Hello again anons, welcome back for volume 7 of Moto Hagio's A Savage God Reigns. The Lowland household is thrown into disarray with the death of Greg and Sandra in a car accident. Jeremy is the first to come under scrutiny, with Ian his harshest critic. And in the aftermath, family, friends, and acquaintances come pouring out of the woodwork. This marks the end of the first act of the series, but there is plenty more to come, so stay tuned.The works of Hagio and her contemporaries ("the '49ers") represented an experimental new direction in girls' and women's manga in terms of both content and style. I hope some anons who might be unfamiliar with these mangaka and their works, or who might generally avoid girls' comics or older manga altogether, will consider reading along and trying something new. You might be surprised.For those who would like to catch up and join in, here are the previous threads:Vol. 1: >>268448441Vol. 2: >>268501695Vol. 3: >>268540638Vol. 4: >>268581029Vol. 5: >>268615427Vol. 6: >>268647910For the Japanese-speaking anons among us: tinyurl dot com slash 4wj859ppTurn on, tune in, drop out...
bump
Bump to read later
>>268683434>he was quite normal>normal>normalDid his brain leak out of his ears or what? What happened to the crying? The drug use? The emotional volatility?
>>268683761William rips off his shirt to reveal the No Homo tattoo emblazoned on his chest. Jeremy is propelled back by an invisible psychic force
>>268684090May not be able to do all the corrections tonight, but I'm jumping ahead to this one because it's one of the bigger mistakes that messes with characterization a little. This time it's easier to just retranslate the whole page.Ian: "You will say it."Ian: "You will definitely say it."Ian: "You will definitely confess."Ian: What is this confusion?Ian: Why is he affecting me this way?Ian: "Definitely!"Ian: Both my sympathy and resentment towards Jeremy are welling up all at once.Ian: I'm becoming strange too when I'm with him.I would have changed confusion to agitation personally but I wanted you to be able to see where their interpretation came from. It's fun that the carfish version makes Ian sound like he's using Bugs Bunny mindgame tactics, but it's not quite what he says.
>>268684061>>268684071Like father like son?
>>268684272>are you bi?>no way fag.>>268684551>>268684564>Pulls this shit twice
>>268683374can't believe those bastards stole ian's nose
>>268683374Are we meant to connect Greg's lighter to the fire or was that just a random detail?
Let's say Jeremy confessed how would that hold up in court?Would they show leniency, because it was a desperate attempt of a victim trying to break free from his piece of shit pedophile step-dad that raped and abused him or would he have to go to juvie for also getting his mom involved and potentially others by tampering with a car?
>>268689747They bring this up later and it's said there's precedent for it being considered self defense with the photos as proof but I only know of a case where someone went to jail for murdering their abuser. It was pretty controversial.
This volume's author's note. I don't get what makes it a method or trick.>>268683251>I used a particular compositional method to write the story centered on Ian and from his point of view. To start with, his father remarries and he has a new mother and brother. His new brother is overly sensitive and emotionally unstable. The events of the story are the same, but the incidents and private episodes surrounding Jeremy are omitted from the forefront. The readers call Ian an idiot who didn't notice anything, but what if they were shown the story from Ian's point of view, without a chance to notice anything until the boathouse scene? How long would I be able to fool them? It's thrilling to think about tricks like that, and I can't help but grin.
>>268683817If it wasn't in the bank in the first place then Greg could have relented and they would just discover right before the trip that the passport was lost and it would get cancelled anyway.
Sorry bros this shit is getting too juicy to no read ahead.
>>268686886That was normal for the Jeremy Ian knows. Remember, Ian never met Jeremy pre-abuse, so from his perspective he has always been a quiet kid that occasionally acted out. Nothing out of ordinary for a rebellious, hormonal teenager.
