-Thinks hard- Well yes...I don't know why I'm using the 20 years number...then again... if she was depressed and shit wouldn't it be normal she just went and killed herself..but that sister...she has to be around 20 to be in College...so yes it was a damn long time,maybe ai is like 40 xD

We should ask her..ahhh I'm tempted to look for her twitter

More than 40, Tomo already had a little brother so unless that half-sister was born right after him, we can assume more than 20 years passed, Ai could easily be 50, 45 at least, and she don't really look much older than 30, and a half-sister looking exactly like Tomo, like I said before if they had the same mother sure could be possible, but half? is that even possible? I think it's easier to think more or less 10 years passed, and Tomo came back from the dead, since she faked her death...

last edited at May 24, 2015 11:43PM

-Thinks hard- Well yes...I don't know why I'm using the 20 years number...then again... if she was depressed and shit wouldn't it be normal she just went and killed herself..but that sister...she has to be around 20 to be in College...so yes it was a damn long time,maybe ai is like 40 xD

We should ask her..ahhh I'm tempted to look for her twitter

More than 40, Tomo already had a little brother so unless that half-sister was born right after him, we can assume more than 20 years passed, Ai could easily be 50, 45 at least, and she don't really look much older than 30, and a half-sister looking exactly like Tomo, like I said before if they had the same mother sure could be possible, but half? is that even possible? I think it's easier to think more or less 10 years passed, and Tomo came back from the dead, since she faked her death...

Hummm I seriously doubt it....I don't think genetics work that way... UNLESS Amano-sensei just wanted to troll us and have us wonder and confused like we are.

https://twitter.com/shunitter_ there it is , I wonder if she knows any english

Hummm I seriously doubt it....I don't think genetics work that way... UNLESS Amano-sensei just wanted to troll us and have us wonder and confused like we are.

It don't matter if the end was rushed or not, Tomo is dead and more than 20 years passed, or just some years and she faked her death, it don't matter, I think she's trolling us either way...

https://twitter.com/shunitter_ there it is , I wonder if she knows any english

Don't think she knows, any kind soul who knows japanese could ask to her about the ending?

last edited at May 24, 2015 11:46PM

If it were you in Ai's place, and it's really Tomo's younger sister in the very last page, would you go out with her?

Well, I don't think Amano herself was sure if she should include the mysterious sibling or not. She wanted something that might have been cute (and good) to have a cuter thing at the end, but was not sure if it fit with the rest of the story. (I'm also assuming it is what "Bridge" refers to).

http://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/philosophia_ch04#67 "I wasn't sure whether it fitted in."

Here is the original if you are curious. I was, and unfortunately Google Translate doesn't make the part in quotes too clear, but that's what I inferred from it.

このあとについている
ちょっとした短編は
「たってもなくてもいい
なんかふわふわしたもの」です

Tomo's definitely dead. It would blow the whole thing if she wasn't. This is a tragedy--and let's face it, Tomo makes a beautiful mysterious tragic love that never really could have been, but she'd make a crappy live lover.

Note on a very minor thing--the monkey reference. I expect some people got what that was about, but some probably didn't also and I'm feeling pedantic, so . . . it's a classical reference to the Monkey King, the Chinese trickster figure who creates havoc in Heaven. He has lots of symbolic stuff associated with him, and I've heard it said he represents the intellect (presumably untrammeled by convention or wisdom). The story of the Monkey King is pretty hilarious; his name, Sun Wukong, was given him by a great teacher who found him very annoying as sort of a joke on him; it means "he who understands vacuity" or, alternatively, "he who knows nothing". Anyhow, towards the end, the whole bureaucracy of heaven has found it impossible to control him and they finally ask the Supreme Buddha for help. The Supreme Buddha goes to the Monkey King and offers him a wager--if the monkey king can jump over the Supreme Buddha's hand, they'll give him all the ridiculous things he's asking for. If he can't, he goes under a mountain for a while as penance. Well, the Monkey King can leap hundreds of miles in a single bound, he thinks it's a ludicrously easy bet, and so he leaps as far as he can--he jumps so far he flies, shrouded in mist, to the very edge of the world, where there are great pillars in the fog. So he pees on the pillar he reaches and scribbles "Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, got as far as this!" And then he leaps back across those countless leagues and says to the Supreme Buddha basically "So, how do you like them apples, huh?" and the Supreme Buddha indicates his hand, where at the middle finger there is a scent of urine and a rather recognizable scrawl. And under the mountain he goes.
So, there you have Tomo as the Monkey King, on the hand, probably unable to leap past it. Make of it what you will.

last edited at May 25, 2015 1:46AM

I thought it was pretty mean of Tomo's dad to refer to her as a monkey, especially when he said "See how far you can escape." I figured she was just trying to run away from him and start anew.... I totally didn't think she was so depressed to the point of being suicidal though.

WHAT.THE.SHIT.WAS.THAT.CRAP.ENDING!? That was just a bad ending. So she just left, DIED AT SEA OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE, and Ai, who lets not forget BARELY ACTUALLY FUCKING KNEW HER, never actually moved on from her. Even to the point where her "rebound," for lack of a better word, was an exact carbon copy of Tomo (I honestly, felt nothing but pity for Tomo's surprise little sister rather than relief that Ai would finally "move on" from Tomo, not that I would ever actually consider that kind of development moving on). No, that's just a bad ending. I didn't even actually like Tomo very much so whether they got together or not or even that she died doesn't bother me too much (especially, since a happy ending was kind of shut down right from the start with this series lol), but the way all that was executed within the story and the aftermath of it all was just badly done. Just no. Seriously Shuninta, wtf is going on with you lately? You're just making crap all over the place with your last couple series. I used to really like you and you have a lot of good works, but you've really been letting me down lately. I can handle sad endings (not that I like them) but these endings are just bad, as in poorly done at this point.

last edited at May 25, 2015 2:35AM

I thought it was pretty mean of Tomo's dad to refer to her as a monkey, especially when he said "See how far you can escape." I figured she was just trying to run away from him and start anew.... I totally didn't think she was so depressed to the point of being suicidal though.

