Haha I was wondering what you were pretty sure about with that last sentence there.
I’m not familiar with Book of the New Sun, but can hiruko actually absorb memories? I was pretty sure that was just something the innkeeper was telling herself to feel better about her son being eaten by Taka, and the only reason it took so long to kill her was because she kept feeding it guests. I’m not sure I understand the hiruko being both the cause and effect though, what do you mean? I was thinking the timeline has been pretty linear so far.
After thinking about it more, my best guess on Robin’s motivation is that he wants to somehow use the hiruko’s regenerative abilities to bring his sister back, and that’s the end goal of his experiments. The guy from back on the ship with the rotting hiruko part mentioned a rumor about how attaching a piece of one to yourself would make you immortal and that there’s a doctor at the Immortal Order who will do the surgery. That rumor probably didn’t originate from Dr. Usami since his work was on prosthetics, but Robin also spent time with the Immortal Order, and we’ve seen what his experiments were…
In Book of the New Sun (it’s a science fiction tetralogy, and one of the best things I’ve ever read) the protagonist encounters a creature called an Alzabo, which absorbs the consciousnesses and memories of people it’s eaten. It seems to be unintelligent itself, but it can attract prey then through a sort of mimicry, by vocalizing the thoughts of those consciousnesses, and that seems to be the entirety of the point as far as the creature is concerned.
Alongside that, there are people who ritualistically imbibe an enzyme taken from the Alzabo along with the flesh of a dead person, and duplicate the effect - temporarily absorbing the consciousness of the dead person. And that gets into some complex existential territory that’s significant to the story.
Probably because I was primed by having already seen the concept elsewhere, I took the innkeepers claim more or less at face value - as a sort of seeming myth that’s rooted in some degree of truth.
That’s undoubtedly where the impression that the maneaters are both cause and effect came from too. The innkeeper isn’t the only one who’s essentially cultivated a maneater, and I’ve just assumed that there’s some underlying reason, and that that’s it. And when I saw the rumor about immortality linked to them, I assumed that the notion of just essentially getting some of their flesh stitched onto ones body was a misconception, and there was something more profound and likely sinister going on - specifically, possibly, that the actual mechanism involved in that nominal immortality is being eaten and, as the innkeeper asserted, absorbed by a maneater, then somehow being extracted from the maneater (and possibly that last bit is still in the experimental stage, and that’s tied in with Heaven, and most notably with the monstrous babies - they’re failed experiments).
Granted that that’s all quite speculative, that’s the rough outline of what I think of as the cause end of the cycle.
The effect end is of course much more obvious - the human-appearing hiruko apparently (certainly in some cases - we just don’t know if it’s universal) become maneaters. But even with that, we have that weird bridge between death and life again, since they don’t simply transform - they die as humans and are reborn as maneaters.
As far as Robin goes, we don’t have enough information yet for any solid guesses, but I think it’s notable that his big issue is the (apparent - we self-evidently can’t take it at face value) death of his sister, and the whole thing with the maneaters and the hiruko and the kids at Heaven deals with these weird cycles of death and life. The simplest assumption is that he’s trying to bring her back, but this story hasn’t followed the simple path yet, so it could be about anything. I’m sure there’s something there though.
Rereading the series, and here’s a good example of why I wonder about the timeline.
From chapter 23 (uploads don’t seem to work on mobile Firefox)
The clear implication there, as it has been since the beginning, is that the events in Heaven and Maru and Kiruko’s journey are going on at the same time, and that he’s the one who’s coming soon. But later it’s strongly implied that Maru is Tokio’s son, and that the one who looks like him that he’s supposed to administer the medicine to is the twin from whom he was separated. Also, there are a lot of events still to come at Heaven, and later outside after the walls come down. Enough time has been shown to have passed for the youngest generation of students to become adults, and even for the daughter of two of the students to grow up into the innkeeper that Maru and Kiruko meet.
But still, it’s presented as if both of the stories are happening at the same time.
Granted, that could just be an author mind game, and there’s no implication that the timeline really is that disjointed - rather it’s just sometimes made to look that way. But still…
Edit to add - I’m starting to figure it out.
It is sort of a mind game, but a well constructed and legitimate one.
The timeline is more or less ordinary - the skewed thing is Mimihime’s experience of time. I think she is, to borrow a term from Slaughterhouse Five, “timeloose.” She doesn’t just see the future - in some sense, she experiences it, and then she can just as easily switch to experiencing some bit of the past (like tripping over a younger version of Tokio that of course nobody else can see).
And I’m reasonably certain that not just the page I linked, but all of the bits that the first time through led me to think that the timeline was screwed up were things seen from Mimihime’s POV. It’s not the overall timeline that’s confused - it’s just her experience of it.
And I had noticed the first time through that while we get to see details of the lives of many of the other characters after the walls of Heaven come down, we see almost nothing more of Mimihime. I was a bit disappointed then, because I like her character, but it strikes me now that that was likely very deliberate, because she still has a key role to play.
