Houseki no Kuni/Land of the Lustrous

For what it's worth, the subtitles on Amazon use they/them and keep it genderless.

Also, just saw the newest chapter (67) and I'm not entirely clear on what exactly happened to Cairngorm at the very end. It looked like either Ghost did something or Aechmea blew Cairngorm out an airlock.

Caingorm was contemplating removing what's left of Ghost Quartz, the subconscious Ghost Quartz resisted the decision, Caingorm underwent anguish-induced shattering, before they fully shattered they managed to shout that they wanted to be free, Aechmea heard the call. I think Aechmea's going to revive Caingorm and remove Ghost Quartz completely.

Dub is happening!

Damn. After finishing the anime I just had to read the original manga, and just caught up to the latest yesterday. That's pretty harsh. Commit genocide on the Admirabilis just to try to bring back gems that won't even have any memories of their old selves? What's even the point anymore?

Bit of for-fun, a sketch of Bort made by webcomic artist Mary Cagle (Sleepless Domain, Kiwi Blitz, and Let's Speak English)

https://twitter.com/cubewatermelon/status/1085275436303769600?s=19

Looks like way back when she also drew a Phos and did her character Heartful Punch as a Lustrous.

Finally getting around to watching this and I also decided to watch the dub first because why not, just finished the first episode and Phos is very good, don't really have thoughts on the rest of the cast right now since Cinnabar's clearly got a lot going on and the others didn't have enough screentime.

Exposition is markedly clunky but the world and conflict clearly had a lot of research and thought put into it so it's forgivable.

Finished it, Phos, Antarcticite, Rutiel, and slug queen what's-her-name are good, feeling meh on the rest of the cast with the exception of Kongou who clearly has more hidden up his sleeve.

The visuals were consistently gorgeous and it is definitely a setting that I'd like to see more of so I'll definitely check out the manga but it's not really something that merits multiple rewatches for me.

I can see they. The manga definitely gives us more on Kongou-sensei, enough that I hope we see a second season of the series down the line. It's set to for it at any rate.

Houseki no Kuni is excellent, and honestly the only recent manga I've actually enjoyed enough to follow besides the many Madoka Magica spinoffs. It's a shame it doesn't seem to have taken off here.

As for why Phos would consider killing the Admirabilis even though they ultimately backed off from it, simple; sunk cost. Phos has invested so much into being able to fix the broken gems that they've gotta stick to it.

Chapter 79. Damn, 220 year timeskip. Phos has finally broke, in more ways than one. Problem is that it's not even that Kongou won't pray for the Lunarians, he can't. There's some defect in his system, or something blocking the prayers on the metaphysical/spiritual level, or something, but's it can't be solved simply by asking him.

Interesting that since the Gems and the Lunarians are all immortal, one won't even notice huge timeskips.

Weird thought, I wonder if Kongou, being a machine, can't pray because came to the conclusion that God/heaven/etc doesn't exist, so the prayers do nothing due to lack of belief.

Edited by sgamer82 on May 27th 2019 at 6:36:29 AM

Considering all the other humans died and their souls definitely went somewhere, I don't think lack of belief is the issue. Maybe what's blocking it is subconscious resentment? He can't earnestly pray for their souls to pass on if he hates them for having effectively killed so many of his children and tormented him for thousands of years.

The problem with that is the Lunarians say they only started taking gems long after Sensei stopped praying for them. My thought is that the Lunarians don't count as humans anymore and Sensei was only designed to pray for humans. I think ultimately Phos may have to take up Sensei's prayers, but I'm not sure how willing Phos will be to do that seeing as they seem to have descended into Unstoppable Rage mode.

I'm wondering what happened to Alex and Benito. We haven't seen either of them yet but I find it hard to believe Alex would have been blindfolded this whole time. Also Padparadscha was one of my favourite characters and I'm angry.

The problem there is that the Lunarians' treatment of the Gems in general and torment of Kongou in particular came about because of his inability to pray. They hoped it would spur him into action.

You'd think they would have taken a hint when it didn't work the first few times. Though to be fair, they said they also tried communicating with the other gems, though they always came mentally broken and couldn't cooperate so the Lunarians stopped trying. Until Phos, anyways.

