Shadows House (Official Colored) - Ch. 229 - Where Mia Belongs

[MangaDex]

 

[ntbnhien2013]

God, Mia needs so much therapy...

 

[Werebearguy]

She's going to redeem herself in the future, for sure. Her acknowledging something is wrong is proof that she's not lost. Whether she survives or not is another topic entirely, but she'll surely have her redemption. Surely.

 

[zanonyn]

She's going to redeem herself in the future, for sure. Her acknowledging something is wrong is proof that she's not lost. Whether she survives or not is another topic entirely, but she'll surely have her redemption. Surely.

One of the things I love about this series is how often I genuinely don't know how it will go, and don't even really have a firm feeling of how it should go either, but rather just trust in Soumatou to reveal things in due time and do so well. I agree that Sara has had her moments and has good reason for ending up pretty twisted. And objectively speaking it's also hard to say she's truly committed any massive crimes or sins under the circumstances. The story has Anthony to help show one part of the black end of the spectrum and the adult Shadows/GGF another, and the larger world may play a third final part depending. Compared to all that minor political games of children and toxic mutual dependency is just gray. That the story has the contrast clearly displayed and Mia being arguably illogical about how far she's really gone certainly suggests the potential to get saved to at least some extent.

At the same time though I think SH has stayed away from being a pure fairy tale and is taking things pretty seriously even if with a message of hope through the darkness. And realistically it's not always possible to redeem everyone, or as much as anything to get everyone to accept the possibility for themselves and take hold of an outstretched hand. It'd be another layer of tragedy if Mia/Sara could indeed have made it, but then weren't able to accept it, and if Mia dragged Sara down with her in another warped mirror reflection of healthy relationships, ala Anthony/Christopher.

So could really see it going either way and being good either way.

 

[solchimes]

She convinced herself she killed her family. What a thing to refuse to walk away from.

 

[Cloverdex]

mia gotta die. you can't just hit emilyko like that and walk away.

 

[AsAnAsterisk]

God dammit I literally just got done translating chapters 229-232 because I didn't know when anyone else was going to pick it up so I wanted to try my hand at doing it.
(It's just as well I wouldn't have been good at anything but translating)

There's some parallels between Sara/Mia and Barbara/Barbie, namely Barbie saying that she was afraid to change because that would mean acknowledging that she's been making a mistake for years, but with Mia, it's her entire life. Every time she was beaten it was for the sake of entering the Shadows House, when she stayed up late to study by candle and accidentally ended up killing her family, that was also for the sake of entering the Shadows House, so to acknowledge that the idea of the Shadows House is a lie would be like saying that all that was for nothing.

 

[swimminginsand]

It's ok Emilyko is sturdy

 

[Eralita]

mia gotta die. you can't just hit emilyko like that and walk away.

Calm down executioner san

 

[Justking14]

That slow-mo page long slap was actually pretty hilarious

 

[Jayinator]

God dammit I literally just got done translating chapters 229-232 because I didn't know when anyone else was going to pick it up so I wanted to try my hand at doing it.
(It's just as well I wouldn't have been good at anything but translating)

I suggest joining the Discord server. They were looking for a translator for a while now, that's why it took so long. You'll be able to get updates about the manga there. They may even need another one in the future.

Anyway, that slap shock me. I hope Emilyko finds a way to repay Mia for that in a way that can help her.

 

[Dudewheresmymecha1]

There's some parallels between Sara/Mia and Barbara/Barbie...

Good catch! I knew there were other characters who probably wanted to slap that optimistic smile right off of poor Emilyko's face, but couldn't think of the best example at first, then realized "oh yeah, wasn't that Barbie/Barbara's shtick for most of the early part of the story, where they called her Daisy-Brain/Flower-Field/Little-Miss-Sunshine? Oh - another parallel!" Because that boundless optimism must really sting for those characters who haven't been able to maintain any hope of their own in the face of what life under the Shadows has given them....

We were even "treated" to a scene early in the story where Barbie/Barbara kicked Emilyko in the stomach, which came across a lot like that slow-motion slap.

If these characters can be redeemed at all, then surely poor Barbie and Mia are going to be some tough nuts to crack: they're dealing with a great deal of pain for the rest of the characters to get through, to the point where a great deal of their personalities are built around it.

And otherwise, there's really only Christopher/Anthony, before we start looking at the integrated "adults" like Edward, King, Lewis, Gerald, Eileen, and the third-floor adults and finally Great-Grandfather. And talk about "tough nuts"!

Spoiler: where those other antagonists currently stand

Anthony seems like an unlikely character for a plausible heel-face-turn, after murdering his own father and everything he has done to the children in his campaign of conquest, and the closest thing to a real villain we've seen so far among the children, other than the tragic case of Maggie/Margaret.

It's the adults where things get really interesting, though, because we know so little about them so far, other than the way they interact with the children. King comes across like a relatively banal kind of evil in comparison to Anthony, little worse than a thoughtless bully, while most of the others quite honestly don't seem so bad, short of maybe Great-Grandfather, Sophie, Ryan, Dorothy, and maybe Joseph, as characters who are presumably the architects of the miserable social/political machinery of the Shadows House. Even there, Ryan comes across as a sadist, and Sophie seems to have a thirst for the soot emitted by anguished Shadows, clearly marking them as some pretty villainous characters with little to redeem them, but the others - even Great-Grandfather - don't really seem to have done much on-screen that seems all that evil so far: the adult characters have quite a bit of characterization ahead of them before we can fairly either write them off as irredeemably evil, or suggest they might have a redemption arc ahead of them!

The children's side of the equation, though, seems like it's more or less revealed, other than the story arcs for Barbie, Mia, and Anthony, however they end up, and the stage will then be set for the children to begin properly working together against the "adults", suggesting a bit about where we are in the story (it feels a bit like we're maybe 2/3 or so through the story?)

By the way, is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else like the Shadows, on the whole, haven't really been all that bad, compared to their troubled "living doll" counterparts? Honestly, it seems like Barbara, Sara, and Christopher aren't really so bad on their own, just doing their best to mimic the bad behaviour of their "living dolls".... It seems like wherever the dolls are brought around to Kate and Emilyko's side, the shadows follow quite naturally? That is, it's really the "living dolls" and integrated "adults" so far who have been the real antagonists and villains, I think, with the adults being a bit harder to read because we see so little of who they really are, and Anthony being the only surviving character who can properly be described as "evil" so far....

 

[lolidunnow]

So I guess palmtop translations quit?
The translation is fine, I spotted no weird spanglish unlike 98% other """"translations"""" in the site. But some Douglas balloons sounded a bit off.

 

[UncleKaos]

Well she is too broken to be at any use of them.. in fact she is dangerous to them. it is better to keep a distance from her for now. She just proved how unstable she is by attacking them.. and suddenly being all creepy polite before leaving.
to have her in a team would endanger everyone.