Mieruko-chan - Ch. 66

[GambierBay]

Man comes in and makes things even more confusing for poor miko

 

[phil777]

Damn, that skull headed butler thing's the coolest character design to come out of this series. Guy was badass

He reminds me of a certain demon in Shin Megami Tensei. Bifrons, I think.

 

[phil777]

I think ghosts are like people. Most are good, but despite that, there's nothing more dangerous in our world than another human being, and the evil ones spend every day practicing hiding it, while you'll only be able to practice detection in the worst situations to do so - when they're already unmasked.

Ghosts are basically leftover energy from the time the person was still alive. Since they are now incorporeal, said energy can take the form it wants, depending on the attachment to whatever tethers it to the living world. This is why Mieruko-chan's dad looks "mostly" harmless, compared to other ghosts we've seen so far, and others have more... Aggressive or frightening looks.

 

[K_Takuya]

I like how both of their explanations paints their character.

Spoiler: A lot of words

Seto doesn't simplify anything, and his understanding of concept is told as is therefore confusing because he doesn't try to cater to anyone but himself. Which is in line with how pragmatic his approach to solving it. Romm oversimplifies it, obscuring the details that might be important, mostly because he doesn't really trust anyone.

The whole flashback in the last chapter revealing that the dad also sees them, and with how he is starting to really get involved in the story, I'm pretty sure that the dad is going to pass on in this arc. I'm spitballing here, but with the theme being that "you may never acknowledge an apparition" he probably gonna start talking to Miko as if he's rambling.

I get the feeling that the restaurant ghost, was telling seto to leave Miko alone. Starting to think that most of the ghosts are chill.

Nah, the ghost is probably talking to the crowd (as in Miko, Romm, Mitsue, Seto and the 4 ghosts with him). Seto mentions "restaurant rule" which is probably to not overcrowd a table and stand in the way because it's bothering the customers, and to not loiter by ordering something hence Seto moving the food to another table for them.

 

[AkiTooru]

Page 2: "I regret what I didn't" <- "didn't do"
Page 29: "Miko has nothing to do with you in the first place, doesn't she?" <- this one I'd just change to ", right?" because the correct question tag should be "does she?" but that still sounds a bit weird.

 

[finalm]

Because he is not the original programmer so he doesn't have access to fix the code and debug. That's why he talks about authority I think. He doesn't have the authority of the administrator.

The problem I have with this is that it's both to vague and too specific at the same time, somehow. This "programmer, modder" anecdote implies they're somehow warping reality on a fundamental level, but in regards to what? The existence of those supernatural entities itself? It's like a conversation within a dream, where the words seem to make sense until you wake up, then it's just gibberish without context.

 

[Kampfarsch]

"Hey can you tell me what that old guy is"
"Yeah, 动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门"

Nice

If that middle aged man is the Reaper, i wonder what is the Hooded-Santa-looking ghost in the trains are? I mean, he killed and absorb evil spirit that possessing people right?

Most ghosts that have a level of sentience seem to fill some kind of caretaker role cleaning up
All the small guys are just animals eating each other

 

[finalm]

just because a person is a debugger that doesn't mean that person can debug any section of the game, in a big project, a dev can only have an authority to access a very specific portion of a project as for who is he talking about its probably the team who handle the ghost section of this game and the root of this problem is probably outside of their scope if there is such a thing anyway.

Sorry, but that's just nonsense and I'm telling you that as a long time dev. Even the most control-happy corporation wouldn't operate like that, since there's no benefits and only hurdles for their trouble. Actual access restrictions apply for any confidential data a system might process (which in the case of a game is a non issue), but that is solved by having multiple staging environments, some of which might have real data and the rest something made up, you don't restrict code for devs unless it's not a project they work on at all (even then you usually don't, for too many reasons for me to elaborate in this post).

for modding, it would be easy to understand if we say this game (their world) is an online game, yes, you can mod online games but there is a limit to that, besides what they are doing is not really debugging nor fixing a bug using mods because that would assume that the problem would never occurred again, what they are doing is just using their unique skill in game to mitigate the effect of the bug to a number of people within their reach.

Let's start from the fact that in the overwhelming majority of cases you can not in fact mod online games. At least not mod and still play them online - it's a little thing that the industry calls cheating. As for the rest this paragraph, that would mean this whole allegory of bugfixning/modding is defunct, because as you yourself stated, it's not at all what is supposed to be going on.

