N - Ch. 26 - Z

[MangaDex]

 

[Darcow]

NIG-

 

[Babymech2]

Not scary

 

[Al_Azif]

I'm sorry, what?

 

[77BLc9JwJGpLVARkamJx]

Wow class, we've completed the alphabet!

 

[kharasiri]

My spiels on past chapter comment sections have been vindicated. It's interesting how this manga pretty much uses supernatural magazines and mass hysteria to critique the way narratives are created in the current age of mass media.

It's a shame the reporter guy broke down and couldn't take it after losing his daughter and his sense of purpose (and maybe even his wife due to the trauma splitting them up).

 

[NyanNyandere]

Wet fart of an ending. Kind of disappointing, too many things left improperly addressed for what they were.

 

[DarthVitrial]

So… the letter N that appeared on the blackboard when God came to school, the lady who got stabbed with an N on her back, the lady who landed in an N shape after a car crash, the “please open the gap” named N… “unrelated supernatural incidents”?
I get that the author was trying for a “people always need an explanation” thing and having people tie a bunch of unrelated things together into a bigger mythology, but it definitely feels like the first batch of chapters were building to something very specific and then the author changed their mind midway through.

chapter K in particular really seems to be spelling out for the reader that there’s a single supernatural force behind it.


edit; I guess we’re supposed to treat everything we see prior to chapter 14 as unreliable narrator that was edited later to add N to it? And really the only original N was the scribbling in chapter 1?

 

[Cool.Ice]

My spiels on past chapter comment sections have been vindicated. It's interesting how this manga pretty much uses supernatural magazines and mass hysteria to critique the way narratives are created in the current age of mass media.

It's a shame the reporter guy broke down and couldn't take it after losing his daughter and his sense of purpose (and maybe even his wife due to the trauma splitting them up).

I believe the chapters were seen in the eyes of Hearsay, just like in the manga, incidents have been hyperbole towards N.
Like, the school was just burned, but to connect it to N, the blackboard N was added to the story

 

[Cool.Ice]

One of the most unique mangas I ever read
Sad the author had to rush by the end

 

[3141592653589]

edit; I guess we’re supposed to treat everything we see prior to chapter 14 as unreliable narrator that was edited later to add N to it? And really the only original N was the scribbling in chapter 1?

A lot of the early chapters are basically the "Fukushima version" of events, where unrelated stories he was told get some mysterious connection to N added to tie them together, and we see the "real" version of them in the back half of the story, like chapter 4 showing us The Tale of the High School Girl and the Haunted Karaoke Box, and then chapter 16 having Hiruma talking to the girl and learning how Fukushima heard the story from her while working as her tutor and embellishing it to give it more punch. You've also got chapter 5's The Tale of the Cute Omegle Girl and the Photo-eating Goldfish, and then chapter 18 shows us Fukushima hearing the original story in a restaurant and immediately making up a connection to the school massacre in chapter 2.

Some of the de-mythologizing starts before chapter 14, though. Chapter 3 shows us the NEET reporter hearing about N and going to investigate, where he meets a strange man, whose backstory we get in chapter 13: he's a socially-isolated, presumably mentally-ill child obsessed with biblical prophecy, with a particular fixation on a theoretical 14th apostle who is the real culprit who betrayed Jesus, and who he refers to in his schizo-notebook as N because N is the 14th letter of the alphabet. Later on, as a teenager or young adult, he sees the beginnings of the media frenzy over N on TV and goes to investigate the mysterious shrine. Chapter 14.1 then shows him running into and ultimately murdering the NEET reporter there, and ending up in prison (also, his haircut in prison makes him look so much like Shindou that I totally red herring'd myself by thinking this was a flash-forward of Shindou in prison, but, no, it's a totally different dude). This same dude also appears in chapter 11 asking for directions to the bus stop in a police station before the police officer he talks to commits suicide, but according to chapter 14.1 it wasn't a suicide at all, and Crazy Dude actually murdered the policeman.

The plot's basically about how the original lie about N that the boy told to avoid getting into trouble after his friends drowned spirals out of control, helped along by Fukushima's click-baiting and people's innate desire to want an explanation for seemingly-inexplicable tragedies, which feed into each other and keep tying together unrelated incidents under the umbrella of N. And this innate desire for an explanation for the inexplicable will lead to this all happening again, with the kids showing up where it all started and one of them going "Whoa, what's with that creepy letter? It's like, a Z or something."