>>268689747Don't know about the UK, but in America there are still serious consequences.https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pieper-lewis-sentence-trafficking-sex-slavery-killed-rapist-b2306177.html
>>268690074Presumably she means that she wrote Ian's scenes in such a way that you wouldn't blindly assume there's child molestation going on if you only saw his perspective. Though in a hypothetical version of this story where the first 6 volumes were all Ian's pov, I think the readers would have started making pedo jokes as soon as he found Greg in Jeremy's room at night.
>>268690344that's too bad, first-time reader's reactions are one of the best parts of storytimes
>>268683555he rises from the grave
>>268684061zowie, it's yaoi
>>268684288kek>>268688080thanks anon
>>268684260rare ian
>>268690726Oh, that makes sense.
>>268691333that's his i'm extremely straight face
>>268684339A swing and a miss
>>268685483This is the Chi no Wadachi route
>>268684288>>268684260Makes me wonder.Was Jeremy deep down always attracted to men or was he just so broken by Greg that sex meant so little to him that sexual orientation or even attraction as a whole meant little to him?Unlike Ian who's simply a bi guy on copium, Jeremy's sexual orientation was never really touched upon and he only showed interest in women before the abuse, he did kiss William, was flustered by accidentally kissing Ian and fantasized about tasting his blood, but that's more him being fucked up from the abuse.
>>268685046>>268685058lol
>>268683783Looking at the raws, the speech bubble over Ian's back is just missing "...">>268688080Thanks anon.
>>268691799I think it's the latter.He had a girlfriend who he was very fond of to say the least and nothing seemed to indicate he was into men before he got buck broken by greg
>>268691799The way I see it, Jeremy from this point on in the story doesn't feel love anymore so his orientation isn't relevant. He engages in physical contact but it's because he keeps subconsciously trying to process his trauma and maybe partly as a self-punishment for his crimes. He's not doing it out of attraction.
bringing back this oldie cause it's kinda how this arc feels sometimes
>>268690980
>>268685180that dastardly valentine
These are all the corrections I can do for now, I have to go to bed. It would be nice if the thread was still here when I get up so I can read the rest.>>268683761Rather than everyone helping him, I think bottom left is referring to how Jeremy will cling to/depend on anyone.>>268683783This empty speech bubble was just ellipses.>>268684389This one was an exclamation point.>>268684986Jeremy says killing him will make them even.>>268685158The middle panel, I'm too tired to think of natural-sounding dialogue but Pansy says he asked Jeremy a leading question about if he had a lover and Jeremy went pale and became angry.
>>268686108The only good thing you can say about Sandra is that she was slightly less evil than Greg.
>>268693039that's debatable
>>268686108>ian was the only person in the entire family who didn't knowJust lol. Lmao, if you will.
>>268693336He was always away tho, didn't even live in the manor iirc.
>>268693505Hell, he didn't even live there as a kid. He was shipped off to a boarding school when he was like eight and then spent the rest of his life between schools and his girlfriends.
>>268686108>>268686125>>268686166Mom of the Year
>>268690726Ian did overlook a lot, to be fair. He is far from a natural Sherlock Holmes.
>>268683307I'd eat his heart too.
>>268683307Also one of my favorite visuals from this series.
>>268689113I think it's supposed to be Ian reaching like crazy
>>268683614Dreaming of a loved one who just died is worse than any nightmare
>>268693505He lived in the manor about as much as Jeremy did, though he was sneaking out to the boathouse at night with Sharon for a while. His and Jeremy's rooms are in view of each other and he noticed the light was still on in Jeremy's room late into the night on at least one occasion.
>>268683142I need to read two volumes to catch up today. I might not survive.
>>268685277>ian, i think the guy that murdered two people and is asking you to meet him alone late at night might be planning to kill you>what? why would you think that???
