Designs - Vol. 1 Ch. 4 - Nara Plant Project

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Thank you for the new chapter!

I have so many thoughts reading this one.

1. I'm thinking of the Remembrance of Earth trilogy, of alien invasion and how humans decided to fight with intellectuals. It's science fiction, so it includes a lot of... things. RoE is based on physics, here biology. I wonder if there's a science fiction world where everything encompasses in an utopia or dystopia.

2. I know a bit of German. So, I was a bit surprised seeing the word "Umwelt" here. (I assume it was a capitalised word, well, it's manga and most words are all capitalised.) I wonder if the author used it like that in Japanese characters or the alphabet. I never thought of "Umwelt" beyond linguistic. But now, I see it's a concept for a lot of other subjects too, originated from Germain-speaking people. It's interesting how I immediately thought somewhere along the line of English as: around my/our world or my/our surrounding world where "I/we" is at the centre of a 360 degree revolving surrounding.

3. That leads to how grams uses the word "see" as in "I can see it". But, grams, most of us have five senses, shouldn't we use more. But at the same time, maybe he's focusing on vision? Maybe it's a figure of speech that is physically and figuratively? Maybe "sense" is vague or a considered taboo? Some people have impaired vision or no vision. I wonder how that would be to grams. And he seems like the type that is wise and sure of himself (to a certain extent), but what about hear, touch, smell, taste? Again, maybe figuratively they can see as well, even the impaired.

Edit: Also feel. (Touch is physical, feel is feeling inside, sometimes unexplainable.) So six senses after all.

4. I also wonder if he is implying something along the line where Okuda is the "chosen one" or the "messiah". (Now, Dune. We have been blessed with good sci-fi fictions these days.)

5. "Change" is also something intriguing to be pondered about. Grams makes me think that way just now, haha.

6. I love the contrast between animalistic (zooming out) and humanistic (zooming in) in page 34 which is immediately followed by something supernatural in the spread.

7. What happened to Babe? Is she the short, light-coloured hair girl?

It's such an exciting slow-burn! I wonder how will it unfold in 5 volumes! Thank you, again.
 
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I was a bit surprised seeing the word "Umwelt" here. I wonder if the author used it like that in Japanese characters or the alphabet.
The way it's used in the Japanese raw is "環世界" (kaisekai), which is the exact biological term used in Japanese for "Umwelt", or the "Self-Centered World".
It has furigana (side-text that indicates pronunciation) written as "ウムヴェルト", which means "Umwelt". So the term is intended to be pronounced as "Umwelt".

It's used in the same way as the one-shot that Designs is based off, actually titled "Umwelt".
I definitely recommend you read it, if you haven't already!
https://mangadex.org/title/5bc1b560-178e-4604-9350-aa04972a581a/umwelt-igarashi-daisuke-anthology

What happened to Babe? Is she the short, light-coloured hair girl?
Yeah, Babe is the blonde leopard and Anne is the one with long black hair.

It's such an exciting slow-burn! I wonder how will it unfold in 5 volumes! Thank you, again.
Thank you very much for the support!!
 
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@grimdotmp4 Whoa! Thank you so much for replying and explaining your translation. Honestly, it feels like such a privilege to me! Your work is really, really good! Please let the team know I'm really thankful for everyone's hard work too.

Yes, I have placed Umwelt in my "plan to read" list. I think it's the prequel to Designs, but released after. So, I'd like to finish Designs first (if I'm patient enough haha).

Please take care and keep up the good work!
 

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