Actually, he wasn't trying to insult Tomo when he called her a monkey he was referencing the story of Sun Wukong from Journey to the West. Sun Wukong was imprisoned by the Buddha after losing a bet to him about whether or not he could escape from Buddha and, after Sun Wukong jumped thousands of miles in a single bound, he realized that he hadn't even gotten off of the Buddha's palm. Hence the imagery of Tomo struggling on her father's palm. So, yeah, her father is an immense prick, but he wasn't blatantly insulting her there.

I thought it was pretty mean of Tomo's dad to refer to her as a monkey, especially when he said "See how far you can escape." I figured she was just trying to run away from him and start anew.... I totally didn't think she was so depressed to the point of being suicidal though.

The monkey thing is a reference to the legend of Sun Wu Kong, the Monkey-king.

In the tale "A journey to the West", Buddha makes a bet with Sun Wu Kong that he cannot escape from his palm.

He accepts and jumps from the palm to the end of the world, being sure that he escaped. There, he finds 5 pillars and he thinks he reached the end of heaven. He writes something akin to "Kilroy was here" on one of the pillars, then jumps back on the hand of Buddha. There he finds his writing and realizes that the five pillars were Buddha's fingers all along and that he never left his hand at all.

What the father says is that running far away doesn't mean you can escape from your problems. It doesn't refer to himself.

Edit: ^ Eh... beat me to it.

last edited at May 25, 2015 2:38AM

Also, while it seems unusual and frankly kind of trite for Ai to remain single for the rest of her life and never fall for anyone else, that kinda WAS her entire life plan, from the beginning. Like, in earlier chapters, she's borderline asexual, having felt no significant attraction to anyone throughout her childhood and teenage years, and Tomo was the first and so far only person she'd ever wanted to have a real relationship with, to the point that she was willing to sacrifice her deeply-valued independence. I think there's enough consistent characterisation of Ai to suggest that, even if she had never even met Tomo, she might easily have ended up with largely the same life either way. I don't think it's exactly a matter of Ai never being able to get over Tomo and therefore spending the next twenty-odd years in chaste mourning; really, it just seems like Tomo was the only person who ever really inspired those feelings in Ai, and Ai is basically fine leaving those feelings in the past, with her memories of Tomo. As mementos go, "all of my love" has a little more poetry to it than a disposable lighter, you know?

last edited at May 25, 2015 3:21AM

Ugh ( ;__;)
sobs
cries
It was a good story ( TT__TT)

Edit: Ehh I don't think MC is exactly mourning her entire life, it's not like she was planning to get hitched in the first place anyways. And I didn't get the feeling MC was going to go out with the younger sister either. Anyways, I liked the characters and the feelings portrayed in this story.

last edited at May 25, 2015 3:46AM

Blah blah... long story short, for me, the ending sucked.

"One of the MC is a pimp and goes to die in a faraway place, leaving the other MC mourning and alone for the rest of her life"

Lol?

Blah blah... long story short, for me, the ending sucked.

"One of the MC is a pimp and goes to die in a faraway place, leaving the other MC mourning and alone for the rest of her life"

Lol?

Don't forget the sibling who looks exactly like the dead pimp

Well then she just have to write an Age gap sequel. As if.

Well then she just have to write an Age gap sequel. As if.

Pfff xD ,that can work for structural formula of first love but not here, I think this ending has no redemption

la la la la date your dead pimp friend little sister whos 20 years younger who may be a pimp too that would be funny if she dies too 2nd times the charm?

la la la la date your dead pimp friend little sister whos 20 years younger who may be a pimp too that would be funny if she dies too 2nd times the charm?

Hahahahahahaa and then comes a third sibling...say a lost..half cousin or something and by then Ai is around 80 yo

Even the comment is hard to read >.>

NINJA!!! YOU AGAIN??? TT__TT

Regarding the little sister. I don't recall if they ever spell out what happened to Tomo's mother, but if she's alive and just left when Tomo was, say ten years old, then it's entirely possible that the epilogue takes place about ten years later, as the little sister is most likely from the mother's side. No way that Ai could be over 40 and still look almost identical to when she was in university.

As someone with two younger half-siblings who I share a mother with, I can tell you that yes, it's entirely possible for maternal half-siblings to look uncannily similar. It's actually a bit of a myth that people get most of their looks from their father. Hell, I have more physical traits in common with both my younger siblings than they have with each other, and they have both the same dad AND mom.

"My older sister disappeared before I was born". So, it's a timeskip of around 20 years. We don't see Ai closely in the last scene, so she can be 40 for all we know.

I don't know about you, but that... epilogue, reads like the sibling is interested in Ai. Didn't expect the hinted suicide ending, that was bad, I mean overall the chapter was well written to me but that felt kinda bad. It's like we finally open the treasure chest to Tomo's secrets and character development but then get killed off... for some feels I don't know.

It would've been interesting to see Tomo and Ai together (in an unhealthy? relationship?) with Tomo selling Ai's skills :x haha.

last edited at May 25, 2015 8:44AM

"My older sister disappeared before I was born". So, it's a timeskip of around 20 years. We don't see Ai closely in the last scene, so she can be 40 for all we know.

That's what I though