Well i can't say the same. What happens in the story is pretty obvious but i don't see how it all ties together. The pacing is all over the place and there's too much happening at once, with none of it really tying together in a way that satisfies.
For one, there's the pseudosientific drivel that, other than telling us that this story being about parallel words and dreams gives us a bunch of questions without answers, then suddenly Sumireko, then suddenly Doremi. The bit about Merry going mad with power and becoming Yukari is easy enough to understand, but then there's that bit at the end. Sumireko's "reality" also being someone else's world, as if the tale of merry and Renko (and by extension Yukari ) was her creation to begin with. It just doesn't make sense to me.
Well i can't say the same. What happens in the story is pretty obvious but i don't see how it all ties together. The pacing is all over the place and there's too much happening at once, with none of it really tying together in a way that satisfies.
For one, there's the pseudosientific drivel that, other than telling us that this story being about parallel words and dreams gives us a bunch of questions without answers, then suddenly Sumireko, then suddenly Doremi. The bit about Merry going mad with power and becoming Yukari is easy enough to understand, but then there's that bit at the end. Sumireko's "reality" also being someone else's world, as if the tale of merry and Renko (and by extension Yukari ) was her creation to begin with. It just doesn't make sense to me.
And nah I get your angle and I'm inclined to agree. It was trying to be "DEEP" but so poorly executed that it's a hot mess.
Well i can't say the same. What happens in the story is pretty obvious but i don't see how it all ties together. The pacing is all over the place and there's too much happening at once, with none of it really tying together in a way that satisfies.
For one, there's the pseudosientific drivel that, other than telling us that this story being about parallel words and dreams gives us a bunch of questions without answers, then suddenly Sumireko, then suddenly Doremi. The bit about Merry going mad with power and becoming Yukari is easy enough to understand, but then there's that bit at the end. Sumireko's "reality" also being someone else's world, as if the tale of merry and Renko (and by extension Yukari ) was her creation to begin with. It just doesn't make sense to me.
Well from what I got from it is that in ULiL it says that Sumeriko leaves a dream self in Gensokyo when she sleeps and time has passed since then. Now that other self lives there. Yukari got Doremy's help so Sumeriko won't go to Gensokyo anymore when she's sleeping. The drivel about Renko and Marribel is how Yukari tells Sumeriko about her perspective and explains about her abilities. So to me Renko and Marribel isn't "real" but Yukari uses their image to explain things. And it ties neatly in that since this is Sumeriko's last time in Gensokyo she will have to live completely in the Outside World and have Renko as a descendant. At least this is what I got from it.
Sumireko's dream self settles down in Gensokyo, locking her out. To cope, she creates a new fantasy world (i.e. book) starring the fictional characters Renko and Merry. It's ambiguous whether she just writes it that way, the characters gain sentience somehow or were sentient to begin with - because every world is in fact equally real - but Merry ends up escaping the world, traveling to the past and becoming Yukari. This allows her to create Gensokyo, Sumireko to enter Gensokyo etc. and the loop to close. After the story has been written and her own birth has been secured, Yukari arranges with Doremy to let Sumireko make one last visit to Gensokyo and "graduate" - that is, say farewell and get over that part of her life.
Time loops are inherently convoluted, but if you can accept the basic concept behind one, this one doesn't leave that many loose threads and isn't even the weirdest Merry=Yukari theory I've seen (almost all of which have time loops). The bit about "chicken or egg" is probably just a general remark about time travel, but Renko being Sumireko's doppelganger is left hanging pretty annoyingly. Presumably she left the book world the same way Merry did or something. And then this last page basically just has the lazy Inception style trick of "what if we're still inside?"
All in all, I gotta agree it wasn't presented that perfectly, but it wasn't that confusing either. Almost all of Hisona's works are introspective and kinda ambiguous, but usually do a good job tying up all the mysteries by the end. This one didn't, not to the same extent at least.
Sumireko's dream self settles down in Gensokyo, locking her out. To cope, she creates a new fantasy world (i.e. book) starring the fictional characters Renko and Merry. It's ambiguous whether she just writes it that way, the characters gain sentience somehow or were sentient to begin with - because every world is in fact equally real - but Merry ends up escaping the world, traveling to the past and becoming Yukari. This allows her to create Gensokyo, Sumireko to enter Gensokyo etc. and the loop to close. After the story has been written and her own birth has been secured, Yukari arranges with Doremy to let Sumireko make one last visit to Gensokyo and "graduate" - that is, say farewell and get over that part of her life.
Time loops are inherently convoluted, but if you can accept the basic concept behind one, this one doesn't leave that many loose threads and isn't even the weirdest Merry=Yukari theory I've seen (almost all of which have time loops). The bit about "chicken or egg" is probably just a general remark about time travel, but Renko being Sumireko's doppelganger is left hanging pretty annoyingly. Presumably she left the book world the same way Merry did or something. And then this last page basically just has the lazy Inception style trick of "what if we're still inside?"
All in all, I gotta agree it wasn't presented that perfectly, but it wasn't that confusing either. Almost all of Hisona's works are introspective and kinda ambiguous, but usually do a good job tying up all the mysteries by the end. This one didn't, not to the same extent at least.
Thank you for this, I had no clue what was really going on by the end of this. All I could tell was that Sumireko got left behind from her own dream self, and her characters somehow leaked out of her new fantasy.