Hello again anons, welcome back for volume 16 of Moto Hagio's A Savage God Reigns. An oneiric dance through their shared history exposes Jeremy's trauma once more, and Jeremy returns to the apartment—for the anniversary of his mother and Gre;s death!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: >>268647910Vol. 7: >>268683142Vol. 8: >>268721319Vol. 9: >>268755228Vol. 10: >>268782676Vol. 11: >>268822559Vol. 12: >>268853844Vol. 13: >>268889217Vol. 14: >>268926108Vol. 15: >>268966243For the Japanese-speaking anons among us: tinyurl dot com slash 4wj859pp
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>>268999711
>>268999050>seagulls>seafoamShould I be worried?
>>268999255Having an emergency on Christmas must really be a bitch with everything closed.
It has been really impossible to catch up in this heat, I just keep dozing off no matter how I sit. Some bugger has started a Ghost Hunt daily while I wasn't looking as well, and I have to admit it's one of my favourites. Have some stream of consciousness as I tried to stay awake:>>268855792The funny cone buildings with white tips here are oast houses, they're fairly iconic in Kent (though they were built all over England) and were used for drying hops for beer. There's a few at Sissinghurst as well.>>268855822I didn't realise they called creme brulee "caramel puddi" in Japan but I guess they would.>>268855833>we'll turn into seagullsI've played this game.>>268855999I'll be honest, if you want to take the train back to London you really ought to go to Brighton.>>268856103>"you're not dying any more!">"fuck you stop trying to fuck me">>268856137Jesus christ, Ian, no. You cannot go to the cliff edge, from the top you can't see how deep the underside is, you may be standing on a crust that'll collapse under a human's weight.>>268856181>>268856191Caaan yoou feel the looove tooniight>>268856373Return of the towering fro.>>268882826Wrong side of England! Bath is in the west, a fair bit further north and nearer the border of Wales.>>268885169Adding to this that the area they first mention looking for a flat in, somewhere near Paddington and Hyde Park, is where a shitload of prostitutes moved to during WWII because of stricter policing closing down brothels and pushing them to sell outdoor public sex instead of inside taxis or houses.
>>268999039>I visited Cambridge. I heard that each college of Cambridge has a different color (for example, Trinity Hall is black). I was interested and went to a store and they had striped scarves with blue, dark green, orange, red, and all sorts of other colors. It looked fun. They also had matching neckties with stripes and coat of arms. How fashionable. But wait a minute. Just who decided to make striped scarves for students and clubs...? I wonder if it happened organically... Neckties are sewn on bias so I can at least why they would be diagonally striped... Well, it's fun to think over mysteries like that.
>>268999216One of my favorite pages. It appears so simple but the imagery is loaded. Even though his face already can't be seen without the mask, I like the detail of Greg's words obscuring his face further.
>>268999155"and by that i mean i should have caught him with my penis of course"
I have to get going to bed, but I'm going to jump ahead in the corrections to the worst mistranslation I remember.>>269001328"These feeling she has must be a lie... I can see that" is the opposite of what she actually says. It should be "The pain he's keeping inside is real... I can see that for a fact." Also add a "but" to the end of the following line about Sandra. Then the next panel, "His suffering must be a lie" should be "It's clear that his suffering is real." It's a pretty important scene so this is important to set straight.Now that that's out of the way, going back to the start.>>2689991114th panel, the blanks are "Please! Please", though an untranslatable detail is the first one is in katakana and the second is in kanji, so one might read the first as more shrill.>>268999275Bottom right panel, "He has a hangover" should be "I have a hangover," it's Ian talking. And Sharon's line immediately after that is addressed to him, I don't know if they thought that was Jeremy speaking or what.>>268999304Third panel, "It wasn't me that made him sick. Seeing him like that" should be "It's not like I'm forcing him to do anything. I just couldn't stand to see him like that.">>268999479"Jeremy was in so much pain he cried out over it" should be "There were times I sympathized with Jeremy's feelings so much it hurt." And then there's missing text in the following panel that should be "The fact that I felt responsible isn't a lie either.">>268999491Fifth panel, the third "Haa" should actually be "Who...">>268999617"Jeremy got a hold of himself" should be "Jeremy curled up"I will do the rest tomorrow.