Haha I was wondering what you were pretty sure about with that last sentence there.
I’m not familiar with Book of the New Sun, but can hiruko actually absorb memories? I was pretty sure that was just something the innkeeper was telling herself to feel better about her son being eaten by Taka, and the only reason it took so long to kill her was because she kept feeding it guests. I’m not sure I understand the hiruko being both the cause and effect though, what do you mean? I was thinking the timeline has been pretty linear so far.
After thinking about it more, my best guess on Robin’s motivation is that he wants to somehow use the hiruko’s regenerative abilities to bring his sister back, and that’s the end goal of his experiments. The guy from back on the ship with the rotting hiruko part mentioned a rumor about how attaching a piece of one to yourself would make you immortal and that there’s a doctor at the Immortal Order who will do the surgery. That rumor probably didn’t originate from Dr. Usami since his work was on prosthetics, but Robin also spent time with the Immortal Order, and we’ve seen what his experiments were…
In Book of the New Sun (it’s a science fiction tetralogy, and one of the best things I’ve ever read) the protagonist encounters a creature called an Alzabo, which absorbs the consciousnesses and memories of people it’s eaten. It seems to be unintelligent itself, but it can attract prey then through a sort of mimicry, by vocalizing the thoughts of those consciousnesses, and that seems to be the entirety of the point as far as the creature is concerned.
Alongside that, there are people who ritualistically imbibe an enzyme taken from the Alzabo along with the flesh of a dead person, and duplicate the effect - temporarily absorbing the consciousness of the dead person. And that gets into some complex existential territory that’s significant to the story.
Probably because I was primed by having already seen the concept elsewhere, I took the innkeepers claim more or less at face value - as a sort of seeming myth that’s rooted in some degree of truth.
That’s undoubtedly where the impression that the maneaters are both cause and effect came from too. The innkeeper isn’t the only one who’s essentially cultivated a maneater, and I’ve just assumed that there’s some underlying reason, and that that’s it. And when I saw the rumor about immortality linked to them, I assumed that the notion of just essentially getting some of their flesh stitched onto ones body was a misconception, and there was something more profound and likely sinister going on - specifically, possibly, that the actual mechanism involved in that nominal immortality is being eaten and, as the innkeeper asserted, absorbed by a maneater, then somehow being extracted from the maneater (and possibly that last bit is still in the experimental stage, and that’s tied in with Heaven, and most notably with the monstrous babies - they’re failed experiments).
Granted that that’s all quite speculative, that’s the rough outline of what I think of as the cause end of the cycle.
The effect end is of course much more obvious - the human-appearing hiruko apparently (certainly in some cases - we just don’t know if it’s universal) become maneaters. But even with that, we have that weird bridge between death and life again, since they don’t simply transform - they die as humans and are reborn as maneaters.
As far as Robin goes, we don’t have enough information yet for any solid guesses, but I think it’s notable that his big issue is the (apparent - we self-evidently can’t take it at face value) death of his sister, and the whole thing with the maneaters and the hiruko and the kids at Heaven deals with these weird cycles of death and life. The simplest assumption is that he’s trying to bring her back, but this story hasn’t followed the simple path yet, so it could be about anything. I’m sure there’s something there though.
Rereading the series, and here’s a good example of why I wonder about the timeline.
From chapter 23 (uploads don’t seem to work on mobile Firefox)
The clear implication there, as it has been since the beginning, is that the events in Heaven and Maru and Kiruko’s journey are going on at the same time, and that he’s the one who’s coming soon. But later it’s strongly implied that Maru is Tokio’s son, and that the one who looks like him that he’s supposed to administer the medicine to is the twin from whom he was separated. Also, there are a lot of events still to come at Heaven, and later outside after the walls come down. Enough time has been shown to have passed for the youngest generation of students to become adults, and even for the daughter of two of the students to grow up into the innkeeper that Maru and Kiruko meet.
But still, it’s presented as if both of the stories are happening at the same time.
Granted, that could just be an author mind game, and there’s no implication that the timeline really is that disjointed - rather it’s just sometimes made to look that way. But still…
Edit to add - I’m starting to figure it out.
It is sort of a mind game, but a well constructed and legitimate one.
The timeline is more or less ordinary - the skewed thing is Mimihime’s experience of time. I think she is, to borrow a term from Slaughterhouse Five, “timeloose.” She doesn’t just see the future - in some sense, she experiences it, and then she can just as easily switch to experiencing some bit of the past (like tripping over a younger version of Tokio that of course nobody else can see).
And I’m reasonably certain that not just the page I linked, but all of the bits that the first time through led me to think that the timeline was screwed up were things seen from Mimihime’s POV. It’s not the overall timeline that’s confused - it’s just her experience of it.
And I had noticed the first time through that while we get to see details of the lives of many of the other characters after the walls of Heaven come down, we see almost nothing more of Mimihime. I was a bit disappointed then, because I like her character, but it strikes me now that that was likely very deliberate, because she still has a key role to play.