Touge Oni - Vol. 2 Ch. 6 - The Enchanting Capital, Mahoroba of Dreams (Second Half)

[sssr]

@pancakesXD There's one more thing that should be added to your explanation. That is, everything until the final four pages is happening in the "present". The spider was surprised to see the older En no Ozuno and Zenki but initially brushed it off because he thought he'd simply failed to notice the passage of time, being immortal and all. But he was right the first time. Not that much time had passed since their earlier meeting and the two should not have been that old.

@Egran No, there are two loose ends. The entire sequence of chapter 6 is happening within Miyo's "present". She smelled the incense, went into the dream to see En no Ozuno's past, found her older self, was helped by dream-Zenki, then went on to find the real Ozuno and Zenki. That means there are two loose ends:
1. Goki-sama came from the future to Miyo's "present" to help her(self). We know this is the real Goki because dream-Ozuno says so. This Goki had not met Miyo in the village yet because she was surprised that Miyo already knew her. So this is Goki before her first chapter meeting with En no Ozuno.
2. Goki-sama met up with the spider BEFORE the spider tasked En no Ozuno with returning Kip's mirror, allowing the spider to send her to the time just before she met up with En no Ozuno and Zenki in the prelude for the first chapter. We know this because the spider is only now writing the note to Kip, so the final jump from chapter 6 to chapter 1 is actually a jump FORWARD in time. This the same Goki from the palace further in her timeline, having somehow jumped back to meet the spider.

That means there are at least two more time travel incidents involving the Goki from the future before she went back to meet up with older En no Ozuno and Zenki as seen at the end of chapter 1: The initial jump and the jump to meet the spider. We thought from chapter 1 that she jumped straight to the meeting in the forest, but she didn't. She had to jump back to the palace to help her younger self, then jump back to the spider before he returned the mirror, prompting him to write the note and ask Ozuno to return it to Kip, then she jumped forward in time to just before Ozuno and Zenki met Miyo, then she used Kip's mirror to jump back to when Ozuno and Zenki were waiting for her. The second jump in this sequence (meeting the spider) may have been achieved by her simply going into the spider's domain because time is always in flux there.

In short, Goki-sama already performed four known time travel jumps in a sequence (that we know of):
1. Jump back in time to the palace to help Miyo.
2. Jump back in time to meet the spider before he returned Kip's mirror, prompting the spider to write a note to let Goki use the mirror.
3. Jump forward in time to meet En no Ozuno and Zenki just before they met her younger self.
4. Jump forward in time using Kip's mirror to return to her proper timeline and reunite with the older En no Ozuno and adult Zenki.

 

[sssr]

@GreyArea

https://mangadex.org/chapter/142433/29

A nice rendering of the story of Azuma-no-Miya's future.

 

[Konrad2]

Thanks for the translation.

 

[Regilius]

It really isn't that confusing though. Can't you see?

 

[Ironclad]

@sssr No Spider-god doesn't see time linearly. He may have been aware of Goki before meeting. He was aware of the reader even. Does the Spider-god's sight make him aware of what happens in dreams and reality?

It's the inception stuff that's confusing me. Why did Miyo dream about dying young and her master growing old if it's suppose to be a pleasant dream? The first dreamer is Miyo then old Zen inside Miyo's dream as well as Goki inside the shared dream with Miyo I guess because as the same person they share the same dream across time?

 

[sssr]

@Ironclad The spider sees time as linear with only two eyes, which is the state he was in when dream-Ozuno and dream-Zenki visited him. With four eyes he's basically omniscient, which allows him to see dream from reality, past and future. Of course he already knew Goki before the meeting. There was no surprise when he met her in the past.

The death of Miyo in the dream isn't Miyo's dream, much in the way Ozuno's past was something unknown to her that appeared in the dream anyway. The dream realm shows truth, past, present, and future irrespective of the dreamer. It shows the truth of what the dreamer seeks to know.

Now, here's the disturbing part. When Prince Oama (Azuma-no-Miya) exiled himself to Yoshino in 671, he took only his first wife Princess Unonosarara (the future Empress Jito) and her sons with him. However, during a stopover in Nara, the old capital, he took on several commoner girls as concubines and servants. This was the first indication that he may not have had permanent exile in mind, because the girls were taken from commoner families who had money or influence with the public and merchant class. It was basically a pledge to the important people in Nara that he was going to bring back their past glory (Nara had been the capital before emperor Tenji moved his court to Omi). When Prince Oama started the Jinshin War in 672, he marched his entire family from Yoshino eastwards (read the Munakata chapter I posted for a breakdown of this story). It wasn't an unopposed flight and he lost some retainers in that flight. What is relevant to our story is that one of those he lost was his youngest concubine who was also his wife's attendant. She had taken the princess' palanquin to delay pursuers while the princess was carried along a mountain path. This story is not normally recounted because upon Prince Oama's ascension to the throne he had to return all his concubines to their families and keep only his noble wives (his four nieces and the daughters of the Soga and Fujiwara clans), so sadly nobody cares about the concubines.