>>268999341he's beauty and he's gracehe's the #1 greg of all time
>>269003017solo version for a greg so nice, you get him twice
>>269003017>>269003055I like how he doesn't even have a head behind the mask. Greggu kowai!
>>269003073Greggu's been getting more monster-like as time goes on. The optimistic way to look at the face disappearing is his memory and control are fading. The pessimistic way to look at it are that his sins were so bad that Ian can't see his father's image anymore, only a monster.
>>268999451Ian you were doing good for a while, why did it turn out like this?
>>269001911Thanks, anon. It's always nice to get a little more background info on the setting.
>>269002025Are striped scarves rare in Japan?
>>268999572bed head
>>269003851I don't think so, but as an American learning about this tradition it also sounds bizarre. I thought official school scarves were just a Harry Potter thing.
>>269003017
>>268999304>>268999318I had hopes she would have learned from last time but Sharon just consistently leaves this poor kid to get his ass ravaged
>>268999341Top Greg
>>268999268>today is the 25th and tomorrow is the 27ththey let this guy graduate school?
>>269003224I’d say it’s both. Greg has little control at this point and both Ian and Jeremy mostly just tell him to fuck off wherever he shows up. Ian has also seemingly decided that his father was so shit the past he had with him is not worth preserving. Probably a healthy approach, to be honest.
>>269006900The translator forgot the “day after” part there. Notice that it’s written correctly in the next panel (“day after tomorrow”).
>>269000192Lindon should really be used to this shit by now
>>269000832The closest to slice of life romcom we've ever seen
>>269000209The struggle of a bi dude in a world without gay marriage.
>>268999304my "i'm not raping this guy" t-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt
>>269000597For fuck’s sake Jer, you can’t keep telling someone that you don’t love them and then expect them to wait for you forever.
>>269000960The way Ian just wants to go on normal romantic dates and take Jeremy to movies and restaurants is kinda adorable.
>>269001120I guess we can consider this a sign of real progress. Jeremy is actually starting to appreciate beauty again.
>>268999341Someone in homo threads once said Greg is like the gay boogeyman and this is what I always think of.
>>269009740Anything would be an improvement over those needle ceramics desu. You could tell he was in a lot of pain from those.
>>269006946The way he's started stuttering and become some hunched over thing that can't even stand makes me think it's more that he's fading and his shape is becoming unclear. But Jeremy still relapses hard even without that so it's tragically not the sign that everything will be better from now on. The damage that was done to him goes deeper than Greg.
>>268999216
>>269012062Yeah, until this volume I don't think I fully understood Greg's abuse just wouldn't have been possible without Sandra's willingness to sacrifice Jeremy. While Greg traumatised Jeremy, that was still just a consequence of Sandra's fucked up treatment of her son. I think this page >>269001345 shows why Jeremy has been stuck.
>>269013370There's also the fact that what he did was a crime so he can't even fully work through it with a therapist. They'll get freaked out and retreat like Pen did.
>>268999553Savage's pube comment could probably be a front-runner for most deranged dialogue in a cast of crazies.
>>269013603Huh, I didn't see her reaction as that bad. It seemed more meant to show her as someone with healthy self-preservation instincts, unlike Ian. Unless she calls the cops or otherwise fucks up with Jeremy (she is a woman in this manga, after all) she's become the third person to learn about Jeremy's crime, and Jeremy was able to really get at the root of his rage towards Sandra with her. That's due to a ton of previous work on his and Ian's part, but that's still a huge step forward.
>>269013603>>269014704I have my hands full with the corrections (and also can't even start on that for a little bit because chores) but if I can find the time, there are parts in one of the psych books Hagio said she read that delves into bad therapy practices, when therapists don't handle the situation well or do things that aren't as helpful for the patient as they think. I can't remember if what Pen does falls under that category, but I'd like to look for it and check in case that was something that might have inspired that scene.