>>268684071>>268684090The one-sided running away of Jeremy and Ian's first kiss is not that different from Jeremy and Greg's first kiss>>268684945And then he speedruns to the end of Jeremy and Greg's relationshipWhat I'm saying is we need to consider Ian is being possessed by Greg's spooky ghost and we should invest in an exorcist
>>268684071Just like daddy
>>268699770I keep telling myself I don't need to read it when the threads go up, I can wait until I wake up the next day, but then right as I'm ready to go to bed I let myself get sucked in and cannot stop until after the sun is fully up. Greg has ruined my life.
>>268685533He seriously already invited someone out to kill them and had no plan in place for how he would do it?
>>268686108when anons say they hate sandra more than greg, this is usually the page they're thinking of
>>268686144So was she projecting her resentment of Jeremy onto Debbie because she couldn't handle the truth or did she think he was sleeping with both?
>>268690074>>268690726Having read this now, I also think this volume was payoff for all the set-up she did with Ian. She included many red herrings and easily misunderstood clues in scenes with him so he could have this bumbling detective arc later. Jeremy's drug use, his unknown lover giving him his fix, this mysterious figure Valentine, Greg's private talks with Jeremy that caused him to be tense, it mostly points to his dad being the good guy who discovered his stepson's drug habit and was killed trying to help him, because the truth is so beyond what anyone could imagine, especially back in this time period when sexual abuse wasn't that widely discussed.
>>268683555>>268683542Greg is looking down from Heaven, happy he is remembered this well.
>>268704680I think the fact that Debbie is physically similar to Jeremy enough that Ian briefly mistook her is trying to imply the former
>>268683854>>268683867>Ian, you shouldn't use tactics like guilt tripping and threats>ok
>>268686886>>268690453Also, Ian's sense of normality is beyond fucked. He thinks his aunt and dad were involved in his mom's death. Greg had a public meltdown where he slapped Natasha and went on a rant about Matt not being his kid, and then Matt almost committed suicide. And as Ian tells it, Greg was even worse before Sandra and Jeremy came along. Despite all this, Ian thought his dad was a mostly decent guy and wanted everyone to get along. Jeremy being a bit touchy barely registered with him after all that.
Is anybody prepared for me to drop an unhinged theory that's almost essay length
>>268707702Do share, anon
>>268707828If you're looking for crazy, you're in luck. I've been contemplating when to post my deranged thesis on how I started to think Sandra was responsible for the car accident after a few re-reads, and with the revelation she knew about the abuse, now seems as good a time as any.I'll preface this saying I don't think there is a real answer to what happened in the car, the author conveniently did not show it but left a lot of details for the reader to come up with their own interpretation.These are the concrete facts:The car slid 5 meters down an embankment.There were no brake marks but the road was slippery from ice and rotting leaves. For an unknown reason, the car sped up during the sharp turn.Despite the incline not being very steep, the car caught fire and it was the fire that killed them, not the crash itself.Greg crawled out in time but Sandra died in the fire.The cause of fire was not determined, but multiple possibilities were presented: the engines for that car brand caught fire randomly during test runs and Greg's lighter was found at the crash site.The police and insurance company investigated the car but did not believe tampering was the cause of death. (cont.)
>>268708114Now I will don my tinfoil hat, these are things that may or may not be related, but I found them interesting:Sandra knew about the abuse but was in denial for most of it.Her demeanor changed leading up to the crash. On the day of, she was unusually determined and got in the car to demand that Greg allow the trip to Boston.She expressed before that she would be willing to fall to hell with Greg if he was beyond saving.The writing went out of its way to point out that the car's wheel turns very easily.There was already a scene of the passenger grabbing the wheel to steer it into a crash and Hagio is fond of using parallels as we'll see.Greg expressed his belief in volume 3 that once a relationship is over, you have no choice but to kill your partner.Sandra's body was burned so badly that it could have covered up another cause of death. I'm including this because it's a possibility but I don't believe it since I doubt Greg would have burned himself to the point of mortal wounds if he was only trying to cover it up, and that's also why I think his lighter wasn't the cause of the fire. (cont.)
