Uhhhh happy belated new year and belated (sorry!) opening for the final part of this re-read,
the discussion for chapter 8!
So yeah, everything's on the table now! And sorry, forgot to mention that there's graphic animal death in this chapter as well.
For the chapter itself,
Once upon a time, I probably admired Hannu's pettiness and rage, if you'd call it that. I think I'm better off leaving that in the context of a comic, but at the end of these seven stages of torment, I have a hard time imagining anyone who wouldn't want to at least severely hurt the person who put them through it. Well, not person, but Puppy-Fox is a sentient being with a sense of self and everything.
Anyway, as a continuation of our discussion from last week, it's so weird that he just floats back up to the spirit-dimension-thing and is alive again? So the question of how they exist and die remains, and I have never been the type to ponder magic systems too deeply so... ohhh well.
The ending! I liked the ending, even though it's kinda weird. It's a plot twist that you wouldn't expect, but still kinda makes sense when you get to it, I guess? Well, they're living together now, sure! That does bring more questions about why the spirits allowed it to happen and the implications for how Ville would be counted as a citizen, but on the emotional side, I think it's cute. Hopefully Hannu is nice to Human Ville
I'll just talk a little about the comic overall
Compared to the earlier chapters, Minna's gotten much better at conveying the necessary story beats in fewer panels without it feeling too rushed. It's still a veeeeeeery wordy comic in some parts, though, which just means the pages all looked pretty busy throughout the whole thing, but it slowly got better at having a good balance between visuals and words.
Overall, I still enjoyed this comic! I know I was very critical of Hannu's actions throughout the chapters, and I don't really like what a cursory analysis of perhaps some accidental themes reveals, but it's still an entertaining and energetic story drawn with care and enthusiasm. It might have meant something personal to Minna at some point, too, though that's none of my business.
It does drag on at the beginning and especially on chapter 4, though, and I'm not sure why Minna made that chapter that long because I can't recall many events that would justify the page count. As nice as it is to have a comic that takes its time going places, it can make certain events from the past lose their impact when they're spaced very far apart for me. At least the void is filled with nice character moments for Hannu and Ville, usually, and that's probably the comic's strongest point! Their relationship is the most fleshed out, while Hannu's relationship with everyone else is just "stay the heck away from me, or I'll be mean"
(Personally I feel their relationship isn't balanced or is a little one-sided, but oh well. It's still good.)
Aside from that, there's also the fact that this comic was finished in two years. It's amazing how much work Minna's able to put out, though this amount of work is always at the expense of... health, usually.
Mr. Moose openly admits to "getting old", however that may relate to an actual end of his existence ...
Still going to do my best not to think too hard about it, but would that mean some are way older than or have a longer lifespan than others? Kokko, for instance, seems to be nigh eternal. They're both ancient, yet Kokko makes no mention of "getting old" beyond being wiser, meaning he improves somewhat with age?
Well, yes, certainly. If you can come up with less terrible measures (or better reasoning, and all the pondering done within the original strict deadline, of course), be my guest. [...]
This is a pretty serious thread of discussion and the examples being brought up make me too nauseous to read further, so I'm not willing to go further. But either way, for Hannu's situation, I'd still be firmly against hurting someone etc etc. but an irrational or emotional response isn't out of the question considering the pressure.
One of my late aunts who was a wildlife carer and especially liked rearing orphaned native birds, or caring for injured ones, was certainly recognised and remembered by many of the birds she had cared for. I have seen magpies, kookaburras, butcher birds and various corvids that she had cared for and released back into the wild bring back their offspring to show her. The birds would line up their youngsters on the clothesline, tap on the kitchen window to get her attention if she was not already in the garden, and she would come out to them and feed them tiny pieces of raw meat, insects, fruit or seeds, depending on what those particular birds ate, and she would make friends with the young ones. When she died in extreme old age she was found by the young man who had come to cut her hedges, where she had been sitting on the back verandah with her morning cup of tea in her lap and several birds complaining at her feet.
Aw :'( That definitely paints a vivid image. I wonder if they understood the situation...
Of course, you wouldn't think of how individual birds are if you just saw them passing by, but getting to know them like that would give you a clear view of how rich their lives are.
Pain and seeing oneself wounded tends to just do that to us humans, even in cases where no grievous harm was done ...
I agree, it's clear that the spirits can feel pain. Also, considering they're not really in their weird powerful spiral glowing mist forms (as Kokko and some foxes appear sometimes), it doesn't seem unlikely that their physical forms are very different. Why? Maybe they just like physical pleasures like eating or dancing, but that's just speculation. I actually have no idea!
