I love actually getting discussion out of things like that so here is my own (getting even more lengthy) reply to your points!
Key word here is assumed! While I think it was stated in an interview or one of the older guidebooks, I can’t actually find something except a more recent guidebook to explain this. Basically, you can’t— I’m under the impression Jin stated at some point or another that Summertime Record isn’t canon to the timeline, though… I guess it’s kind of open to interpretation, considering there are multiple other songs absent from the timeline. Whether or not Summertime Record is like a happy end AU, or supposed to represent a timeline where Outer Science is avoided, I’m not really sure.
This is a good point! I’d never gone song-by-song through the timeline, so I never noticed that it was missing more than just the “exposition” songs. (Children Record and Yobanashi Deceive? I’m pretty okay with those not being in the timeline. Loss Time Memory? Yeah that would probably show up if it were in there.) I guess the point of this bullet was more that I wanted something that wasn’t “we power of friendship-ed the bad guy into the ground” that we seemed to get in the anime. (And yes I am aware that I’m greatly oversimplifying that scene.) It seemed like until the anime, Jin never actually thought about what happened to get to Summertime Record, even if that loop didn’t go full Outer Science and was just Outer Science Lite.
Well… honestly, we’re probably never getting a clear answer on this one. I want to lean towards yes, because that’s the logical answer; I’d also lean towards a possible no, I’m not sure if the last light novel helps clarify this point, but considering Mary’s in her medusae form at some point, Seto and Hibiya both survive… ??? Thanks Jin.
Alternatively, half and half? This is spoilers for the most recent manga ch, apologies in advance— but Ene disappears, seemingly because her wish is granted, so maybe they can live as long as their ‘wish’ isn’t granted?
So I went and read the chapter to get on the same page as you. I’m gonna roll with “contradicting answers” because they wanted the anime to good end but also needed the snakes to come out to make for a more dramatic climax. We could technically meld the two by bullshitting something about how they could still keep the kids alive even if extracted but that sounds even more ridiculous and has some hilariously awful implications for what happens to them all post-anime. I think it’s really “whatever makes the best drama in the current canon”.
You know, this is one of the things that always bothered me, because people seem to assume they’re the same. Again, this is going off of my vague knowledge of the light novels— I’ve always thought it’s something that is dependent on timeline. Shintaro has a rabbit in some timelines, in other’s we don’t really see it present; I’m thinking the hamster might be similar. In some timelines, it’s the one from the forest, in other’s it doesn’t exist, and in other’s it’s a different one.
I think the hamster mostly bothers me because there isn’t really any good reason for it to be the same one. From a storytelling standpoint: why give Seto a hamster? It... gets him to meet Haruka in novel 6? Is there anything else that it really does, plot-wise? The hamster in the forest gets us exposition about Seto’s ability (can read the minds of animals but doesn’t mean he can talk to them, etc) and allows Marry’s place to be legitimately hard to find/far away/otherwise not just secretly sitting a short walk from the city. What changed in the history to make the hamster lord of the forest vs. a house pet? Also is forest hamster actually like two hundred years old because it kinda seemed that way and hamsters don’t live that long okay.
I’m assuming you mean Mary’s ability to rewind time— this one is also more of a theory than it is an actual explanation. Azami’s ability to control the snakes has always had the implication of being very strong— remember, Azami’s wish essentially created an in between world that we know as the daze. Mary’s ability to combine the snakes comes from Azami granting her the ‘most powerful’ snake, in a sense, it’s not hard to think that combining all the snakes together, would give her the ability to do some pretty wild things. Alternatively, it’s actually because that’s Mary’s wish; to go back in time, before all the bad things happen— all the snakes combined is pretty powerful, possibly powerful enough to grant such a wish.
Yes, that one. My own theory, which seems to mostly line up with yours, is that it’s basically the bloodline extension of Azami’s ability to create the daze. Azami used her overwhelming desire to create a pocket dimension, and Marry used hers to rewind time. Both required the power of the snakes to help out, hence why Marry needs them. It does annoy me that Marry can set things back to before her own birth, though (or at least that’s what I interpreted from the scenes at the very end of Outer Science) but maybe the snakes can carry the wish on without her back to the beginning of their own existences... or something like that.
