Honzuki no Gekokujou ~Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen~ Dai 1-bu 「Hon ga Nai nara Tsukureba Ii!」 - Vol. 5 Ch. 22 - Shampoo Improv…

[mahtan]

@Longherin

Spoiler

Those are nice points but I just said what I would try to do. As shown Main herself don't actually try to do anything with the mane otehr than contain it can't be said that the mana can't be released from the body and in contrary we have seen instances of the mana leaving the body when she gets angry so maybe the body has ways to deal with it but it has a limitation to how much it can handle and people like Main produce too much mana for their body to process correctly but the mana still respond to amins attempts at manipulation by retreating instead of circulating by her body like when she is in fever. So far nothing indicates that control fo the mana is not possible and dicharging it seem to be possible but no one knows how to do it conciously.

I don't see how the leanguage barrier would be a problem, as you said most people are illiterate and she can talk normally, understanding and being understood by others, but taht would still not matter as we are assuming no one is going to teach us and we would be experimenting by ourself. Again I'm assuming that we don't see people using magic because it is considered too dangerous to experiment with and knowledge of it is limited to what they already know with only a few especialized people trying to elarn more about it. As such it doesn't matter we can't read as we would be trying things by ourselfs with no imput from others and that would start when we first realized we could manipulate the "fever" after hearing about how magic exists.

Lastly Main is not 7, she is 6 and even then she is not actually 6 she was an adult before dying and an adult that read a lot of books so she should have more knowledge and imagination than what she is showing right now. Treating Main as if she is a child is wrong and is a mistake I think the author is making now that you mentioned it... it seens to be a mistake most authors from this kind of "girl/women dies and gets reincarnated" do and we don't see such when the MC is a boy.

 

[mahtan]

@ kuzunagi13

Agreed! Everyone should know how to do a headpat!

 

[crustlessbread]

yay!! tysm

 

[RandomPasserby]

@WhimsiCat

Spoiler

So no Lutz x Myne... Good thing I dropped this novel (Their relationship hits too close to home so I began to feel a little uncomfortable reading it. I hope that Lutz wasn't ditched in a bad way)

 

[Longherin]

@mahtan
The problem is not the language barrier (she speaks the language) but is the fact that written language is arbitrary. Like...effort needs to be made to ensure that a little kid knows that the letters T-R-E-E is pronounced "tree" and means 'that tall thing outside with green leaves on it'. That effort can only be made when someone else is there to teach her (which Otto does, to some extent). This story also covers the fact that the teaching is NOT 21st century compulsory education, but is basically apprenticeship where the knowledge you learn is based on who's doing the teaching. Since Magic isn't shown to be commonplace, we can assume that magic is therefore similar to technical knowledge, and you would need a teacher of the field to teach you how to do things properly.

...which, leads to the next problem. I'm sure Maine/Myne/Main does have the imagination of someone who reads a lot, but uh...reading about doing something theoretical is not the same thing as being able to do that theoretical thing. She can definitely imagine doing things (such as stuffing a fever into a box) but...how do you 'imagine' doing magic? Or, I guess, more to the point, if you imagine that fire pops out from your hands then nothing happens, then did you fail at doing magic, or are you incapable of doing magic?
(To put it in a different way: if you were to meet an alien that never has the concept of legs, how do you describe walking? Like, they understand locomotion, but why do you need two spindly little sticks to do it?)

Next point: I think the point where the author stops treating Maine like a child is the point where things get dangerous. I actually like it when the author is aware that the person in question is in fact a small child and does not have the same social status as an adult, because it means they're seriously treating the problem of life experience. There's this gray area where we can debate whether if a person with an adult mind would behave like an adult with a child's brain, but that kind of talk sounds weird so let's not go there.

TLR A system that a normal human has never experienced would be hella hard to learn, and I'm very happy that this story gives magic the respect it deserves.
Like this is easily my favorite isekai for the simple reason that it goes into detail on the small problems that other stories gloss over so they can tell their own narratives.