This series hurts so much. I really want them to be able to live happily and I want Jeremy to be fully healed but it's just not that simple.
>>269000132>hallelujahI hope this is a different kind than Jeremy's.
There's one volume left right, I wonder how this could end
>>269015624I want Jeremy to be happy, fuck Ian though
>>269015898I feel like the only options are an open-ended one or tragedy and I really hope it's the former. It's a 50/50 chance because the manga doesn't hold back on its cruelty but I also don't feel like it's cruel just for cruel's sake, so I want to believe Jeremy can find a way to keep living in the end.
>>269015930I have a hard time excusing Ian's actions but at the same time, as of this volume, I think Jeremy needs that relationship, he needs someone who cares about him and knows his secret because the alternative is that it will consume him and he'll end up like at christmas but without someone to realize what's wrong before it's too late. In an ideal world, maybe William could have been the one to find out, and I think he would have been similarly caring without the angry homolust baggage of Ian, but I'm also not sure he would have been able to invest his whole self into Jeremy's problems and stuck with him through his worst relapses. I don't know, it's a messy situation where I don't fault people for hating Ian, but I'm not sure Jeremy could live without him.
>>269000157Every time Matt shows up he looks more and more like a mob character.
The weird thing about Matt is that he's getting to an age where he should have a better understanding of what he saw by the swing and its implications but there's been no indication of it. I wonder if he just forgot or if his childhood was so messed up already that it barely registered as that strange. There's not many ways you can explain your dad holding your step-brother down and giving him a full tongue kiss and I would definitely need therapy if I saw that.
>>269015930Ian wouldn't be nearly as dislikable, even despite his rage and control issues, if he could keep his horniness under control. It's been handled okay enough so far when it comes to how if affects Jeremy, but it better stay that way and not get into Magical Healing Cock territory.
>>269000209Ian openly admitting that he plans to be unfaithful.
>>269016427I mean it's not like Jeremy was given much of an option, but then again I don't think his life has given options in general after his dad died. At least Ian took him and made him go to school instead of being a crackwhore in Boston, but like Jeremy says himself, he's basically Ian's whore.
>>269016889Matt is shown to be very juvenile and basically autistic
>>269016901I think the rage and control issues are worse and they also play into his horniness which is the problem because it keeps turning him into Greg. When he's being horny but supportive and nice then it kind of does delve a little into healing cock territory but I'm not even going to complain as long as that helps Jeremy and keeps him anchored. I just want my boy Jer to be happy and not suffer so much.
>>269003017That's like my fat cat who bothers my sleep every night
>>269017166A bit, but he was 12 or 13 at the start of the story and that's a reasonable age range to be childish. He's around 15 now, right? He seems to act normal for that age.
>>269017124It's a complicated and at times unhealthy relationship for sure. I'm just on copium and praying with all my might they both improve and work it out because I'm so invested in Jeremy's story that I can't bare a tragedy end and my read of the themes so far are that Jeremy's salvation lies in learning to love/be loved again. The only alternative to Ian I can imagine is if he stops hiding the secret altogether and goes to trial so that he can get all those skeletons out of the closet because they're smothering him slowly, but I don't think there's enough time in one volume for that and I'm also not sure he could withstand that. He already said he'd kill himself if anyone else found out.
>>269017251Greg confirmed catboy.
>>269017055The boy's honest if nothing else
>>269017191As weird as it is, the healing cock actually works in this case because Jeremy needs both someone who understands the depths of his issues and crimes AND someone who can replace his negative memories of sex with something more positive. This is indeed happening, as we see that he now thinks of Ian as beautiful and considers him his safe haven even physically and mentally.
>>269017055Well, he’s a romantic who doesn’t want to marry just because the society expects it of him. No wonder he’s so unexcited about the prospect.
>>269017892But isn't it more through a fucked up masochistic lens?