First… you know, I’m never really sure if these are repeating timelines or parallel universes! Second, I’m also pretty sure Shintaro isn’t his own death pair… maybe. This is.. complicated, also a theory. So… Shintaro’s ability comes because Mary granted it to him… which might bypass the need for a death pair. Alternatively, because there’s the implication that Shintaro’s ability is granted post-Outer Science…. there’s probably enough deaths to uhhh hit that requirement.
Third alternative— depending on the timeline / events that Shintaro actually got his ability originally, it might be Ayano; again, on the assumption that this is post-Outer Science, it might be also possible that, being stuck in the daze, she was never granted her own ability to begin with, thus making her the other half of Shintaro’s ‘death pair’ so to say. I highly doubt this, but it’s fun to think about the possibilities when Jin doesn’t give us clear answers.
(While on the subject— Haruka and Takane’s abilities are a pretty odd case too, that I don’t think we ever really get a clear explanation for!! Most timelines imply that they at least died around the same time, with some even having Haruka, Takane, and Ayano having died roughly about the same day… but Takane and Haruka aren’t each other’s death pairs… kinda? Depends on how you want to interpret that.)
First point: Well, there’s definitely SOME level of repeating timelines, because that’s what Marry is doing. If there’s parallel universes running along with that, Loss Time Memory has been our only solid pointer at that. Second: I think basically LTM and the anime are at odds with each other here. This is the best option for meshing them I can get: in one specific loop, after most of her friends are dead but (maybe) before Shintaro’s dead, Marry gives him a snake, possibly while they’re both still in the normal world. In subsequent loops, that snake doesn’t “awaken” unless he passes some sort of trial. LTM was being poetic and Shintaro dies alone, but it’s showing us a compressed version of what happens when he succeeds vs. when he fails. Hiccup: Shintaro’s snake awakens in the anime before he dies, but maybe his trial doesn’t need to be in the daze per se. I don’t LIKE this explanation since it feels overly-specific to matching the evidence rather than the evidence intentionally pointing at a cohesive explanation, but sometimes that’s what you get when you’re making things up as you go along.
Ayano does get an ability when being stuck in the daze! That’s actually the point of her sacrifice: to go in, get a snake, and stay in there to keep it from returning to the real world. I guess there might be a loop where she even fails at that, but it’s not explicitly a canon loop (yet).
In the novel, Takane and Haruka are each other’s death pairs. I was re-reading #2 to look up something else and there’s a scene about Clearing Eyes patting himself on the back for getting both of them to die together enough to unlock the daze. In standard timelines (aka not current manga loop of wtf-ery) Ayano dies the same day as Takane and Haruka, though basically every canon is kind of ass at giving that proper acknowledgement. FUN FACT: The “Ayano’s Theory of Happiness” PV came out almost seven months after novel 2 was written. I think at the point of novel 2, Jin was still thinking he was hinging the daze activation on death pairs, and then realized later he couldn’t when he decided what he was doing with Ayano. So, Takane and Haruka are a death pair because their deaths were plotted when death pairs needed to be a thing. And they both get snakes because Shut Up The Plot Says So. Shintaro and Ayano die alone two years apart because their deaths were plotted after death pairs stopped being viable.
Clearing Eyes seems to be one of the more powerful snakes— Retaining Eyes (Shintaro) naturally seems to remember, but we get implications that even Mary somewhat remembers (via ‘nightmares’ / visions / etc), though in her case, it’s probably likely that she tries not to remember. Clearing Eyes abilities seems to vary depending on the timeline too. So WHY it remembers? It’s possible that the snakes can remember, on some level. Alternatively, there’s no good explanation because JIN. JIN. GIVE US PROPER EXPLANATIONS ON HOW THE SNAKE POWERS WORK GOD DAMNIT
I’m also answering these two together because they’re somewhat related. Does Azami actually know Shintaro’s power? Forgive me, I’m going off Yenpress’ English translation, so if there are translation differences or something, feel free to correct me! What I assume you’re referring to is the part about Azami’s diary[...]
