Urasekai Picnic - Vol. 13 Ch. 74 - The Inviting Hot Springs III

[Grye]

so close to lesbians

 

[Soweinc]

Personally, I thought this was one of the scariest (as well as most enjoyable since it all starts snowballing from here) sections in the novel. Good to see it adapted!

 

[0ps]

So close...

 

[dustbird]

Not gonna lie, the lack of nipples actually made the mannequin reveal hit more for me. Everyone didn't have nipples so when I saw these featureless background extras I just accepted it. Then the reveal hit and I just "OOOOOOH BOY"

 

[Orangechrisy]

CONFESSION YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

[Lilliwyt]

Specials eyes.

 

[Thrembs]

We don’t get a conversation?!

 

[Thrembs]

Specials eyes.

My friend can do that on demand.
She can roll her eyes in different directions simultaneously.

 

[Roodypatooti]

Don't really like how they skimmed over the bear, its one off the scariest little details. When they run out of the bath the taxidermied bear in the lobby is just gone, like it got up and walked away...

We ain't getting back to that level of progress until 30 chapters later I'll bet

Spoiler

well they kiss at the climax of the next story, still not "together" tho.

 

[Otayuri]

sigh ! this is the main reason why I don't like (Japanese) manga .no matter how good their story is, there is absolutely zero romance (mostly yuri)!! I hope the author will focus on romance a little more.

 

[SleepyDemon]

I was lowkey expecting them to think they had escaped the dream, then turn around to their friend and find that she was replaced by a mannequin.

 

[Aichan]

Oh no, the dolls are cuming.

 

[DexTimeLord]

Theory 1: Theirs bodies are abducted to the other side while sleeping.

Theory 2 (makes more sense and more terrifying): Their minds slowly slipped to the other side. In the start, the waitress give a vague response because cuz there's no noise at all and neither so much slippers. Only Sorawo could notice that cuz she was being influenced by the other side.

 

[boboro]

That last panel is a great spook

 

[lolglolblol]

these girls are gay :>

 

[Yuu3]

Omg we're finally out of the vague ambiguous atmosphere and into official post confession stage kyaaa

 

[shittycoolusername69]

Mannequins seem a bit lazy, unless there’s a ghost story known by Sorawo that ties into mannequins at a hot spring resort. I guess they were in an interstitial space, but it’s definitely odd that they woke up in their bed, that implies they were both in the space by the time they woke up and went to the hot spring.

While its unclear if the Otherside is entity (or a group of entities) with its own goals and intent, there has been a pattern of it seemingly responding to the characters' mental state when it contacts them. So I'd like to ask everyone to consider that the girls were pulled into a nightmare about mannequins (naked bodies) in the interstitial space, right after Toriko made it abundantly clear that she is sexually attracted to Sorawo's naked body, and think about what that might say about Sorawo.

When one looks past the memes about Sorawo being a "useless lesbian", and the fact that the author takes inspiration from scary stories shared on 2Chan in the 2000s, one might find that this story is also about about the characters' internal struggles, and the author isn't just slapping a random creepypasta in each arc without a deeper meaning.

I'm not trying to flaunt my intellect here, I'm just a bit bummed out when I see people read Otherside Picnic without looking past the surface level, and then dismiss developments as random or illogical.

We ain't getting back to that level of progress until 30 chapters later I'll bet

(Tbc: I'm trying to respond to all the comments with a similar sentiment, not you specifically.)

On one hand, the option to read ahead is always there. The novels are available in English; they are excellently written and translated (I have read some of the popular yuri LN's available in English - the quality of the prose in Otherside Picnic is in a different category). You will be able to engage with this story the way it was originally intended, and I guarantee that pacing and lack of romantic progress will no longer be an issue! (Not counting vol. 4 which the manga is currently in, there are four more volumes that you can read right now.) There has never been a better time to catch up than now; I honestly envy anybody who gets to read those eight volumes back to back for the first time.

On the other hand, I don't think this reaction is fair even without reading ahead. Sorawo being forced to reckon with how Toriko feels about her has been a consistent theme since Toriko's first "I love you" (after they escaped from Satsuki at the end of the cultist arc).