>>269017784Delete this
>>269017428Realistically he's just not important or sexy enough for Moto to waste time fleshing him out so him being a mob is convenient, but you can be charitable and interpret him just being a proper not-my-problem teenager like most people
>>269017959He's so confusing sometimes. What's he going to do if he continues his relationship with Jeremy? I had assumed they would eventually come forward about it when they're old enough since it's a barely kept secret but it sounds like he's actually planning to get a normal marriage and kids. Did he plan to keep fucking on the side while he raises a family?
>>269018287You know, I've actually thought Matt is the closest character to Hagio based on how she speaks of her family problems and depicts it semi-autobiographically (emphasis on semi) in Iguana Girl. It seems like there were favoritism issues in her family as well and her parents were always rejecting her and devaluing her. She didn't end up focusing on him that much but the concept of parents pursuing the elusive perfect family at the expense of their children did.
>>269018365Just like daddy.
>>269018002A bit and that might be inevitable due to how the abuse warped the relationship Jeremy has with sex, but the results in this volume were compelling. He was doing well and moved away from the self-harm needle art and started sculpting Ian as something of a comfort totem to keep away the bad thoughts, and they had even worked out their schedules so it wasn't an unhealthy stranded situation where they were ignoring everything else in their lives until his issues with his mom and his unresolved anger came roaring back from therapy. Up until then, the relationship seemed like it had reached a stage where it was helping and it wasn't the relationship that caused it to crash this time.
>>269000179This fucking guy lol. He's writing a letter to apologize for abandoning her to take care of Jeremy and he's just fantasizing about Jeremy the whole time he's writing it. I'm not even mad at him, his lust is too strong for his rational brain to handle, but Nadia is torturing herself by loving this dude when he's this hopeless.
>>269000209The mediterranean rears its head again
>>269019313Ian doesn't have a brain in his head only inside his dick
>>269019313English women look abysmal, shit taste.
>>269019340what if he's right, jeremy's got dark curly hair so he could have some mediterranean blood in him.ian's on the verge of a scientific breakthrough and then you'll all regret your words and deeds.
>>269019464At first I thought Jer was part Asian since Matt said he looks like a China doll with fair skin and black hair
>>269019464>scientific breakthroughJeremy leaves the house long enough to get a nice tan and Ian bluescreens, wakes up in a daze a week later and Jeremy is somehow pregnant.
>>269019569In the raws, he actually just says his skin is smooth like a china plate but I guess that doesn't sound as poetic in English.
>>269000412I wonder if Jeremy will actually be able to keep it a secret his whole life if he's having these kind of difficulties and wanting to blurt it out. It's not like Ian is the only one who knows, there's Lindon, Natasha, Sharon, maybe others I'm forgetting. If he could open up to more people in his close circle about it then it could go a long way toward helping him. Maybe not everyone would be able to handle it but William and Lorenzo seem mature enough tot take the news.
>>269019635I guess Hagio just likes dark haired europeans, that's why she has to make them suffer.
>>268999341Sleep paralysis demon
>>269000625Ian handles the situation in the most Ian way possible.
>>268999541ian got that baking residue stache going on
>>269000793Positive progress? In this manga? I'm immediately suspicious.
>>269000192Lindon's reaction to Ian's line is hilarious. Ian's horndog levels are beyond human comprehension.
>>269020318Hey, whatever works. Jeremy clearly enjoyed that one.
>>269000938These last two volumes it feels like Moto really wanted an excuse to draw them in cute domestic scenarios.
>>269018002>>269018770I think the part where Jeremy sleepily asks Ian to “birth” him is extremely telling. It’s a symbolic expression that he had put himself together again, with Ian functioning as the protective and nourishing womb.
>>269022195Considering this series' track record with motherhood though... But you're probably right it was meant to be healing.
>>268999711The boys are not all right.
>>269000999Jeremy not missing the opportunity to harsh the vibe.
>>269001018How old is Lindon supposed to be anyway? He looks 40s or 50s at most.
>>269000973Jeremy is still trying to make their relationship similar to what he had with Greg. Maybe that helps him cope since he's decided he can't accept love so he's convinced himself the relationship is acceptable if he can turn it into a transaction, but it's yet another thing they really need to but won't bring up and process with the therapist.