There's also a little bit of mystery left after it all, though. There are some genuinely unexplained paranormal occurrences throughout the story: Shindou's prophetic visions of people dying are the biggest one, but there's also Hiruma's recording getting mysteriously corrupted in chapter 17, his business card getting turned pitch-black in chapter 20, and his ghostly encounter that set him off down the path of a paranormal reporter in chapter 19. There's also the rather odd circumstances of Sanae's death, which may or may not have been just a tragic accident. We never get an explanation of any sort for these, but, well, when you stop and think about it all of these things have gotta be the work of Z, right?

 

[OWMWO]

So it eNdZ with..
EVERYBODY CAN LIEZ, EVERYBODY CAN DIEZ.

One of the most unique mangas I ever read
Sad the author had to rush by the end

Not sure if rush, the pacing and all feels right, with some random mystery filler to fill in some gaps.
This end makes this story feels like a love letter to twilight zone or x-files.

I guess we’re supposed to treat everything we see prior to chapter 14 as unreliable narrator that was edited later to add N to it? And really the only original N was the scribbling in chapter 1?

My take with this ending is, it is what happen when unfounded (supernatural) rumours blows up. How people behave when they are mass believing and panicking, putting them into a tunnel vision. Refusing to accept that it is just coincidence or it is something entirely different, and refusing to just ignore and let it go.

We never get an explanation of any sort for these, but, well, when you stop and think about it all of these things have gotta be the work of Z, right?

N does not exist.
Z DOES EXIST.

Supernatural things that happened in between ch 17 and 20, none of them are doing harm or having any lingering consequences. If so then there is no need to meddle with it, better to brush it off, ignore it, and eventually forget it, why bother? Think this ending is giving jabs to that way of thinking, of how people tends to believe what they read, without bothering to cross check the facts, or tends to relate things that actually is not related at all, blindly connect the dots because WHY NOT?

Everyone are free to choose what to believe, yet everyone for most of the time choose to believe the bad 'truth' rather than the explainable but unexciting 'truth'.

 

[Hikineet]

Thanks for the chapter.

 

[Nitrorare]

NIG-

Chapter 7

 

[farranpoison]

What feels really odd to me was that the transition from last chapter to this one feels so disjointed, like I was expecting some kind of reaction to the accident at the beginning of this chapter but no, it's ignored and instead the reporter guy commits suicide with no explicit explanation and so does the kid.

But the thing at the end where it hints this whole debacle will happen again but with "Z" this time is great. People really can't stop trying to look for meaning in meaningless things.

 

[OWMWO]

instead the reporter guy commits suicide with no explicit explanation and so does the kid.

Have to re-read the whole chapters as the answers are bits spread out on those.
But if you have no time for that, check ch 19 and ch 20. Reporter dude wife have tell him what is wrong with him, he try to debunk N but at what cost? He lost sight of his family, one that should matter to him the most in his life. N has NTR him from his beloved.

Now that he got his goal, what N truly is, nothing is left for him on the end of road but N. He can see Nothing and think Nothing but N, that he has debunked himself.
Him making the shrine and put all the N words possibly is his last straw. As long as he live, N as concept will keep living free in his head, and it slowly eats him till he become an empty husk for N.

Edit : as for hanging rope kid, safe to say he is not in too deep and thus he is spared, forgetting N as another thing in past that is better off forgotten.
Sometimes ignorance is really a bliss.

 

[schwnt]

So supernatural is real, but N is a lie. Most supernatural incidents were real, except those unambiguously involve N, those were fake, tampered with or caused by human

The mom dying in N shape was probably fake or exaggerated rumor

Chapter "N" explained it's not N but a box => it's all a view port

But they are still living in a world full of anomalies.
MC (Hiruma) encountered 3 anomalies (4 if you count his daughter's death): the shadow haunted him for decades and turned his card black; the interview with the karaoke withness; the audio of "God" slaughtering the classroom.

The karaoke story is probably fake. The girl is another liar and "Takkun" is the same as "N", but the obsession took shape and created the burn mark
The fish tank girl is probably another "liar" wanted to build her own myths => video call strangers and do wacky shits

The suit dude died because he severed his own lies

 

[ResidentialVisitor]

Maybe I missed something, but was there ever a real explanation for the school massacre, or why the survivor is tearing up class photos and feeding them to fish? That was the main thing I was hoping to find out.

 

[Fantasie841]

A great ending!

Thanks for translating it to the end!

 

[Dverin_Oshiban_Duren]

Maybe I missed something, but was there ever a real explanation for the school massacre, or why the survivor is tearing up class photos and feeding them to fish? That was the main thing I was hoping to find out.

It's explained in chapter 17 and 18 (Q and R)
The school massacre was a murder + arson and the girl who was feeding photos to fish wasn't actually the survivor but just someone who looked like her (probably crazy or trolling). The rest was added by Fukushima.