 

[mahtan]

@Longherin
Well you are mistaken on two things:
You assume it is not possible to learn to write if no one teaches you, wich is false and there is a field of study that covers that (I forgot the correct name but it deals with codes and recovering ancient tests) but it is something a child would not be able to do. Luck us Main is not a child. She has the brain of a child and that biology limits her some but she still has the thinking capacity of an adult with the memories and thinking process of an adult and since she was a bibliophile she should be able to learn how to read by helself, like how shge learned the numbers after discovering they were numbers, but it is faster to have someone teach you.
You also seem to assume that it is impossible to learn something complex without defering to some previous knowledge, wich is also false otherwise we would not have the computer nor the network we are comunicating through right now. The problem here is not even you but that we are molded in a way that don't teach us nor let us discover by ourselfes ways to learn thing by trial or induction. In this case induction would be realizing that there is some energy in the body that raises when angry, gives a fever if out of control and can be manipulated by some mental image.

Other thing is that your experiment is lacking a few steps: first you have to try and find the source of the magic, this case mana, second is to be able to manipulate it and just then you can try to mold it in some way. Let's say you want fire, then you manipulate the energy with a image of having fire. Let's say that doesn't work, now you have to analise if something was wrong: first did the mana moved as I wanted? (to the point of a finger and left the body from that finger for exemple) lets say yes, then why the mana didn't change and from there try diferent ways. We would even have the advantage of knowing how the fire is made so we can try and find what we are lacking (in this case likely some font of energy since we have fuel in the form of mana and oxigen around us) and go from there to everything else.

I recomen you read the novel "harry potter and the methods of rationality" (hpmor.com), it's a good read and if it peaks your interest there is a whole section on the site with reading on real science and methods used to discover and learn about things one doesn't know and have no way to know other than extrapolate from previous knowledge.

Lastly I understand your view on the MC being an adult or child point but if we are to treat the MC as a child there is no point to the reincarnation and that most authors use it like that, just some Deus ex machina knowledge to fuel the plot but otherwise has no bearing on the character, is something very irritating to me and something we see done way better when the MC is a boy (they still have the mental capacity and misshaps of a child but with the though process and sense of maturity of an adult). I like this one a lot because it is close to what it should be with main being too mature for her age, because she is mentaly an adult, but with some childish moments when something goes wrong or her plans don't go as expected.

 

[WhimsiCat]

@TrueGoddessReincarnation: Depends on which AIDS you're talking about

Spoiler

Having insane level of magic power due to basically constantly doing the compression training? No, once your capacity grow it stays.

The whole constant fragility/collapse? Somewhat, she's cured of the fundamental problem for various reasons later on, but getting overexcited and collapsing never stop because getting excited = mana is active + less focus = self-overload.

It gets to an almost 'tradition' level really.

@RandomPasserby blah blah major spoiler blah blah open at your own risk etc

Spoiler

The final pairing (assuming author doesn't pull some twist) is Lutz x Turi.

No flirting romance like in shoujo manga or such, just more of 'we get along, we meet each other a lot, we both want to help Myne, there'll be people trying to get close to us for connections to Myne , etc'
So it's not a burning passion romance but a more...logical pairing to say (and if not for needing to marry I get a feeling those two will basically not bother with it at all, them workaholics)

@mahtan: First, replying to your earlier mention

Spoiler

>So the whole problem is that they have no idea how to use mana and it is too "dangerous" to research it?
>Seens kinda stupid but it is the setting we got I guess.

The nobles know how to use mana, but it's dangerous to let children practice it until they're more mentally stable at older age (it's why Myne survived for so long) A child is too mentally unstable to maintain a proper control of their mana, so they just attach a magic tool that drains excess mana and store it in magic stones which will be used for classes in school.
They don't teach commoners because the majority of commoners doesn't even have enough mana to do anything, and secondly the nobles does't regard commoners with any value besides almost slave level of workers 'if some commoners die, who care, soon enough they'll repopulate' 'it's not like they can actually help keep the place running, without our magic literally their crop yields will be shit, in fact if WE can't offer enough mana, maybe less mouth to feed is a good thing' etc
Basically the view of that world is more on practical side rather than sentimental side.

>If I was in Main position I would have just learned to control the mana, since it would be dangerous likely after going to the forest or requesting some place to stay alone for it... but likely would cause >some acident first since I would not know what I was doing.