>>269001078There's some interesting symbolism going on here. I've been associating the mask with abusers but since everyone has traces of it here, are the markings more like the potential to be an abuser? Or rage? Greg is the only sculpture with his eyes open, possibly because he acted on his anger, but Ian has acted on it too and his eyes are closed.
>>269001102Cosmo's haircut is so weird. You should not put a part in the middle of that.
>>269023530I think it’s just the people that are currently somehow important to Jeremy; the bigger the face, the bigger impact they’ve had on his life. You can see the faces of Valentine, Marjorie (?) and Lorenzo too, but their faces are small and incomplete because the emotional connection there is relatively minor. Greg’s eyes are open because he is associated with fear, while others aren’t.
>>269001120This is not dissimilar to what he was doing with Nadia's music. It's a step above how he was before when he was channeling his emotions into art that conveyed pain, though there's an underlying toxicity to it that he still sees himself as dirty and is trying to cleanse himself with an external source.
>>269000730g-greggu is f-falling on hard times
>>269001142This reminds me that I have no idea if Moto understands how English accents work.
>>269022532It would be on brand for this manga if the most protective mother turned out to be a guy. Jeremy seeing Ian as his totem against his inner ugliness also points towards the interpretation that he views Ian as an all-purpose balm for his inner self. Ian also metaphorically put him together in the last volume, so there’s that too.
>>269001162Jeremy still thinking of sex as punishment is whoof. If it's true then it's hard not to see their relationship as bad. We see him substituting concepts of love with his more clinical interpretation to maintain his no-love rule though, so I'm not sure whether we're meant to take that at face value or not.
>>269000800It's almost like a normal shoujo manga here.
>>269001279Sandra's roses in the background of this scene.
>>269000938
>>269001396Ian acting so proud of his work is actually pretty sweet.
>>269001042Ian is not making a good case for himself here.
>>268999587>>268999604is this an actual thing with PTSD or something?
>>269000938>>269001524>>269001533These are very Hagio was reading her psych books moments. Most of these are symptoms described in people with certain traumas. IIRC it was most common in people who experienced abuse and/or captivity. They have trouble asserting themselves and doing basic things many would find easy. One example was a man who after years of captivity struggled with opening doors by himself because he hadn't been allowed to do something like that and had developed a mental block towards it.>>269001089This too, the impression that the trauma happened like it was yesterday was a symptom specifically detailed in the book. It was part of an especially severe form of PTSD if I remember right.>>269026350I don't know if it's been debunked because the book I'm thinking of came out at a time before multiple-personality disorder fell out of favor, but I think it's detailed in there somewhere. It's not unheard of for trauma victims to hallucinate flashbacks though the examples I'm thinking of are usually brought on by a powerful stimulus like how veterans react to fireworks.
>>268999897Ian awkwardly sweeping the don't fuck Jeremy until he's better promise under the rug
>>269001452>>269001465This is the culmination of what the abuse wrought. There's the clear symbolism of Jeremy's anger and warped thoughts turning him into the monster he feared but these pages also lay bare how Greg using him as an outlet for his pent up rage and calling that love caused Jeremy's perception of love to become inseparable from anger and fear and why it's so difficult for him to love or accept love.
Now that we're here, I'm a little terrified of reaching the end. To be honest, I intentionally never read the last volume because this manga meant so much to me that I didn't want to not have any more to read and put it off indefinitely. In a short time, I'll have to face whatever the outcome of the story is and who knows when or if I'll be able to discuss or read other's discussion of it on such an engaged level again. It feels a little like I'm in mourning. I've put off the end for so long that part of me doesn't want to reach it.With that sentimentality aside, here are the rest of the corrections.>>269000132The untranslated text in the second panel is that it was a massacre of the French.>>269000697Not a correction but a little note for English readers, the "I love you" is in katakana so it's being said like there's no feeling behind it.>>269000987"I asked Marjorie, but I'm petty" should be "Marjorie told me the same thing as you, that I'm stingy.">>269001132"Am I to be teaching children?" should be more like "I'm taking lessons from a child?">>269001179Second panel, "I didn't come here" should be "I don't really need to come here, but"Fourth panel, "What? I guess it's useful? (etc...)" should be something like "What? Are you asking if it helps? Is it supposed to magically make things better for me?" not very confident on it though.>>269001255Second panel, "Why are you calling?" should be "Why aren't you calling?">>269001377"He has intense headaches" should be "My head is throbbing."The translation for this one was weird because the therapy scene was as bad as they get but there was a lot that was surprisingly competent for their usual. If only they could have kept the quality consistent.
