I really enjoyed catching up, though I'm still as confused as I was in the first chapters lol. It's probably not the kind of story that can be summed up in a single point, though.
The 2 themes that I see throughout the story are the following :
1) Humans use their will to gain increased freedom from restrictions (through science for instance), but they find themselves in new situations of restrictions : the limits of imagination, the chaos of a world where nothing is tangible and susceptible to being changed when left alone, the inability to change yourself as easily as you can change the external world, the constraints that result from living with other humans (or other beings, as chapter 46 shows an example of how even a Goddess cannot prevent war).
Some actively seek the increase in freedom (Shijima's sister), some resist it (the gardener), others don't really care (Shijima) but no one seems to be able the affect the direction of that change - the same way that no single human currently can decide to just stop collective technological progress for instance.
2) The mysterious nature of reality : is the universe a story, a dream, a song, a dance, a material observable thing external to us, a simulation ? What does it mean to exist ? To be separate from someone else ? All the characters have different perspectives on the matter, and different ways of relating to the absurd world they are in, but it seems that no matter what their answers are, the main characters ultimately long for human connection at the end of the day (not super certain that this is really the trend, it's just that ch44 p08 seemed quite important to me : "The stories that began as legends are gradually shifting towards anthropocentric themes").
Looking forward to how it will end.
last edited at Jul 6, 2023 11:19AM
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