Kudan no Ken ni Tsuite - Vol. 1 Ch. 2 - Madarako's Secret Plan

[CrzestFsh]

PEAK CUTENESS , hopefully no other girl will appear that also like the mc

 

[mageofeverlife]

The concept is interesting, but perfect visions essentially being "this is fate" is kinda tough to make a satisfying story of. And for romance, despite the visions being "random", Madarako does seem to have gotten enough of them to know pretty much everything she'd have learned through a normal relationship. It would always be a bit jarring to have a partner who always knows so much more about that kind of thing, on top of this skipping through her falling in love.

Seeing it is different from experiencing it I believe. I think that there will be times where she will be caught off guard.

 

[DJKatsu]

Speaking out of topic, but I noticed in the cover art she has splotches of white on her hand. Does it mean she is some kind of Holstein?

Boi is truly going to drown at this rate.

 

[cystericosis]

Touch the cow! Do it now!

 

[Parnifia]

Why does the art look familiar? Have I read something this artist did under a different alias?

 

[100thlurker]

I get the feeling that her visions go a lot deeper than she's letting on. She said that her vision always come true and that she can't change much. I find it a bit wierd that she immediately went full throttle on becoming a novelist despite the fact that she seemingly could've just wrote anything and fate would have just done the rest.

I think this is a misunderstanding of how her foresight has been presented so far.

From what we've seen so far, her experience of reality reminds me a lot of "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang. Now, pointedly, Story of Your Life is not about actual precognition but something even more mindbending, the idea that an alien language might rearrange how you perceive time and memory. However, I think it's useful here because one of the passages poses a question that seems almost directly about Madarako:

There’s the rub. The Book of Ages cannot be wrong; this scenario is based on the premise that a person is given knowledge of the actual future, not of some possible future. If this were Greek myth, circumstances would conspire to make her enact her fate despite her best efforts, but prophecies in myth are notoriously vague; the Book of Ages is quite specific, and there’s no way she can be forced to bet on a racehorse in the manner specified. The result is a contradiction: the Book of Ages must be right, by definition; yet no matter what the Book says she’ll do, she can choose to do otherwise. How can these two facts be reconciled?

They can’t be, was the common answer. A volume like the Book of Ages is a logical impossibility, for the precise reason that its existence would result in the above contradiction. Or, to be generous, some might say that the Book of Ages could exist, as long as it wasn’t accessible to readers: that volume is housed in a special collection, and no one has viewing privileges.

The existence of free will meant that we couldn’t know the future. And we knew free will existed because we had direct experience of it. Volition was an intrinsic part of consciousness.

Or was it? What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?

- Story of Your Life, Ted Chiang

It's only the second chapter so perhaps I may end up wrong, but the way Madarako seems to experience time as long chains of causality, the cause and the effect, but the actual motion between is something she must fill with the present. Her visions are realized because everyone, including herself, of their own free will acts to fulfill the future. So, Madarako can not just 'write anything' and get Hazama to clear everything off his schedule to come find her; she's not perceiving fate but the moments people make because of their own decisions. A purely fictional novel would not have piqued his sense of interest him with its strange sense of realism, but Year 2100 poorly written would have been thrown back in the slush pile only a few pages in. She may not necessarily understand why it needs to be a vivid biography of their grandson, her foresight doesn't grant her telepathy, but she knows that that is the book and level of authorial skill she needs. She wants to do it, so she acts.

 

[DPChaos]

According to the legends, a kudan's prophecy is 100% accurate because its life is consumed in the process. Perhaps she uses less power so it doesn't kill her, but it becomes less accurate as a result.

Or maybe the reason she became a novelist to begin with was because it was ordained by fate that she would die young (30-40). So the novels also double as her own legacy.

 

[Daymare]

I get the feeling that her visions go a lot deeper than she's letting on. She said that her vision always come true and that she can't change much. I find it a bit wierd that she immediately went full throttle on becoming a novelist despite the fact that she seemingly could've just wrote anything and fate would have just done the rest.

Someone referenced this in the first chapter. There's a novella by Ted Chiang called Story of Your Life that kind of goes into free will and determinism alongside knowing the future.

To put a very well-thought out take into an oversimplification, think about it like this:

If you could see your own actions in the future, while you still ostensibly have the free will to do something different, the future you've seen is predicated on you having seen the future, meaning you chose those actions because what you saw pleased you, so you will always choose the actions that lead to the future you saw.

