentalizing and staving off cognitive dissonance, so I think she actively distanced herself from those thoughts if she found herself brushing against them. Even if I don't consider her an entirely reliable narrator in the second light novel when it comes to Ray, it fits with the drive we hear her voice in her private dialogue and inner monologues and how others describe her.
(Chapter 181.3 | Chapter 3 | TPN Light Novel 2: Moms’ Song of Remembrance - “The Starry Sky and Leslie’s List” Chapter 9 | Chapter 37)
It helps her ignore any similarities she subconsciously notices between herself and Ray (and she does see many, when she allows herself to do so)
(TPN Light Novel 2: Moms’ Song of Remembrance - “The Starry Sky and Leslie’s List” Chapter 9)
until she couldn't anymore, and it makes her reaction all the more horrified and poignant.
A can't stop myself to wonder how a changement of mum happens in the orphanage. Did things happen like during a shippment day? Is the former mum killed, or kept in the HQ because she has experience and it's precious so she is used to teach the new generation?
My default inclination is toward brutal maintenance of the system based on the other facets of it we see in the main story and Krone's story in the second light novel that was adapted into her bonus chapter. Almost entire classes of girls are killed off to reinforce this because they seem to have such a surplus.
(TPN Light Novel 2: Moms’ Song of Remembrance - “Searching for the Skies of Freedom” | Chapter 181.2)
There is no shortage of potential moms, so to reinforce this cutthroat atmosphere among them, failure is met with swift retribution at headquarters because there's no pretense to keep up for any children. Maybe if they committed no grievous errors in their tenure as moms they would be allowed to retire to another role back at headquarters, but given that the only older woman we ever see in the demon world is Grandma Sarah, I think it speaks to the message of bioessentialist horror and social commentary that no longer being able to meet that rigid and conservative standard of motherhood, framed as the pinnacle of existence in their reality, results in death, and the dismantling of it at the end of the series the refutation of such belief. (This is also why I personally think the farms are transphobic even if it would be impractical, especially pre-artificial insemination.)
That said, how much the demons are willing to let slide and how often moms are switched out is a bit more up in the air for me because of how integral they are for the well-being of the children.
(Chapter 27)
They're thoroughly entrenched in the lives of their charges as a mother figure, so a constant revolving door of them wouldn't be good. They need that stability with a primary caretaker, whereas sister helpers are on more shaky ground, especially early on in their roles (e.g., Krone being introduced and disposed of within three weeks time).
We're also told early in the series all the Grace Field plants besides Isabella's had disappointing harvests in 2045.
(Chapter 7)
But there's no further elaboration on how much of that was chalked up to the failures of each individual mom and how much was due to the headquarters-mandated curriculum that's planned out by Grandma.
(Chapter 181.3)
So the other four moms could have been kept on or disposed of regardless of Isabella's crop bringing up the average.
There's so many variables to account for and not enough information to work with to come to a decisive conclusion for the general procedure on this matter because the main example through which we see it is the exception and not the rule, but over the course of 600 years there was probably a bit of variety.
hello, i was late to the fandom so i might have missed out on this discourse but do we ever find out the real content of Ray's letter to Isabella? Is it something of a plot point the author hasn't developed in canon? If so, what would the plot be you think? Thank you so much!!
Same hat, anon 😎🤝😎 (coming up on my third anniversary of first discovering the series just this month)
Shirai has never officially, explicitly stated in an interview what's in the letter Ray writes in chapter 22/S1 episode 7, but I've talked about this before and personally find it funny how he made a big deal out of the mystery surrounding it back in a 2019 Jump interview (translated here):
When I feel most people’s first guess as to what was in it after the escape arc concluded was eventually confirmed in December 2020 with the release of chapter 181.3:
A farewell letter from a son to his mother that reveals their biological connection when headquarters purposely kept it a secret.
(Mystic Code Book Chapter 2)
It's meant to be such a huge revelation it stops Krone in her tracks and deters her from digging around in Ray's room further to discover the rewards he's been receiving for six years and the lighter fluid he's been stockpiling for five.
(Mystic Code Book Chapter 1 Q&A | Chapter 22; Krone evens whips out records she brought along in her suitcase from headquarters to corroborate what she's read.)
I've also talked before about how Ray's retaliation was threefold in its pettiness, and this letter falls into points 2 & 3. After years of bottling up his anger and resentment toward her, he wanted to incriminate her by implicating she at very least knew about the escape, potentially that she even helped with it, all because she knew of their biological connection and wanted him to survive (the same thing he wished she would have said to him back on his sixth birthday at the gate):
(Chapter 181.1)
He found it sickening how she could choose to prolong her own life by sacrificing all his siblings over the course of her tenure at Grace Field. With this, he thought he would seal her death at the hands of the demons she groveled before like a dog, while he would die on his own terms as a human.
(Chapter 14)
What he didn't count on was Isabella's prioritizing results over rules was something that was enabled by her mother, to the point they were willing to remove Krone from plant no.3 altogether.
(Chapter 23 | Chapter 181.3)
Ray assumed Krone did not have the means to contact headquarters like Isabella did, so she would keep the bait and bide her time until presented with the opportunity to reveal it to someone higher in the chain of command. Ray assumed Krone would still be at Grace Field at the time of the escape, and that after he was dead and the four other oldest kids were gone and headquarters was looking for an explanation for how a blunder of this magnitude could have possibly happened, Krone would show her hand to usurp Isabella's position.
It's why he's so caught off-guard when Isabella reveals she made a move first.
(Chapter 24)
As for why Shirai gave conflicting information about this, I'm assuming he wanted to leave the door open for multiple possibilities before his health tanked and he began aggressively cutting off story branches so he could still complete the series under his own power and maintain his sense of artistic integrity.
(October 2020 Series Completion Interview)
And that's how we arrive at the contents of the letter being what a lot of fans suspected from the jump.
@anulithots Ray's lack of infantile amnesia being the result of epigenetics is an interesting and tragic thought.
This is also one of the reasons the farm system seems ill-thought out to me from a purely pragmatic standpoint.
The demons have to have an understanding of this after breeding humans for roughly a thousand years and learning of the differences between demon and human genetic make-ups, on top of Ray making a point to cite how humans are influenced by their environment to back-up his reasoning about why they won't increase security if Norman ran away to avoid being shipped out. (To say nothing of how Isabella probably pettily considered this when thinking about shipping Ray at some point.)
Living in the kind of brutal environment that headquarters is for a decade would fundamentally change a person on some level, and we're shown the toll it takes on Isabella despite the iron woman persona she's built up.
(Chapter 181.3 | Minerva Confidential Report from the S1 Blu-ray | S1 Episode 12 | TPN Light Novel 2: Moms’ Song of Remembrance - “The Starry Sky and Leslie’s List” Chapter 9)
So I question why at least when the candidates are pregnant the demons wouldn't want to offer better treatment and incentives to them, or at least a mention of this by humans or demons directly involved with farm management questioning it before being told by those higher in the chain of command that it's unavoidable; they're working within the confines of the time and resources they've given, or whatever reasoning they provide while the upholding of the status quo so the demon royalty can maintain their authority over the general populace can continue.
