Sakura Tsuushin 20

Created/Updated 2002-12-25



In the beginning, it was mostly comical watching the naive Touma deal with his meaningless life. As the story went on, I started to think that Touma is a selfish lucky bastard. And then, I realized that he's only around 19 years old when all this happens. It's been almost 10 years since I was 19, so I'm not sure, but I think I was as hot-headed as Touma was. When I think of it that way, I can sort of understand him doing things like breaking the elementary school windows and being unable to "fend off" all those girls who happened to notice him. In that sense, I feel I was lucky not to have any chances at all until I was mature enough to be able to fend it off. If I were as lucky (or rather unlucky as I see it now) as Touma was, I would be ashamed of myself by now. Here I am, x-mas morning, alone, updating my website. Sure it's a bit lonely, but it's better than being ashamed of myself.

Throughout the whole book, one thought remained constant. I felt sorry for Urara. All human beings have the tendency to make up the world they see by only seeing what they want to see. This is one of the biggest fallacy of thinking mammal. Even knowing about it isn't good enough to completely prevent it. Girls have another tendency on top of that. Girls are more likely to treasure small things --here when I say things, I mostly mean events-- and there's nothing wrong with that in itself. Heck, I tend to treasure small things in life, too. After all, I consider myself fairly well in touch with my feminine side. Major problem happens when they use that small thing to filter reality.

Obviously, the first meeting with Touma meant a lot to Urara even though it meant nothing to Touma. Read it again: It meant NOTHING to Touma. That's fine, of course, as it helped Urara get back to a meaningful life. It is NOT fine, however, for her to see Touma with that pre-fabbed filter in her mind. In the end, Touma came through for her, but in my eyes, he's already a used car. Sure it's gone through 120 point inspection and what not, but a used car is a used car. Come to think of it, Akimoto probably is a brand new car, perhaps for the wrong reasons, but who cares? Yeah, there were some test-drives, I guess.

And frankly, it is scientifically wrong to mix closely related genes without the ability to filter out the bad genes. There are two ways to do it. One is very advanced, like how it's done in "Gattaca" or "Seikai no Monshou." Obviously, that's not available to Urara and Touma. The other way is to cull. Culling is not anywhere near foolproof because many recessive genes don't have obvious signs. I'm sure you can think of many other things wrong with culling.

"Sakura Tsuushin" is a worthwhile read, perhaps because there will be more brand new cars coming out of manufacturing line when this manga is read by those cars in production.

Anyway, no kanji list is planned for this series. I don't care for it that much and it's too long to bother.


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