 

[Umbrum]

Kudos to the translator!!
Seto's exposition reminds me of Brandon Sanderson's writing and to translate all that from Japanese to English... Well I don't even know the word to use here so I'll just say GOOD JOB!!

nah, Sanderson's lore dumps are pretty easy to get, here I don't even know how to approach his explanation.

 

[Levankua]

Me and the boys pulling up

 

[VINT64]

"Let me explain in an easy-to-understand way"
Piles up a bunch of metaphors and parables.
Focking middle-aged men, I hate them.
But it seems Seto-san is hurt by his own circumstances in the past, that's why he tries to exorcise anything in his sight...excuse me, hearing, as soon as he can.

Great thanks to good sir for translating it in a coherent and convincing way.

 

[Pyras]

Basically, Seto said it's impossible to fully understand things. What you see isn't what you see. It's a distorted reflection of what you perceive. Hence the middle age man ghost is apparently different to different ppl.

 

[S0LUS]

His "explanation" was so bizarre made me wonder if we were going full Otherside Picnic mode and we were just watching him drag everyone through the interstitial space in real time lol
please leave her alone UBL-san, she's having enough trouble already without needing to start carrying a bag of bolts and a gun at all times as well!

 

[Shinigamisama]

Seto is savage dang. Good thing that dog horse thing is on their side. Ngl, Miko having those mafia looking ghost looks cool.

 

[Gu7]

Seto-san, stop aura farming already

 

[Mr_Humpykins]

My interpretation of what Seto said:

1. Perception is not fixed.
   • The folded-up map analogy means reality (or what Miko and us see) only feels solid once we perceive it, but that solidity is an illusion.
   • Ghosts exist in a way that doesn’t conform to human categories like alive/dead” or real/imaginary.
2. Ghosts are distortions.
   • They’re not stable, physical entities. They resist being defined. When you try to put them into words or concepts, the definition falls apart ("outline falls apart")
   • They feed on or twist human attempts at understanding (“they consume definition”).
3. They overlap with our world.
   • “All things overlap inherently” suggests the world of the living and the world of the dead aren’t truly separate, but layered together.
   • That’s why some people perceive them differently (like how Miko sees a middle-aged man, while Rom seemed to see something else previously). Their appearance is filtered through each person’s mind and perception.
4. They affect thoughts.
   • By existing on these fluctuating “phases,” the apparations seem to interfere with perception and even “infect” thoughts, making people see disturbing forms.
5. Seto’s role.
   • He claims he positions himself as a kind of buffer, someone who works in the “gaps” between these overlapping realities.
   • He doesn’t eliminate the distortions (he admits he can’t rewrite the rules or close the “door”), but he prevents them from crossing over too far and messing with the balance of the world.

My interpretation of what Rom is saying:

• Rom translates Seto’s more poetic explanation into gamer-speak
• Ghosts/apparitions are "unexpected bugs” in reality.
• Seto (and maybe the other exorcists) are considered “modders” who try to patch over the bugs with workarounds, since they don’t have the authority (like devs, which would be what? gods?) to fix the underlying problem.
• In other words, ghosts aren’t supposed to manifest so strongly in the world, but since they do, people like Seto and Rom try to contain or mitigate the damage without being able to erase it completely.

TL;DR
Ghosts Are:

• conceptual distortions that overlap reality, and don't have fixed rules on how they operate
• perceived differently by each individual, colored by our individual minds, personalities, fears, personalities, etc. (which makes sense based on what the characters have said thus far)
• Unstable, undefined, existences that are potentially infectious to human thought (kind of like a cognito hazard?) Which may imply Miko instinctively tries to ignore them, so they don't "infect" her and why it's so important for the distortions to not notice that she can percieve them
• Unsolvable bugs in the system of this universe's reality, which exorcists try to contain but can't inherently fix.

 

[NotSomeone]

Do let me know if I'm wrong, so what I can understand from what Seto said basically:

• The existent of "ghost" and "apparitions" is a distorted concept that can fool some individual (like Miko) into seeing them while they actually weren't there, like an illusion, but like a parallel universe, they do exist on the "other side" which was why he said "All things overlap."
• You can't touch them physically.
• They don't have a defined form, but their appearance will form depends on each individual's thought (usually lean on the disturbing aspect of the mind)
• Since they exist while also not at the same time, so they can blur the line between the living and the dead. Seto is the one who "stand in the gaps" so he can "send them back" to where they came from, but he can't close the "door" that lead them here?

