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ANN Book Club -- Kino's Journey.

Are we going to discuss the episode about the Country of Tower at some point? I would have thought if we did it would be at the start rather than the end, as it is somewhat of a preview for the series.

In episode 2,

It was stupid of Kino to stop and help them for so long, she should've gave them a couple of days worth of meat and been on her way. spoiler[She may be a good philosopher , but it seems she is not very clever)]

Alestal wrote:

In episode 2, It was stupid of Kino to stop and help them for so long, she should've gave them a couple of days worth of meat and been on her way. spoiler[She may be a good philosopher , but it seems she is not very clever)]

She's first and foremost a traveler, though. She wanted to learn all she could about them as people, and about their culture. I can't blame her. They were kind to her.

She enjoyed helping people and learning about them. In the end, she clearly wasn't happy about how things had turned out. She didn't accept the ring partly because she knew where it had come from, but mostly I think it was due to guilt, that she couldn't change these people through kindness anymore than she could change a rabbit from fearing predators or a wolf from being one. She can't accept any reward from the wolves.

It's very sad, but I don't think it was wrong of her to hang around if she didn't sense much danger. And why would she have until the end? (Although their hesitance about mentioning their "stock" was a big tipoff, I'll admit. Still not damning evidence.)

Well, she isn't a very experienced traveler, you're absolutely right. But we'll learn more about that later. She's really just trying to become her own person by learning about other people's ways of life.

It's really ironic in Ep1 how they made it super easy to communicate and understand each other but in doing that, they made it so that privacy is pretty much gone.

In sort of the same way, Cell phones and wireless technology including the Internet make it so that anyone can have contact with virtually anyone anywhere in the world within seconds (or minutes), yet now that we have all this text messaging and Skype and stuff... no one has much to say.... so it's kind of ironic, but for somewhat a different reason.

I found episode 3 quite sad... not because the city was sad, but because of that poem and how it made everyone extremly depressed. But what made it worse was the other city attacking it simply because they thought the poem was some kind of bible.

I agree with Kina when she asks why everything someone says has to be interpreted. There have been times when I'd say something completely off the walls just to throw someone off and then they're sitting there tryiing to figure it out. In the end, the key is NOT to think about it too much.

But yeah, it's really a nice thing to hear once in a while, the whole idea of how all these little things can get in the way of a good relationship between people sometimes, and how we sometimes pay way too much attention to them. Basically, I guess we as people can be way too much of perfectionists at times. I just like the message that came from it though, about how we shouldn't have to expect anyone to know every last single thing we're thinking, and at the same time we shouldn't expect it out of ourselves. Basically, if you have something to say, just say it! And if you don't, then don't. Don't expect someone to automatically know every last single detail about you. In fact, relating to the main theme of "the world is ugly, therefore it is beautiful," in fact it's the very fact that we know so little about people that makes it all the more worthwhile.

In fact, relating to the main theme of "the world is ugly, therefore it is beautiful," in fact it's the very fact that we know so little about people that makes it all the more worthwhile.

• Notice any key differences between the poet’s daughter and the current 14-year old girl? What does that reflect about the theme of the episode?
  

I agree with you a lot on this one. And besides isn't a relationship based on compromises? At the beginning the man says that she was into growing flowers but he didn't like that much and she wasn't too fond of the music that he was listening to. Nonetheless when Kino left she observed that the man was growing flowers while the woman that he loved was listening to music. I think it says at the same time that we don't need to know eveything about that person and that imperfections makes us what we are. And also we shouldn't underestimate our power to make compromises in a relationship: we tend to like what we used not to or at least share an interest with the partener just because the latter enjoys it.

I think you are taking the word "ugly" to be the figurative meaning of unknown

Regarding relationships.....episode 1

Alestal wrote:

Quote:

I think you are taking the word "ugly" to be the figurative meaning of unknown

Yeah, pretty much. From hearing what others have said about the nature of this series, it seems to me like each new experience Kino has has something to do with a different form of "ugly," based off of what the general way society views something ugly to be. In this particular case, ugly is indeed the unknown, because there are a lot of people in this world who believe the unknown to be a negative thing, and pretty much are afraid of the unknown in the first place. But the beauty of tackling the unknown is that in the process, you gain more knowledge. Therefore, "this world is ugly, yet beautiful."

What's more, they had ignored her completely. A four-year old girl who had essentially lost both parents, she wasn't even an afterthought until she replaced her father as the terrible voice that plagued them.