I freaking LOVE Nagatsuki! He's so cute and awesome! Such a good friend, too. I wonder what he'd do if he found out about Shouya's past as a bully?
I'm starting to feel like maybe Shouko has some sort of problem. I think she blames herself for things that aren't her fault. She has the right to be mad at the way people treat her. No one could be so accepting of undeserved abuse unless they're Buddha or Jesus. It might be that she cares a ton for others, but not nearly enough for herself. This girl deserves so much better than what the world's given her, and she needs to know that.
hehe, I love Nagatsuki too, best wingman ever. This chapter seemed to hint that he's kind of got his own problems with bullying or something. In addition to borrowing Shouya's bike and it getting stolen, the line about Nagatsuki telling another one of his lies, makes me think that he's probably an outcast/pushed out of the school "society" norm.
It surprised me that Nagatsuki knew Yuzuru was a girl, makes me wonder if he also knows, or came to know of Shouya's and Nishimiya's past.
I want to see Sahara too, but I'm holding out for a happy reunion. It finally seems like the story is at a happy, moving forward spot, but at the same time this feeling seems to be very fragile. Like it might come crashing down in the next chapter where we meet Sahara and see that she's grown up to be someone bitter and cynical due to the way she was bullied in elementary school.
To chip in on the whole forgiveness debate: I am a deaf person. Do you know how many people I know have told me they wanted to learn sign language? Many, many, many. How many got to a point where they could actually hold a proper conversation with me? One person outside my immediate family. That's right. One. Learning any new language's hard work, and many give up. At this point if someone says they want to learn sign language, I assume they won't actually accomplish it. I don't really judge them negatively for it; I simply don't have high expectations for their success, it's far more easy to say than to do after all. Hell, you see a glimpse of that in chapter 16--the two girls saying it'd be cool to learn sign language. Spoiler: they almost certainly won't actually do it. I hear that kind of thing all the time from others.
Now, remember, in the manga it's been years. If someone came to me after years and apologized for something like that, I would probably forgive them--that's more than enough time to mature and realize your own crimes. But then again, I often give people the benefit of the doubt (though not as much as Shouko seems to do). But even putting that aside, learning sign language just to apologize would leave me outright dumbfound. I would really appreciate that, let's be frank, absolutely amazing and unbelievable gesture. I'm being serious, it really isn't a trivial gesture doing something like that.
@Kaja Rainbow
The stuff they've been signing in the story, were there any gestures that were similar (similar gesture, similar meaning) to the sign language you know (American, Chinese sign language/whatever sign language is used in your country, or was it totally different (for example as different as Japanese Spoken is to English Spoken)?