In other words, Miyo's death is OUR world's real history. In the world of this manga that never happened and she became Goki-sama instead.

 

[Monky]

I think this chapter made a great manga turn into something truly special
Damn

 

[alacaelum]

MAAAAAAAAAN THIS WAS SO META. I found a gem, not a rough one but one that shines brightly, this tickles all my fiction bones the right way.

@sssr I am impressed, by the author for doing such amazing job in interweave reality and fiction and by you for noticing these details that are necessary such knowledge to see.

 

[ARMED_Rabbit999]

Me trying to roll with it
...starts reading comments...
Hears linear* 🤣🤓🤔 y=Mx+b

 

[Nk9bjP4A]

But I'm not wearing any clothes at the moment....... this kami got it wrong.
Also, I didn't understand the dream vs reality thing.

 

[bunny]

This is just tedious

 

[Kipsta]

@Nk9bjP4A
Came to post this. Nude gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang.

 

[thegoatrider]

@Nk9bjP4A its as much of a dream as it is reality, if you really seek it you could escape from the dream through time to what you want.
Nice way to explain the time loop

 

[RandomPhoenix]

This is some 4D chess shit I am yet to understand and I fucking love it

 

[L00PH0L3]

This one chapter has just fu*ked up my brain...

 

[Sola]

"You didn't deserve that."
I'm guessing he means, "You didn't deserve to be left behind by En no Ozuno like that."

Nk9bjP4A
"But I'm not wearing any clothes at the moment....... this kami got it wrong."
lol, same here. Just lying in bed with only sheets on me (and nothing else) while I read this, even if saying that is a bit TMI.

I think the author just randomly felt like breaking the fourth wall. Probably to help drive home the point about the incense being able to affect various times and places.

It's interesting how it's the four-sight incense and the spider kami used two extra eyes (for a total of four eyes) to see beyond the here and now. Seems like a deliberate connection. Also interesting, but almost certainly coincidental (unless author is fairly familiar with the English language), is how four-sight is a homynym of foresight.

 

[Sniperking]

@sssr
your explanation was helpful but kinda confusing since i didn't understand what you meant by Goki did a jump forward in time to meet zen and ozuno before they were tasked with returning the rope/mirror thing. I got it later that you meant she arrived before them at the spider god's place then jumped again to meet them while they received the rope/mirror. But i don't think that happened, i think she arrived a few minutes before them and simply waited. That seems more logical. So i don't think jump 3 happened.
edit: rereading it, when she gets there and the spider god writes the notes, she doesn't make another jump. she just puts on the mask and the spider god says that ozuno and ren are about to arrive

 

[sssr]

@Sniperking Oh, the 3rd jump MUST happen because in-between Goki putting on her mask and meeting the guys, there must have been an event when the guys met the spider god and was tasked with returning Kip's mirror that Goki wasn't a part of. Goki wasn't the one who tasked them with it because from chapter 1 we know that from their perspective they just met her during the assignment of the task and she tagged along. The guys viewed the task of returning Kip's rope as completely unrelated to Goki, otherwise they would have considered her the spider god's messenger and would not have shared Kip's surprise when the note was revealed.

So the sequence of events in linear time should be:
Goki meets spider god -> spider god meets En and Zen and task them with returning Kip's mirror -> Goki appears out of nowhere on the road and asks to join them.

The event in the middle is missing from this chapter because Goki wasn't in it, so she must have jumped forward to the third event by using the spider god's help. From En's explanation in chapter 1, the jump must have happened right after they were tasked by the spider god, because we can see in this chapter that all three had already left the spider god's domain when they met. So from En and Zen's perspective, they were tasked with returning Kip's rope then when they left the spider god's domain, there was suddenly a masked woman in front of them. Essentially the jump was a short one, the equivalent of a player in a game skipping a cutscene showing the start of a quest.

 

[Sniperking]

@sssr
i see where the problem is, she didn't meet them on the road, she met them while they were being tasked, not after. Go to page 45 of chapter 1. After she returned from the dream, she and spider god were conversing, he starts and finishes writing the note and while she puts on the mask he gives her the heads up about ozuno and zen's arrival and then she meets them as they are being tasked not after. I mean ending of chapter 6 shows the spider god in the background of their meeting and her asking to tag along.

 

[sssr]

@Sniperking Yes. I corrected the post after going back to it. I forgot that I also had this thought before, then I realized that when Goki met the two the assignment was already over and they were leaving the spider's domain. Chapter 6 ends with the three characters having already left the spider's domain and ending up together in the real world. So the step of the assignment itself was skipped by Goki.