She already is controlling them, but lacks the awareness that she can release it outside (since she's feeling it flows like blood flow, to imagine sending it out would be akin to normal person trying to imagine how to shoot out blood from their skin)
Also, magic tools works as a channel that makes it far easier to release magic as well as controlling the amount released.

However, here's something rather important.

A major spoiler I suppose

Spoiler

Until your baptism, you literally are not considered a 'person' or a 'citizen' yet in the eyes of the country.

This is because this whole country is actually made with magic and supported by the Gods in relation of the people offer prayers, the Gods offer their power in return.

It's only when you receive your baptism, which is in essence a magic contract registering your existence for the Gods to recognize, as well as allowing the nobles to use that contract to punish you in case you do illegal things, that you're properly a 'human' in this country.
If you die before your baptism, your death basically doesn't get recognized, at all, in fact on the wiki it's mentioned that they had 2 other children before Turi, and 2 more after Myne, but those didn't survive so eh.
(For nobles, the punishment is usually annulling their citizenship, which means their most powerful magic tool, a'staff' given by the Gods at school, stop working, these criminals are usually kept locked up and use as mana battery basically)

Even for nobles, they don't show their children to public until it's their baptism ceremony (which is also a social debut event), and in fact some might even be....'discard' from the family because the family don't have enough resources to support them to attain the 'you're now a REAL noble' status.
Although these are done pre-baptism, at the baptism the family essentially also announce "Yup, this is our kid", even if that kid might not be blood-related to them (like, say, a branch family have a child with high mana but lacks the fund to support them properly, so they have the main family baptize that child as their own and support them that way)

Part of Myne's character is that she's a flawed person.
She herself said in WN that someone once told her she's a "child who know, but can't comprehend" (back when she's Urano)

Basically while she can read and memorize a fair amount of things, her memories is not perfect and more often than not if it's not related to books she just doesn't care that much.
Right now she doesn't even know that fever is magic, or what she's doing to that magic with her shutting it in a lid like that.

Yes she subconsciously release her magic when she gets emotional, the thing is not only is it harder to release magic this way,

Spoiler

That magic has to be aimed at something (the target of her emotion)
As well as her magic becoming so active like that is also harming herself (see:being stuck in bed for days after each of those outbursts)


At this point in the story (or soon, before her baptism anyway) her magic will get to the point where her emotional outburst can kill people without magic/with weak magic from the sheer force of it (a proper noble will know how to counter such...unrefined use of magic tho)

(The moment with Lutz's brothers and the clay tablets was before she gain this level of magic power, that's why she didn't accidentally murder someone then)

 

[Longherin]

@mahtan
On Self-learning:
It would be totally possible for Maine to learn to write on her lonesome, I agree. However, learning on her own takes time and resources. Time is something that's hard to come by when impoverished, and she basically has no resources (or at least extremely limited resources) and...well, learning to read and write is a bit hard when you have nothing to read and nothing that can be written on. (This, I imagine, is also why she lost her shit when her clay tablets were stepped on--they were beyond precious given her current situation).
In other words - If I were to ask you to learn, say, Sanskrit, (and you didn't know Sanskrit to start). Without looking at any reference material, how long would it take you to be able to read and write in that language? Likewise, if I gave you a list of pronunciations with no indication of what word corresponds to what, how long would it take you to learn how to write a list of fifty words based on their pronunciation? ...Well, ok, a little material: you have access to the numbers.
(Hard mode: you're an adult and have to work a day job to keep yourself fed.)
(Maine mode: you have a disease that literally kills you when you're tired.)
Like the fact that we both know English means that we have the linguistic knowledge to write down a word with reasonable accuracy upon hearing it, but that's only because we both have gone through at least...what, seven years of parents and teachers teaching us how to write? (I don't know how old you are but I assume you are at least ten.) ((Yes I'm aware ten year olds can write down sentences that they hear, but the point still stands: learning takes time.))