Ghosts are distortions of reality that exist in another plane of existence which overlaps with our own.
You can't define them, but your brain forces them into a "mold" (perception) so that you can perceive them as something.
No matter what they look like to you or anyone else, they have a "fixed" meaning.

The most interesting part is the:
"Wavelengths get disturbed and infect the thoughts. Symbols cloak their form in disguises."
This means that Ghosts, these things that we can't define and that our brain forces into molds are more or less memetic hazards, they are wavelengths of some force and symbols that can affect us by just being able to perceive them.

Something being a wavelength, you can cancel it out it out with an equal and opposite wave, that's probably what Sato does.

This is all the probable in universe science to explain Ghosts and Exorcisms.

 

[Arexty]

Never a dull moment in poor Miko's life...

My interpretation of what Seto said:

1. Perception is not fixed.
   • The folded-up map analogy means reality (or what Miko and us see) only feels solid once we perceive it, but that solidity is an illusion.
   • Ghosts exist in a way that doesn’t conform to human categories like alive/dead” or real/imaginary.
2. Ghosts are distortions.
   • They’re not stable, physical entities. They resist being defined. When you try to put them into words or concepts, the definition falls apart ("outline falls apart")
   • They feed on or twist human attempts at understanding (“they consume definition”).
3. They overlap with our world.
   • “All things overlap inherently” suggests the world of the living and the world of the dead aren’t truly separate, but layered together.
   • That’s why some people perceive them differently (like how Miko sees a middle-aged man, while Rom seemed to see something else previously). Their appearance is filtered through each person’s mind and perception.
4. They affect thoughts.
   • By existing on these fluctuating “phases,” the apparations seem to interfere with perception and even “infect” thoughts, making people see disturbing forms.
5. Seto’s role.
   • He claims he positions himself as a kind of buffer, someone who works in the “gaps” between these overlapping realities.
   • He doesn’t eliminate the distortions (he admits he can’t rewrite the rules or close the “door”), but he prevents them from crossing over too far and messing with the balance of the world.

My interpretation of what Rom is saying:

• Rom translates Seto’s more poetic explanation into gamer-speak
• Ghosts/apparitions are "unexpected bugs” in reality.
• Seto (and maybe the other exorcists) are considered “modders” who try to patch over the bugs with workarounds, since they don’t have the authority (like devs, which would be what? gods?) to fix the underlying problem.
• In other words, ghosts aren’t supposed to manifest so strongly in the world, but since they do, people like Seto and Rom try to contain or mitigate the damage without being able to erase it completely.

TL;DR
Ghosts Are:

• conceptual distortions that overlap reality, and don't have fixed rules on how they operate
• perceived differently by each individual, colored by our individual minds, personalities, fears, personalities, etc. (which makes sense based on what the characters have said thus far)
• Unstable, undefined, existences that are potentially infectious to human thought (kind of like a cognito hazard?) Which may imply Miko instinctively tries to ignore them, so they don't "infect" her and why it's so important for the distortions to not notice that she can percieve them
• Unsolvable bugs in the system of this universe's reality, which exorcists try to contain but can't inherently fix.

My interpretation of Seto's explanation is if, put into biological terms, that reality in Miko's world is like a greater living organism made up of many different individual spiritual cells, microbes like gut bacteria, etc. all stacked together and the Middle-Aged Guy stalking Miko's family is a kind of aberration in the most basic mechanics of the entire system like a cancerous cell that replicates infinitely or more aptly a kind of spiritual protein-folding prion disease like Kuru or Creutzfeldt-Jakob that once contact is made with by other normal spirits closes the "margin" Seto was speaking of and initiates a destructive reaction as happened to Romm (and implied to have happened to Miko's Dad).

I'm relieved Romm has made a recovery plus seeing him, Mitsue-san, and Miko sharing a relaxing meal together was very sweet. An important detail revealed was whatever calamitous thing Miko's group unleashed on the mountain is an entirely separate issue from the one currently plaguing her according to Seto (possibly setting up for a future arc). At least for now however, she has some bodyguards though how they'll play with Pii-chan and Hana's aura will be interesting to find out.

 

[Zhangar]

Damn, that skull headed butler thing's the coolest character design to come out of this series. Guy was badass

I'm marveling at the sheer... aura? is that the right term? of this ghost staring down an entire table of exorcists and telling them to behave.

 

[kzaofkkua]

The fact that Seto did not want to mess with restaurant ghost means that one is a big shot.