Wtf is up with that convenient newspaper clipping on page 5?? Are you telling me this guy's been holding onto that in his back pocket for years, waiting for the right moment to rock Yoshina's world? Crazy.
By which I mean lame plot device
Also maybe I'm only noticing now, but this episode was full of repeated backgrounds and face shots that were basically the same :/
I compiled some of them in a google drive folder, in case anyone's interested what exactly I mean
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1egLXILKZOQT34dulGs2wg7kXg-v6L77x?usp=drive_link
Totally feel this. With the hiatuses between chapters in the past few years and the subsequent lag in scanlations, it's easy to forget details. We only know this stuff off the top of our heads because we're like steeped in it.
The clipping didn't just magically appear and he wasn't hanging onto it, it was just a background storyline that was dribbled out over time and got a bit lost in the shuffle. The actual fuck is this:
In
CH 26 he and Yoshino are talking about the truck that crashed into the Kirigaya headquarters, which apparenlty piqued Shouma's interest and is probably why in
CH 28 he goes to talk to one of his contacts and finds out about a weird accident that happened with a truck 20yrs prior. The guy who did it is released from prison and subsequently killed according to the scanlations.
In
CH 29 Shouma goes to visit his family's graves and stops by the Somei plot, notices there's a discrepancy in the death dates he knows and what's on the stones. He calls Yoshino, who is like 'Bruh, my dad died like months before I was born' and he's all 'Nah, kid, the dates don't lie I'll get the old man to confirm'. He checks out her mom's family plot and notices a posthumous Buddhist name and since Kyosuke was likely adopted by Hirota family and the death date is verrrry close to the year of Kyosuke's, he's curious.
In
CH 30 he goes to the library, looks up old news papers, makes a copy of the article about an attack on the Somei house that aligns with the death date on the Hirota marker. He calls Yoshino to tell her what he's figured out, just after Azami has tossed her phone in the bushes.
Then comes the kidnapping (
CH 30-31), Azami tells Yoshino her dad's death was not an accident, the escape, they're sitting int eh hospital, and now Shouma has more proof in his pocket. It is a bit deus ex machina but on the other hand it kind of makes sense that things would be happening pretty quickly, but he definitley wasn't hiding it from her, he was learning it too.
So like it felt like five years with all the hiatuses and scanlation lags, but the time between him figuring shit out and getting the article was maybe a few weeks then between getting the article and showing it to her was like less than a day.
The repeated backgrounds and faces have been a thing since the start and it's something a lot of mangaka do-- the faces for comedic effect, the backgrounds because literally they're a pain in the ass to draw so why not.
Admire your dedication to this thing, though. Got a blog? We'd love to check it out!