The question is can he even pray for any of them and have them pass on? Like, was there ever a period of time where he was functioning as intended and sending on Lunarians, but then stopped? Or did he simply not pray/not function since he was first activated? Could the Lunarians have been chasing a dead end in futility for all this time?

I think the Lunarians have made a massive blunder in their own judgment and that the reason they can't move on, is because they aren't even trying to do it by themselves. Recall, the Lunarians that we have seen and do exist, are all people with massive tendencies to get easily distracted by other things in the present and unwilling to let them go. (scientists, fashion designers, shallow teens, the simpletons etc...)

They are so obsessed with their work/desires that they can't just let them go.

He didn't even need to pray to let Shiro and the Pieces move on, they did it themselves after spending some time with him and having really easy and basic desires to be fulfilled.

The Lunarians however, the ones on the moon which are being based on humans, are too unwilling to acknowledge that and being lazy as they are, rather want to have someone else pushing them on to oblivion rather than trying themselves to do so. and having the distraction that's the Moon Gems on the moon to provide them entertainment and change, they find another reason to not just move on and vanish into oblivion as they want.

Finding inner peace is not something that can be entrusted to others to fulfill for you. It is something each and everyone of us all must find for ourselves.

I do wonder though... did Sensei just send Phos' actual eye into the afterlife, leaving the fake pearl eye(the lunarian eye) behind? Which would be fitting in a symbolic sense, as now, Phos' tunnel-vision is more apparent and it's the part that just wants to die and move on the most, being of lunarian origin and all.

This is just so sad...

and knowing that the concept of "winter-sleepwalking" isn't unknown to the gems, there is a risk that one of them, without Sensei's supervision, might end up walking out from the room and wake up prematurely in time for this spectacle to happen in front of their eyes.

Which also reminds me...Who is dealing with the ice-floes at this point?

Wonder what part is next for Phos to have replaced through the suffering that is their life...

Edited by TitanJump on May 30th 2019 at 11:56:35 AM

I guess either Kongou himself or the gems have found someone to take up winter duties or split it up among themselves. Or who knows, maybe another Antarcticite has been born in the meantime.

Hmm. Wouldn't Antarcticite be the easiest gem to reconstitute from dust? All it would require is taking piles of moondust, heat it to room temperature, then sift through it to get the liquid parts out. You don't even need to piece shards together, just pour it all into a tub and cool it down.

They pretty much said Antarc probably flew off into space because a lot of the dust ends up doing that. As for who's doing winter duty, it sounded like Euc was since they said they weren't going to stay with Sensei "this year", kinda implying they've done it before.

Chapter 80:

Wow...

Guess that proves that the Lunarians are the real Big Bad of the story after all, since they're just fine with eradicating all of humanity in order to kill themselves once and for all.

Even worse, Phos is completely unaware of all of this and still trying to finish the prayer so that their self-imposed burden can finally go away forever.

Please let a sleepwalking gem walk in and stop this suicide-pact from being carried out... Phos deserves better than this.

At this point, it's hard to say if Phos even cares. She's completely broken at this point, in more ways than one. She just wants an end to her own suffering, the world and the continuation of humanity in whatever form be damned. Just look at how she calls Adamant, her teacher and caretaker for hundreds of years, "machine".

And, hey, now we know what was preventing Adamant from praying for the Lunarians. Basic human decency and not being willing to commit genocide on innocent people.

Edited by danime91 on Jul 26th 2019 at 9:56:22 AM

But what prevented him just saying so?

He had those protocols that basically made some information classified and nobody left on Earth had the clearance to get him to tell. At the beginning, to explain that would have required giving classified information, which he literally couldn't do. After Phos goes to the moon and learns the "truth", I'm not so sure. Perhaps because the Lunarians hadn't told the whole story, the information was still technically classified and he couldn't say? Or that malfunction that they mentioned where he basically developed a conscience and some amount of free will made him not even willing to consider the option, much less inform anyone about it or why.

Phos was unaware of being human enough to qualify to get past Adamant's programming. Phos has gotten "I can't tell you" responses before, so probably figured there was no point in asking again. All in all, Poor Communication Kills.