Shimeji Simulation - Vol. 5 Ch. 44 - We are but a stream

[74HC595]

Was sis always a special being, like the gardener presumably always was? Or did she obtain that status just by working to comprehend the world?

 

[Kyte]

Was sis always a special being, like the gardener presumably always was? Or did she obtain that status just by working to comprehend the world?

Big sis and book girl actually discuss it obliquely in ch 36 pages 7-9. Big sis might be something like "freedom" like how book girl is "knowledge" and the gardener is "order".

Shimeji might be something like this too. Something to do with isolation and connection.


As an aside, I recommend rereading the whole thing. Turns out there's a lot of hints and stuff seeded here and there.
Book girl here in ch 23 page 6 saying she's been here "far before [Shimeji] came here" which would be a joke except it's probably literally true.

Ch 28 page 6 last panel actually shows the same disagreement book girl and big sis have wrt the nature of truth in this chapter.

 

[Corruptedata]

I absolutely love this chapter, and I'm glad to say that with its recent developments, this manga has become one of my favorites. Also, kudos to the translators.

 

[Hikineet]

Thanks for the chapter.

 

[cutething]

holy shit

 

[fgsfdss]

After these past few chapters, I can recommend (re-)reading the oneshot (warning: sex), as well as GLT chapters 9 and 28.

 

[YasuNotFound]

I feel like we're reaching the end vary soon 😔

 

[q0099]

Thank you kindly for the chapter.

On a side note, the line about world was created by god in a process of making soup is seems to be a reference to the "Cat Soup" animated film.

 

[KZO]

Reminds me of this:
https://mangadex.org/chapter/74f961bf-4eb5-4cc8-9e03-6dae908affc9

 

[viliml]

Tsukumizu killed Chito and Yuuri, but she doesn't want them dead. With a greater fiction of the right sort, she might be able to unkill them.

"She"? Tkmiz iz a guy. No, using an anime girl avatar doesn't make someone automatically trans.

 

[KenshiroKosuke]

"She"? Tkmiz iz a guy. No, using an anime girl avatar doesn't make someone automatically trans.

It's just a pronoun so it doesn't matter really. Ever consider that?

 

[Felo]

In one of the last chapters of GLT the girls find a record of three rockets that were launched before the city was destroyed by the war; two of the rockets had their paths cut short, as though they stopped functioning out in space. The third rocket, however, continued on indefinitely. I think Yomikawa's story about the computer was meant to be connected to that rocket, but the fact that Chii and Yuu appear to be in this world kinda contradicts that.

I still want to believe that this is some kind of afterlife, which is why both Shijima (who lived in the distant past, as seen in the photos) and the Potatoes can exist at the same time

it wouldn't be weird to think that what we are seeing right now is a conflict in the logic behind the machine, or more specific, the conflict within the psyche of it. Sis (id), gardener (ego) and yomikawa (morality) given how:
Sis wanted to free the mind within the dream to appeal to human nature (instincts)
Gardener was meant to keep things as they were "supposed to be" as we can understand them, safe and adjusted (reality)
Yomikawa has always been surrounded by knowledge, she holds knowledge over everything that has happend before, she knows the "rules" and even confronted sis before but even still she wont take action she is there to stop uncertainty (morality)

On the topic of chii and yuu i think those are here now cause they reached the black box at the end of GLT, that could be (if the world within a machine theory is true) just a representation of the machine itself and GLT was just another side of the same simulation, heck most of the dreams they had on GLT (or the fact that they are a couple here) all hold true to the thing we know for sure about this setting "a dream within a dream"

 

[Oeconomist]

Tkmiz iz a guy.

If provided with reliable evidence that Tsukumizu were a guy, then I'd certainly start using “he/his/him”. I've simply used the gender that I first encountered applied to Tsukumizu. Checking now, I find mostly avoidance of identifying his or her sex.

 

[KuroNoVoid]

What exactly does the last paragraph of the page mean?? Tsukishima little sister (shimeji) is talking in 3rd person but then it mentions she has glasses so is it actually the sister talking??

 

[shittycoolusername69]

"She"? Tkmiz iz a guy.

Source: my uncle works at Comic Cune (just trust me)

 

[Shareazu]

Obligatory image I always post from GLT:

Can't see the gardner or the book girl, but Shimeji and her sister are there

 

[zizolmao_]

It's not like I didn't understand anything, but there is a feeling that I missed something, or I'm only stupid

 

[Luke_chase]

She just like me frfr (I am literally her)

 

[Kyte]

What exactly does the last paragraph of the page mean?? Tsukishima little sister (shimeji) is talking in 3rd person but then it mentions she has glasses so is it actually the sister talking??

The way I interpreted it as things got more abstract she started dissociating and eventually her viewpoint shifted/merged with book girl's at which point she panicked again.

 

[74HC595]

Shimeji might be something like this too. Something to do with isolation and connection.

Strikes me as if there’s two kinda conflicting world-views here. At one extreme we have the literal interpretation that everyone is just a human copied or uploaded into a machine. At the other, everyone is a representation of some abstract concept. Ignoring one extreme to focus on the other feels wrong, but the intersection of the two isn’t easy to see. Giving someone a single cause to pursue like order or freedom works for characters like Sis or the Gardener, but this is a story about the human condition, about a loner opening up to other people. I don’t think it’s reasonable to apply just one concept to nuanced characters like Shimeji or egg.

An alternative is that no humans were uploaded at all, and that it’s either a single computer or single brain that’s simulating or dreaming the entire story by itself. In that sense the story would be like an ancestor simulation, and the “special characters” would be beings whose minds were tweaked by the game-master to bring flux to the world. That would make them like prophets or messiahs.

Another thought is of inter-cognitive feedback loops. They’re in a world where a mind can influence the world, so is it not impossible to suggest that minds could influence other minds? An ordinary person’s actions could be viewed at in a certain way by a lot of people, changing that person to match more like what they were thinking, making their actions even more extreme. In that way you’d get a positive feedback loop, turning only those who strongly stand out from the crowd into vessels for mass cognition. There’s a bit of irony here, in that this world that permits extreme individuality would also force collective will onto some.