On Magic:
It is also entirely reasonable for her to systematically test and experiment on how to properly use magic. One caveat: every wrong experiment has the chance to cause death. How many wrong experiments would it take for her to get to something resembling the correct answer? Let's say that she has to rest for a day after exhausting herself.
Each failed attempt to learn magic WILL exhaust the poor girl, which means she has to spend the next day in bed.
Each failed attempt is also not spending mana, which means it's still building up inside her.
Each failed attempt would (very likely) also drain willpower, which means she's less likely to fight off the consuming the next time around (I want to call it consumption so bad but noooo).
Let's say, for the sake of easy math, that she has a 5% chance of death every time she fails to properly channel magic. This is pretty low odds, but let's pretend.
I haven't done the math (Probability is bad for me) but I'm pretty sure that she's going to die at around the 20th experiment. If the disease is deadlier (which it seems to be) then she'll die faster.
(BTW I have read Methods of Rationality, but I found how it treated learning to be weird enough that it threw me off of the story)

In General:
Like if Maine had all the trappings of a noble life (access to resources and time) then yeah, she'll learn how to handle magic no problem.
Unfortunately, she A] is poor and B] can die on a failed experiment, so...y'know. The deck's stacked pretty high against her.
Like she can be the most methodical person in the world and these problems would not be any more solved.

...Though this does pose an interesting question. If Maine does end up casting (say, fire). Would she burn down the city? It doesn't look like her housing area is up to code.

 

[mahtan]

@Longherin
On the self-learning: It would depend on a few things, like am I a child or an adult, adults have a harder time learning new things, am I able to speak Sanskrit, being able to speak the leaguage is already a big help, and if I live in a place where the use of Sanskrit is commom place, the exposure to it also makes learning faster especially if I'm a child. Note I'm not saying it would be easy or quickly but it would not be as hard as you assume if we are talking about a situation just like the one Main is. That's all. Also I don't know about you but I don't really get tired when I'm studying and being concicous of my situation, in Main cases, I would stop it as soon as I fealt I could be getting tired.
I'm not a native english speaker, I learned english by playing video games with no formal study of it, I know it is not the same but it's something. (I was 14 when I did it).

On the magic: You raise a good point, we could end up killing ourself with the experiments but that is why there are procedures for it. You also assumed that the experiments will exaust Main but that is not clear and they could be stoped at the first sign of tiredness or something going wrong. Remember that the first step is to learn how to circulate mana inside one's own body while controlling the amount of mana one's use so the chance of a over charger would be small if done right. You also assume that someone that would try this would lose their will by each failure when it is a known thing that each failure is just one step closer to sucess, but I agree with you that most people can't think like that.
But just to be clear are you saying you wouldn't try it or just defending how the story is progressing?
I have very little problem with the story as I realize that is how a normal person would likely act in that situation. Just would like to try and expand on how people think about the magic system presented so far and from what you are saying you see it as impossible to do something without some previous knowledge about it, wich can't be else no one would have been able to create that fore knowledge to begin with... unless we talking spirits or gods giving it but so far nothing would indicate this. Yes it would take a long time but it is not like there is someone that would just teach us so far and it is not like we would be freaking out about books so we would have more "free time" than Main has.

So you read it? Great, I loved the book. I'm too much of a sucker for smart characters especially when they are smart but they are presented in a somewhat realistic way, like how Harry is smart but still a child that has too much of an ego because of it or how Tom is also smart and experienced but because of that aways downplay those he is with. The way it takes learning is weird because we are used to learn by memorization and aplication and hardly comes upon a situation in wich we have to learn soemthing new, that has no previous information about it, so the way Hermione learn is more analogue to us than the way Harry learns. Afterall before the information was avaliable someone had to do all those mental gymnastics to reach that conclusion and experiment with it to verify if it was true or not so we could learn from it afterwards.

That is another good point I had not tought about, what if things were to go out of control in the "make fire" part... if one loses control of their mana it could be catastrophic.... well maybe fire is not a good idea to start with -_-'
Thanks!

 

[mahtan]

@WhimsiCat
I see. Thanks for the information, I have not read the WN so I only know what was said so far in the manga.
Well it seems there is reasons to learn magic by oneself to a point of being untouchable and to not go through the baptism cerimony of to fake it somehow. That's good to know...
In some way the more I learn about the setting the less I like it....

