#jp notes

Paul was certain of his mother's love for him, and her role in his life was very well-defined and stable¹. I think her figure was so consolidated that it is this absence that weighs heavily on his grief, it is the loss of a certainty in his life.

John and Julia, on the other hand, always had a very troubled relationship, not that she was a bad person, I think this phrase² sums it up well, and they were getting closer again. And I think her death leaves a door open. Both regarding her love for her son, and what she means to John. If in Paul's case he loses a certainty, in John's case he loses the chance to have certainty about Julia. A combination of whys and what ifs that remain unresolved.

And this comparison made me think about how the John-Julia grief, in this sense, ends up resembling the Paul-John grief.

When John dies, although he and Paul were seemingly reconnecting and planning things for the future, one of the things people around them did for Paul was to try to reassure him that John loved him. In these similarities between their griefs, there is not only the uncertainty of love, but the uncertainty of what their relationship meant. Friends, brothers, or something more, was always a thing of discussion. And before any assurance or stability is possible, John dies and leaves Paul with this open door that never closes.

～てくる can just indicate the direction of a request. It is sometimes redundant.

こともある implies that something has happened at least once, but does not rule out the possibility of multiple times. It does not mean every time.

食事が済み、春菜が仕事に出かけると、ゆりは久しぶりに薫子を訪ねて植物園に行こうと思った。春菜が出がけに頼んできたこともあったが、あの日以来何度も訪ねてきてくれた薫子にまったく会おうとしなかった自分の無礼を謝ろうとしたのだ。

After breakfast, Haruna left for work, and Yuri decided to visit Kaoruko at the botanical garden for the first time in a long while. That Haruna had sometimes asked Yuri to do so on her way out to work was only a part of it; Yuri wanted to apologize for her rude behavior in avoiding Kaoruko every time she had visited since that fateful day.

Ahh, 微妙. What a confusing word that can mean "subtle", "complex", "doubtful", or "not great". And people use it all the time to refer to some type of feeling that encompasses something from the above.

Well. In the case below it apparently means something more along the lines of "questionable as to whether something can or will actually happen", a branch of the definition "doubtful; questionable; dicey​". Most tellingly, it follows できるかどうか. Similar to 曖昧 in this context. 微妙だなー

I had to get help for understanding the below section.

Example:

キュアブロッサムはとっさに鉄棒の握り棒を両手で摑んだが、勢いがつき過ぎているために大車輪をやる羽目に陥ってしまう。

　──逆上がりもできるかどうか微妙なのに～～っ！

Cure Blossom quickly grabbed the bar, but all of her momentum sent her spinning around it awkwardly in giant circles.

I don't think I can even do this swing right, let alone a back hip circle—!

Honestly a weird thing to say, but I guess Tsubomi wanted to do a back hip circle (逆上がりも) and failed. The もできるかどうか also implies that she already knew that doing the back hip circle was going to be tricky?

Instead she was forced to do a (gymnastical) giant swing (大車輪). Forced is through 羽目に陥ってしまう, as (adj. or plain form verb) + 羽目に陥る appears to be a phrase that means that you're stuck/trapped doing something or in a certain state.

The のに at the end mostly expresses regret rather than working as a real contrastive function here.

～に追われる means you are busy with ～ and have almost no time to do other things.

翌日、両親は引っ越し荷物の整理と花屋の仕入れ業者との打ち合わせに追われ、つぼみを連れて隣家の来海家へ挨拶に行ったのは午後になってしまった。

The next day, Tsubomi's parents were tied up with organizing their unpacked belongings and meeting a supplier for their flower shop, so by the time they took Tsubomi to say hello to their neighbors Kurumi, it was already the afternoon.

Apparently is a more formal way of saying のではなくて

ももかはつい先程までゆりと一緒にいたそうで、自分が思っていた以上に落ち込んではおらず、明後日からの学校には登校すると言っていたことを報告してくれた。

Momoka had just been with Yuri, and she reported that Yuri hadn't seemed as depressed as she was expecting and would be attending school the day after tomorrow.

自分以上に: Seems pretty self-explanatory, "more than (my)self", but it threw me for a loop when I was expecting the 自分 to then be the subject of the action, but it was not so.

目に見えている: Literally "the eye can see" but basically indicates sureness in the observation. In most cases you would not translate this literally.

どうしても、薫子から聞いた父親に関する報告をしなくてはならない。自分以上に失望することは目に見えている。

She would have to tell her mother what she had learned from Kaoruko about her father's whereabouts. Yuri knew her mother would take it harder than she had.

This can mean "safe to say" or "you could say" as と言ってもいい. Apparently you can conjugate it to past tense and it doesn't change the meaning? Unlike how ～ていい (It's okay to do ~) and ～てよかった (I'm glad I did ~) have different meanings.

Sample sentences:

薫子はデューン率いる『砂漠の使徒』が地球に近づいていることをペンダントの変化で知り、コッペに命じて植物園全体に結界を張らせた。

　先手を打ったことで、デューンが失った自分の魔力を取り戻すために、植物園に近づく可能性はほとんどないと言ってもよかった。

Kaoruko could sense when the Desert Apostles whom Dune commanded neared Earth through changes in the pendant, and (had already) ordered Coppe to enclose the entire botanical garden in a barrier.

With this preemptive measure, there was virtually no chance of Dune approaching the botanical garden to recapture his lost powers.

「戻ってくればいいのに、王子先輩」 　 アコが私たち三人を振り返って言う。 「それでみんなで話したら、なんてことない話なのに。そう思わない？」 「思う」 　 誰からともなく言った三人の言葉は、偶然きれいにハモったからみんな笑ってしまった。

The なんてことない話なのに here is more like "it wouldn't be a big deal after all," apparently.

According to what someone kindly explained to me:

The isolated （な）のに at the end of a sentence like that usually marks a kind of complaint/suggestion for what goes before it And the entire thing before it is the idea of 「みんなで話したら、なんてことない話だよ。」　”So why don't we do that more?　We don't do it enough" or something like that If it were to be the latter meaning, you would see something along the lines of： なんてことない話であっても　みんなで話してはしゃいじゃおう。（The last part from the verb はしゃぐ）