>>269001543marjorie stocks are DOWN
>>269001543I thought I was clever for noticing the parallels between Marjorie and Nadia with Sandra but they kind of spell it out, don't they. Well I'm vindicated anyway.
>>269001551>>269001563>>269001576This might seem like a smaller scene but for me it's one of the most significant in terms of why I hold the second half in such high regard. At the risk of repeating myself from a previous thread, so many stories about abuse only cover the sympathetic ways the victim suffers, but they don't do a good job of exploring how the damage can twist you into something more nasty. Not just the sadness but the anger and the difficulty directing that anger. This is part of trauma that people who want to help irl usually aren't prepared for. I think it's depicted very thoughtfully here, and I really appreciate it.
>>269004350Schools will make any kind of memorabilia they can because it is upcharged to hell and back.
>>269002719Ian probably thinks at this point that if he just fucked Jeremy himself a few times before the sabotage that everything would have been fixed.
>>269029879healing dick strikes again
>>269023948Yeah, but they all have the mask markings, though subtle.
>>269023530I think the closed eyes are more about shutting out reality, maybe. Every sculpture with its eyes closed has a history of either being unaware or deliberately avoidant of the dark things in their lives. Greg has his eyes open because he was a source of the dark things. The mask markings seem to be less about abuse exactly than the capacity for evil, for being monstrous towards someone.
>>269015030I don't know if it's exactly what I was thinking of but I found the section on traumatic transference and traumatic countertransference that Pen mentions here >>269001377 and it includes a lot of what was depicted in the scene. Regrettably, most of the relevant passages are too long to share. Pen recognizing it and trying to reinforce the relationship boundary seems to be the preferable option (though there's not really a good one in this situation since the patient leaves unhelped) which is interesting because I thought her looking at the clock and thinking "thank god it's almost over" reflected poorly on her ability to do her job in that scene. I guess that's why a lot of therapists fall into this trap, because you expect being an active advocate to be the correct decision.
>>269031124Yeah, I read it more as the capacity or maybe the anger they keep buried than the suggestion they were actually abusers. With Greg though, he strikes me as such a narcissist that I'm not even sure he would be able to see his own actions as evil. Maybe he was crazy enough to believe Jeremy loved him back, maybe not.
>>268999216>he's literally me
>>269005630Sharon doesn't want to be raped next.
>>269017784Greg doesn't deserve this fate.
>>268998996>>268854552As I'm going through some old threads, this page really hurt to read. Jeremy was away from Ian for just a bit of time and even while stuck around BPD hoe Marjorie, he was starting to love beauty again. Then you have Ian's fucked up psychosexual mug standing right in his way. Jeremy really would have been better far away from Ian for a long time.
>>269032164Ian is extremely easy to hate throughout that part (and in general). His level of selfishness and lack of empathy is realistic, but man is he an absolute asshole when he gets going.
>>269032164Ian gets better (I say while nervously glancing at the start of this volume). Okay, well he has moments of being better. There is room for a lot of improvement but he doesn't remain static at the bottom of the barrel at least.
>>269032801>>269028831Thanks again for all the corrections and commentary throughout anon. It definitely made some parts of this a lot more comprehensible.
>>269032801
>>269032800Ian's issue is that he ideally wants to dress Jeremy up as a doll and shove him into a clockwork mechanism where he enacts exactly what Ian has planned out, an ideal life of Jeremy recovering from trauma and being a moody but sweet boyfriend and artist/poet or whatever. And any deviation Jeremy has from it, Ian doesn't take well at all.
>>269001741Reading this series, always.