>>268708162If I were to put together a hypothesis for what happened it would be that Sandra was reaching the breaking point in her denial. The Boston trip was her final test for Greg. If nothing was happening, Greg would relent after enough pleading because there would be no reason to go to such lengths to prevent the trip. If he refused no matter what, it would confirm her fears. And she did not get the answer she wanted. Now that she couldn't deny it anymore, she finally confronted him and Greg flew into a rage and jammed on the gas, causing the car to speed up. Sandra knew she couldn't face Jeremy after all this and may have grabbed the wheel. Upon crashing, either the faulty engine or Jeremy's tampering caused the car to burst into flames. Sandra intended to die with Greg, but Greg escaped and dropped his lighter in the process. There's another possible interpretation where Greg realized everything was over after being confronted and crashed the car himself because he would be exposed as a sadist pedophile otherwise, but I'm inclined to believe the Sandra theory because it's more fitting to the story and also one other thing that won't come up for a while.As far as Jeremy is concerned, none of this is that relevant because he had the intent to kill and attempted to act on it, so he will remain a murderer for narrative purposes regardless of whether he was the true cause. So why did I type all of this then? Because I believe it's relevant to whether the reader believes Sandra had redemption in the end.
>>268707058We're at a point in the manga where you could probably make a drinking game out of all the times Ian says he won't do a thing and then proceeds to do it, usually mere pages later.
>>268708114>>268708162>>268708270This isn't that crazy, it's actually entirely believable. The manga does go out of its way to not confirm exactly what happened in/to the car. But I do think there's not enough things pointing towards Sandra for this to be more than a 'what if'.
>>268709372Yeah. Like I said, I don't think she ever had a true answer in mind. But whether to forgive the parent who betrayed you is a theme explored in the manga and I think Hagio wanted to leave that decision up to the reader, so she left enough crumbs to construct a scenario such as that one, allowing the reader to choose to believe Sandra cast aside her weakness and stood up for her son in her final moments.It's interesting that Hagio was so pessimistic about her parents but she kept trying to write stories that leave room for acceptance, as seen in Iguana Girl too.
>>268683490It's telling that the Jeremy in Ian's family Christmas daydream might as well be a changeling. He would never smile like that.
>>268707828hehe, nice gif
>>268684272common british pop culture bara no kishi
>>268708114>>268708162>>268708270What the other anon said. Sandra was surely prepared to give him hell to try and bend his will, as it was always her one way of asserting control with people, but this time she was more determined, she wasn't going to let Greg dodge around her demands. The accident coming from either Greg's erratic driving or someone grabbing the wheel is foreshadowed, and you could even say Jeremy failing to tamper with the car to any success was suggested by Ian repeatedly pointing out how little he understood cars. I will say though that I didn't used to think the lighter was a red herring.For some reason it's been dropped far away from any charred grass, even though Greg's clothes would have been alight when he crawled out. It's possible he threw it aside intentionally to stop the fuel going up, but that's not something someone thinks of in an emergency, especially not if you habitually carry cigarettes and a lighter. It's been years so maybe it doesn't fit further evidence, but I used to think Greg set the fire after crashing. That's why Ian has that odd line about finding it "still works." Depending on how the car crashed the passenger might have taken more trauma, especially if their head was in front of the driver or their seatbelt strained so they weren't secure in their seat. Sandra most likely lost consciousness in the crash and couldn't escape. That's when I thought Greg would have set fire to her, knowing what happened to the car in tests, to pass off her death as a tragic accident.So to me the question was always why did he do such a piss poor job of discarding the lighter and catch fire himself? Was he struggling to get free and lobbed it? Did an oil leak from Jeremy's tampering carry the flame to him too fast to escape? Did Greg, after everything, lose it and try to go into the fire for Sandra or something stored there? I don't know. The oil'd be nice though, like a fiery hand dragging him with her.