Azami does! Not from her diary, but from this line when she takes over Marry in novel 7 and sees Shintaro’s body:
“There was a person sprawled out by my feet. He had grown a lot, but I could tell who he was right off, too. But... dead? Really? How was he supposed to see anything in the shape he was in? What an idiot.”
I did a spot-check against the Japanese just to be sure and it seems to be a more or less correct translation. It’s not explicit, but it’s not hard to read the implication that Azami knows that Shintaro’s role is to be someone who sees things. She also knew him as a kid? So THAT better come up in novel 8, but I’m still very suspicious of how she knows about Shintaro’s power.
Another one I’m not too certain on because… haha everything’s left pretty vague— I’m also going to go off of the novels for this too, since I know that this varies across the timelines too. Azami makes comments on how Tsukihiko’s pretty young when they first meet, Tsukihiko talks about how he was fought in a war, and when Shion’s young enough to be running around when Azami first starts being talked to by Clearing Eyes (and she comments on how Tsukihiko’s aged). Shinigami Record (the song) also more or less says the same thing, and the manga and anime tend to show Shion as being pretty young when Azami disappears into the daze.
It’s probably likely that Tsukihiko’s in his young twenties when they first meet— it’s not uncommon for young adults to fight in wars, after all. Shion’s aging is probably as slow as Mary’s is (visibly aging one for every ten human ones); meaning that even a four or five year old Shion would make Tsukihiko somewhere from sixty to eighty (probably? if I’m mathing correctly). Not young by any means, but not dead.
In the manga Azami says something about how humans die around age 80, so we can assume Tsukihiko is approaching that. The only good explanation is to put Shion at age 5 or so when Azami opens the daze, yeah. She looked older than that to me in the manga, but also what even are child ages in manga anyway. Maybe she was actually meant to be 5, and Tsukihiko was 80-ish! Which would be not awful timeline-wise, but they just didn’t look drawn that way to me so it bothers me.
Medusa thing, probably. Shion has it too, and it’s sort of implied that it’s an inherited thing? That said, Locking Eyes is referenced to as a snake (I GUESS), so maybe it’s a bit of both? It’s also possible that, because Mary holds the queen snake, that it’s sort of supported through that?
Haha, now that I think about it though, I don’t think Mary herself ever refers to her power as a snake thing, I think it’s probably treated like a snake thing because the others (orphanage trio) probably don’t know any better— Light Novel Route shows that it isn’t until they find the diary that they figure out that Mary’s a medusae to begin with, while manga route shows that Ayaka at least somewhat understands what Mary is (while yeah, Seto probably knows too, the orphanage trio is also pretty young, so it’s not hard to assume that they kind of assume she’s similar / the same as them).
I don’t blame the characters for thinking it’s a snake, at least at first. That makes sense. But the fact that it has a name from Azami’s list implies that it’s a snake, and I don’t like that implication because Azami would be someone who knows better. It could have been as simple as Azami saying “I call this one Locking Eyes, but it doesn’t seem to be supported by an entity separate from myself. It’s possible that this is a power that comes from me alone.” or something like that in her diary. That would make it perfectly reasonable to exist in multiple related people without it being passed along via snake (which it actually CAN’T be, since Shion uses her power before Azami opens up the daze to reach her).
You know, I can’t actually recall if this was ever explained. Whoops.
That said, it’s probably not the best idea to send a kid that disappears all the time and a kid that can’t shut out other people’s thoughts to school. Let alone, the fact that they know they’d probably get bullied for.. having red eyes. It’s a good thing that Kenjirou’s a teacher, Jin.
In the manga they explicitly say that they can’t go to school. Which makes sense for two of them but Kano totally had his powers under control, but fine okay Jin we’ll roll with that. I also don’t recall anyone saying anything about Kenjirou homeschooling them, but that would’ve been an easy and plausible thing to slip in there offhandedly, so I really hope I just missed it somewhere. I hope.
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