In the next file ('The Matter At That Farm'), Toriko escalates their intimacy to holding hands, and Sorawo reacts the worst possible way ("you are acting like my boyfriend"), but emboldens Toriko with promises of playing together in the Otherside. The Otherside, as if Sorawo's relief about Toriko finally giving up on Satsuki prompted a change in tactics, "contacts" the two through ghosts of Sorawo's troubled past (father and grandmother). This is followed up on in the next file ('Pandora in the Next Room'), where Sorawo avoids sharing the relevant parts of her backstory with Toriko by avoiding her altogether, but it still leads to a milestone in their relationship (Toriko's first stay at Sorawo's place). And now in this file, Toriko tries to escalate further, and they are "conveniently" interrupted, but if you consider what they are interrupted by, it doesn't seem that random or convenient. In the novel, all of this takes place within the same book!

What I'm trying to get at here is something that becomes fairly obvious when reading this volume of the novels, but easily gets lost between waiting for each chapter of the manga adaptation. Even if you're a manga-only reader, if you take a step back, you may realize that the series has been a coming-of-age narrative from the start, where Sorawo's character crystallizes as a genuinely troubled girl on a journey of processing her trauma and repairing her severely damaged connection to humanity. With that in mind, the idea that Sorawo is a "useless lesbian" whose romantic "progress" is always thwarted arbitrarily by the forces of the plot, is something you should be seriously questioning at this point.

 

[74HC595]

I'm just a bit bummed out when I see people read Otherside Picnic without looking past the surface level, and then dismiss developments as random or illogical.

Ok I get your point. But I believe a story shouldn’t just rely on metaphorical truths and deeper themes in the absence of literal truths; of a self-consistent reality. Though this is a fuzzier point to make with this story, since at least some of reality is adversarially trying to perturb our main cast, and so it’s unpredictability could easily be hand-waved away with “because it wanted to see what would happen”. That’s a lazy shortcut though.
Also I usually go out of my way to avoid yuri stories because the writing style just doesn’t appeal to me, so I might be missing out on something specific to those. I’m attracted to this story because it’s basically a scientific story, with characters trying to understand reality by reasoning about their observations, and because it’s a coming of age story. The characters learn about themselves and reality at the same time. Like Eureka Seven, or maybe Lain.

The otherside train station arc was great because it both referenced a real myth and showed some predictable features about how that myth had been manifested, but also played into Sorawo’s problems with trusting others. As a result, her world was broadened, she was exposed to an uncomfortable situation, she learnt something about herself, acted under pressure, and developed as a character by taking on responsibility. Concurrently, it hinted at some deeper nature of the otherside via the incomprehensible phone call, untimately creating more questions than answers. Peak coming of age shit right there.

A world that pushes through character development by whim of the heavens is fundamentally less interesting than one that does so by rhyme and reason. I have some faith that there is method to this madness since the writing is otherwise pretty excellent. I shall wait. Good to hear that the novels are good, I’ll look into them.

 

[shittycoolusername69]

Ok I get your point. But I believe a story shouldn’t just rely on metaphorical truths and deeper themes in the absence of literal truths; of a self-consistent reality. Though this is a fuzzier point to make with this story, since at least some of reality is adversarially trying to perturb our main cast, and so it’s unpredictability could easily be hand-waved away with “because it wanted to see what would happen”. That’s a lazy shortcut though.
Also I usually go out of my way to avoid yuri stories because the writing style just doesn’t appeal to me, so I might be missing out on something specific to those. I’m attracted to this story because it’s basically a scientific story, with characters trying to understand reality by reasoning about their observations, and because it’s a coming of age story. The characters learn about themselves and reality at the same time. Like Eureka Seven, or maybe Lain.

The otherside train station arc was great because it both referenced a real myth and showed some predictable features about how that myth had been manifested, but also played into Sorawo’s problems with trusting others. As a result, her world was broadened, she was exposed to an uncomfortable situation, she learnt something about herself, acted under pressure, and developed as a character by taking on responsibility. Concurrently, it hinted at some deeper nature of the otherside via the incomprehensible phone call, untimately creating more questions than answers. Peak coming of age shit right there.

A world that pushes through character development by whim of the heavens is fundamentally less interesting than one that does so by rhyme and reason. I have some faith that there is method to this madness since the writing is otherwise pretty excellent. I shall wait. Good to hear that the novels are good, I’ll look into them.

To be clear, I tried to make my points as spoiler-freely and briefly as possible, without misrepresenting the characters' evolving theory of the Otherside as truth. So everything I said should be taken with an extra grain of salt. Moreover, only the first three paragraphs were intended as a direct response to your comment; the other segment was a response to those lamenting the slow romantic progress.