>>268714982The placement of the lighter was definitely weird. I think the one of the big knocks against the lighter starting it are that I feel the police would be able to tell the difference between a fire that originated from a lighter vs from the car. Also a fire of that size seems a bit much for a tiny lighter and it's hard to imagine Greg wouldn't be able to get away in time, but I suppose it could work if the crash produced a ready source of oil as you said.
>>268715482The lighter was uphill from the thicket, right next to the tree. Neither the tree nor the lighter seem to have gotten burnt. Greg had full-body burns and most people carry their lighters in their pockets, so it's hard to see how it could've avoided getting damaged if it was still on his person. Could it have fallen out while the car was rolling down, either due to a struggle between Sandra and Greg or in a freak accident?
>>268715917There's no telling. It could just be there to sow doubt about the nature of the fire with no intended explanation. That it was untarnished is another thing pointing more towards either the engine or the tampering being the cause imo.
I like that Ian finds the lighter in the same manner as some early Nancy Drew PC click-it adventure. Just a sparkle in the scene that might be worth poking.
Now that Sandra's secret is out of the bag, I want to point out that this was the most cold-blooded thing she ever did. It bowled me over the second time I read it.
>>268684497>don't worry, I won't force you again>5 pages laterIan is so funny
I checked for remaining corrections but actually encountered one that's going to need someone else to correct it.>>268685298I have no clue what Lindon means by the secret garden comment. It doesn't seem to be any kind of slang. Is anyone familiar enough with the novel to tell if it's about that? It could also be a misprint. If there's someone else who can read raws in here and knows what this line is about, I'm dying to know.>>268685863Ellipses and an exclamation point are missing from the third panel.
>>268689113Ian is a bad detective.
>>268715917It's a real head-scratcher. The lighter being out of Greg's pocket and nearby the scene of the fire but not being touched by the fire itself is fishy as hell, however, Greg safely starting the fire and dropping the lighter by the tree only to get fucked up by the fire afterwards has no plausible explanation unless you suppose he ran back into the fire for some reason, and there was never anything presented to suggest he would do that.
>>268718654He might have stood a chance if he was investigating something else but he's uniquely unfit for this case because he's biased in favor of his father, horny for the culprit, and the motive is something way beyond what he could ever conceive of.
>>268685625He thought of giving him alcohol so they would find it in his blood and conclude he was drunk when he died but at the same time he didn't think about how they would also find 5kg worth of sleeping pills in it.
>>268719109Jeremy is bad at being a criminal in the same way Ian is bad at solving this murder.
>>268718005>Is anyone familiar enough with the novel to tell if it's about that?It's not a reference to the children's book, I can tell you that much. There are a couple similarities in the manga that might point to Moto having read the novel, though. The mom of one of the characters is called Lilias, and she died from falling off a swing.Without looking at the raws, I think Lindon is implying Ian plans to make Jeremy surrender by seducing him. He's kind of poking fun at it for being the sort of plan only a guy raised in all-male boarding schools would come up with.
>>268718005>>268719260Yeah, I don't think it's about the book. I've seen 花園 used to describe the (gay) atmosphere of girls schools, and it from googling the phrase, it seems like people use it for boys schools too.Also on this page, they mistranslated an idiom.>A mouse in a cat's jawsshould be>A cornered mouse will bite the cat
>>268719154It's actually amazing that Greg's murder went as well as it did.
>>268719580If this thread is to be believed, it's because Greg did it himself. Greg's pretty good at crimes after all.
>>268717999Somebody needs to keep a running tally of how many times he backtracks on a declaration because I swear I remember it happening many more times.
>>268721319
>>268718961The other problem is that Ian is pretty unimaginative overall.
>>268686886Ian just thinks Jeremy is a crazy and neurotic kid by nature.
>>268683142Jeremy is a magical creature.
>>268721323Thanks.
>>268683761Jeremy is still relying on his twink powers to get away with his woman moments.
Savage post for a savage thread.
>>268717999Changes his mind more than the wind does.
surprised this one is still getting bumped. volume 8 is here, friends >>268721319
