I’m back! There was no blog post last week because at the time I’d normally write it, I was in Torino, at the InTO MANGA: Critical Paths in Manga Studies conference. It was a privilege to be on a panel and get to talk about part of my project alongside such clever people! In my presentation, I focused on something I touched on a bit in this post from last August, using Episodes 15 and 16 as an example of how Saito expands on smaller plot points, adds cliffhangers, etc in service of telling the story of Torikaebaya monogatari the way she wants to tell it. And apart from that, I had a lot of fun throughout the conference, and I was really struck by the variety of subject matter – people had so much to say about manga from all kinds of angles!

Now that I’ve returned, I actually want to stick with Episode 30 just a wee bit longer, as it offers a good jumping-off point for another topic I wanted to return to. A couple of months ago, I wrote about the significance of the word 散る (chiru – to fall, to scatter, to die nobly) in relation to Sara’s departure from the court and in relation to his name. So just as I foretold back then, today I’ll say some more about the meaning of sarasoju!