 

[WhimsiCat]

@mahtan:
Yeah, a lot of things get revealed the further along, and explains why something that seem unreasonable (noble 'hogging' magic, etc) makes more sense.

>Well it seems there is reasons to learn magic by oneself to a point of being untouchable and to not go through the baptism cerimony of to fake it somehow. That's good to know...

Spoiler

You can't.








Even if you self-taught magic to the point of not having to rely on magic tools to survive excess mana (so far there's 0 example of this btw, even Myne herself would die without magic tools to siphon off excess mana), the difference between having magic tools and not is overwhelming, and more specifically the Gods-given staff.
Want to make magic tools? Staff required.
Want to use stronger magic? Staff plz.
Need to fight the magic-eating tronbe in its full grown state? Staff to enchant your weapon with magic-dispelling property (or when Myne eventually does it 'old style', asking for blessing from the God for that power)
Need to operate the magic circle that controls the domain? Staff.
Want to make a water gun that shoot rain of arrows? Staff, also, Myne, stahp.

The power difference between Gods and humans is also a factor, even Myne with her ridiculous magic power is still within human standard (otherwise there'd be objections to her getting married if her magic power is too high that no human can even possibly make a kid with her), and the Gods are way above that.

You have to understand that this whole country is literally made of magic, as in it was a barren desert before a God planted himself here to make a safe haven for people with magic power (yes, even the commoners in this land are magic-sensitive, albeit their mana is too low to do anything)
The Gods are supporting this country because of that one God, not because they give a shit about people.

Btw, one of the main and most important job for nobles is to basically pour magic into the land to sustain it/give it life.
This range from basically magical fertilizer, where nobles create this magical liquid via a divine tool that when poured onto field will increase crop yields in proportion to the mana used.
To recharging the magic circle that keep the country from returning to the barren desert that it was before the God reshaped it

 

[mahtan]

@WhimsiCat

Spoiler

I see. That does seem complicated, I don't think you need the staff though. It likely makes things easier but I don't see why it would be mandatory other than having outside help in the manipulation of the mana, like it can be done without the staff but since they have it no one bothered in learning how not to depend on it, same with the wish, it could be that the God gives his own mana to fufill the wish but from what you said it is more likely just guiding the beggers mana for them.
Defeating God is kinda of a cliche plot but becomes a little unrealistic when everything you have is given and controlled by said God like you said. Still don't like the forced servituide and giving absolute power over me to someone else like that but if it is unavoidable the way is to find some breach and break it later in someway....

 

[WhimsiCat]

@mahtan:

Spoiler

Again, if it's even possible to somehow ditch the Gods, or even just the Staff, no human has ever done it, and so far even Myne herself say it's impossible to compare to them in power.
Myne's magic teacher is basically a mad scientist type and even he never speak about anyway of replicating Staff's magic without it.

I think you're basically confusing the ease of using magic in this world with other series with more normal fantasy 'wave a hand, throw fireball' sort of magic.
It's not, the earlier you get rid of that notion, the earlier you can get rid of your own prejudice towards 'magic'




Heck, Myne even said that despite their seemingly human appearance, they're a different beings, living in different perspective altogether.







To give example of that, here's a paraphrase of a conversation between 2 Goddesses.
"Look, stop crying over this ruined weave" (speaking to the Weaving Goddess, said to use threads of humans' fate to weave tapestry of history)
"But, everything else was so nice outside that one bit..."
"Seriously, if she fail, you can always just reweave it"
by that, she means DELETING THE PAST AND REDOING IT.

The Gods don't just manipulate magic, they literally control all that exist.




In a way, the 'accidental' moving away from the faith is what's causing the country to head towards destruction.

 

[Siquall]

Rub rub rub rub rub rub

 

[Mck26]

Benno HUmmmm

 

[Goretantath]

last page bottom left panel = 2 cute x3

 

[Liquidxlax]

wow, and otto wanted 3 years of work out of Myne for a the same sized bottle

 

[nan0bitz]

@Goretantath
my fav page of the chapter
so adorbs :3