Otherside Picnic has a sci-fi bent, but it has a whole other foot in the realm of the inexplicable. Lain is not a bad reference point exactly, but I think Roadside Picnic and the 'new weird' contemporaries Annihilation (2018 film) and Control (2019 video game) (all three of which are also more or less staged in a "zone of weirdness") serve as better examples of what makes it tick.

From what the author has said in interviews, yuri was instrumental to how this story was born. It is noticeable too because the attraction, love, and other (not always positive) feelings between women has been (and continues to be) one of the main forces acting on the story from the start, and it plays an important role in Sorawo's character arc. There is no secret code that only yuri readers can pick up on, but I think attempting to engage with those themes is necessary to get a complete picture.

 

[MapleMakarov]

Ok I get your point. But I believe a story shouldn’t just rely on metaphorical truths and deeper themes in the absence of literal truths; of a self-consistent reality. Though this is a fuzzier point to make with this story, since at least some of reality is adversarially trying to perturb our main cast, and so it’s unpredictability could easily be hand-waved away with “because it wanted to see what would happen”. That’s a lazy shortcut though.
Also I usually go out of my way to avoid yuri stories because the writing style just doesn’t appeal to me, so I might be missing out on something specific to those. I’m attracted to this story because it’s basically a scientific story, with characters trying to understand reality by reasoning about their observations, and because it’s a coming of age story. The characters learn about themselves and reality at the same time. Like Eureka Seven, or maybe Lain.

The otherside train station arc was great because it both referenced a real myth and showed some predictable features about how that myth had been manifested, but also played into Sorawo’s problems with trusting others. As a result, her world was broadened, she was exposed to an uncomfortable situation, she learnt something about herself, acted under pressure, and developed as a character by taking on responsibility. Concurrently, it hinted at some deeper nature of the otherside via the incomprehensible phone call, untimately creating more questions than answers. Peak coming of age shit right there.

A world that pushes through character development by whim of the heavens is fundamentally less interesting than one that does so by rhyme and reason. I have some faith that there is method to this madness since the writing is otherwise pretty excellent. I shall wait. Good to hear that the novels are good, I’ll look into them.

I'm chiming in here pretty late but mannequins specifically do have some symbolic importance here. When Kozakura was talking about anger being a form of attachment that manifested Satsuki, the subtext is that strong attachments of any sort might manifest a terrifying aspect of the Otherside. Hasshaku-sama shows up when Sorawo starts getting possessive of Toriko, she slips into the interstitial space and meets the Time-Space Man when she gets worked up over how to reconcile with Toriko, the Yamanoke shows up and melts her sense of self right after she opens up to Toriko about her past, and her father/grandmother show up to call her a destructive force right after she says she wants the Otherside for herself and Toriko. Desire and trauma are also forms of continuous attachment.

The mannequins showing up the moment Toriko expresses sexual interest in her isn't surprising, then. While Sorawo's she's increasingly aware Toriko is in love with her, she's really not able to separate that from Toriko liking women in general. A mannequin sort of reflects her reaction to being stared at - she's being treated as an item on display, and there's insecurity that Toriko would stare at other women too (see Satsuki).

The other symbolic value is in how the mannequins contrast against Toriko. Sorawo is very dimly aware of how other people think and act, and in the novels she barely goes into detail about anyone but the main cast. The mannequins being statically posed in the middle of routine activities reflect that. Toriko, on the other hand, is a living, breathing person that Sorawo is constantly aware of. She's the only other person in motion in her world at the moment.

You could probably read into the mannequin chasing them, too. The pose looks like someone trying to coax out a cornered animal, and its dressed like a person trying to anonymize themselves. It might relate to Sorawo's history of being chased around by the cult.

The "was it all a dream?" ending is a little cliche, but that's how a lot of these stories end, mixing the unreality of dreams with the reality of life. I would point out though, that the way they escape through a TV screen is basically how Sorawo put her past behind her. She interacted with online ghost stories, chased them, and ultimately found the Otherside and met Toriko because of them. Escaping through the screen is an affirmation of their bond and how the Otherside connects them.

IMO the mannequins are a deceptively trivial story element, but in a literary sense they're doing a lot of work expressing how Sorawo views her relationship to Toriko.