Hopefully that makes sense, the full discussion is a bit too esoteric for a manga comment section and can get a bit into quantum theory but

 

[asspussy]

MC going for breaks in the smoking room without actually smoking, is he trying to get chain smoke'd to death lol

 

[fumokaze]

this is pretty cool and actually surprisingly out of the court for the usual stuff we've been getting, I like it

 

[ranrastel]

I too want a tall girl to call me responsible, smol, cute and have a huge heart

 

[llxUnknownxll]

Someone referenced this in the first chapter. There's a novella by Ted Chiang called Story of Your Life that kind of goes into free will and determinism alongside knowing the future.

To put a very well-thought out take into an oversimplification, think about it like this:

If you could see your own actions in the future, while you still ostensibly have the free will to do something different, the future you've seen is predicated on you having seen the future, meaning you chose those actions because what you saw pleased you, so you will always choose the actions that lead to the future you saw.

Hopefully that makes sense, the full discussion is a bit too esoteric for a manga comment section and can get a bit into quantum theory but

That's honestly an interesting way to close the issue of pre-cognition while retaining free will, especially in conjunction with the limits she established in chapter 1 that 1) Visions are random 2) She cannot significantly change what she saw 3) All she can see are visions of people or things close to her.

Future visions are usually about 5 camps: inanimate things like wind that you cannot influence, sentient creatures that you cannot influence, those you've haven't told the future to, those you have told the future to, and yourself.

Those she don't have influence over are already taken care of by her power's limitation in that she won't see any visions about them. So all you have to worry about is those you can tell the future to and yourself.

Normally, future vision stories about how theyncan change stuff or tackle things a protagonist's lived through or seen willingly with a power they control. But with the visions being random, your theory melds well.

Take seeing visions of the lottery numbers. Either she wouldn't use it herself (be it morals of thinking that its cheating, or it being a different thing from what will bring her joy in the end) and she sees them to no effect, or she wouldn't see them at all (because visions are random.)

Personally, I'd extend the concept to say that future visions probably also show the best outcome for the most people visually. There may be a caveat of not being able to (significantly) changing the future but it's a completely different thing from not being able to change it at all. We may not know the extent that she can change but that small leeway clears the few remaining contraditions nicely.

Given the culture of Japanese people hiding their inner thoughts, she could still end up with the same sights, sounds, and tastes but not the same person person. Her visions of her loving, doting hubby might change to a hubby that says those same lines but with apprehension. Or they may be as extreme as a loving wife eatinf dinner with a husband, but not as loving or doting. And any contradictions can still be swept away by the fact that the visions aren't summoned at will so visions that can change greatly by telling it to someone just never appear.

 

[ConfuciusRex]

Seems cute and interesting so I'll follow this. Not sure how the narrative is going to maintain any suspense or irony if she's just going to be so forthright with information though. Regardless, it isn't clear where this story is heading exactly, so I won't overthink it.

 

[CaDragon]

This is good.
This is  really good.
I am quite eager to see what this mangaka can pull off here.
Thanks for the TL!

 

[Fox777]

Oh yeah, I like where this is going.

 

[shadowmasstitan]

So this manga is spoiler free because it's like "spoiler are us" in the first chapter. Then she just keeps spoiling everything he is going to do with her lol 😆

 

[NotSomeone]

The concept is interesting, but perfect visions essentially being "this is fate" is kinda tough to make a satisfying story of. And for romance, despite the visions being "random", Madarako does seem to have gotten enough of them to know pretty much everything she'd have learned through a normal relationship. It would always be a bit jarring to have a partner who always knows so much more about that kind of thing, on top of this skipping through her falling in love.

I'd be fucking terrified at the implications of fate being true and that the future's already written.
At least I could find solace in the fact that a got the cute monster girl wife to go with it.

 

[Umbrum]

If anything, I'm coming out of this manga with an interesting book to look into.

I've seen many characters with precognitive-ish abilities whose entire consciousness is shaped differently as a consequence, and also these abilities also have a specific shape that dictate how they work and their limits.

So far I don't really know if this is that kind of story.

 

[PtoH]

I've never even thought about romance for prophet like characters let alone reading about it. I will loging for this.

 

[z99]

This situation is only not nightmarish because the woman is attractive and the man is a pushover. Unfortunately it would be completely unacceptable to have a story where he was attracted to someone else and was upset that some random albeit talented demon woman insisted their marriage was fate.