/r9k/ - robot9000

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>>3018 (OP) 
Welcome to the NHK
>Why should I read it?
It's safe to assume that everyone has at least watched the anime. The novel is definitely worth a read considering all the changes that were made in the animated series. Many scenes that may seem really obtuse will take a new meaning knowing the original intentions of the author.

>pdf still doesn't work
Here is a link instead.
https://archive.org/download/manga_Welcome_to_the_NHK/Welcome%20to%20the%20NHK.pdf

>>3020
I apologize in advance for not completely adhering to the rules of the thread since I actually haven't read this version of  NHK ni Youkoso. However, I'd still like to speak about this story since it's one that's very close to me.

>Welcome to the NHK
This story had a substantial effect on me back when I first watched it. I think I was 15 or 16 back then and, at the time, I was coming off the immense shock that was my discovery of just how fucked things are. The impossibility of the pure romance displayed in the media I consumed, the hedonism rampant in society, and the trend towards an ever-increasing amount of this hedonism. You know, the works.

Unsurprisingly, this sent a young me into a pretty serious depression. I started to despise the outside world and its people, and soon, due to my weakness at the time, began to fear interacting with them. 
Due to this, I connected with the main character, Satou, very deeply and empathized with him quite a bit. At the time it was very cathartic to see the emotions I was feeling displayed on screen. It showed me that I wasn't alone in the way that I was feeling, even if the guy I was relating to was in an anime. As cliche as that might be. 
The show also rubbed me raw quite a few times. This happened most notably during the representations of Satou's crushing loneliness which mirrored my own feelings at the time. Especially so after the breakdown of his relationships in the later episodes.

Honestly though, I don't think I can watch the show again and enjoy it as much as I did. Not that the show would be of lesser quality. However, that show was for that time in my life. It helped me be a bit more self-aware and hinted towards the self-reliant nature of happiness with its ending and for that, it has immense value. However, I can no longer empathize with Satou like I used to. I'm not lonely anymore because I don't mind being alone. I'm not anxious anymore because I'm no longer weak. And I'm not depressed anymore because I stopped wallowing in hopelessness.
I due however still empathize with Satou's journey and I'm happy he was able to pull himself out of the hole too.

I didn't get to talk about Misaki and the self-destructive idea of the female savior today, or the stagnation found in mindless comfort, however that will be for another time since this post is already long enough. I hear that in the original she was flat out scum rather than someone who was caring yet had ultierior motives which is an interesting difference.

Im afraid of submitting anything because my interests are extremely specific, i mean i don't know to what extent other robots care about the history of Wargaming or ASW warfare, im currently reading some Yukio Mishima's stuff, i have yet to finish it though, maybe i'll submit something if i find it interesting enough for other anons

>>3022
Ideally it'd have to be generally interesting for most robots, something that may spark some discussion, opinions and thoughts.
If you feel a book will do that, feel free to submit away.
>Yukio Mishima
I've heard of him but never read his stuff, it might be interesting.

>>3021
>I actually haven't read this version of  NHK ni Youkoso
Feel free to post anyway. I still recommend reading the novel.
The afterwords are interesting too. You might want to read them first, they are at the end of the pdf.

Nice, I  will have to read the NHK novel then. Is it true that the main girl is shittier in the novel than in the anime? Hell I should rewatch the anime, it's been years since I watched it.

>>3022
>i'm so unique like omg no one 
likes what i like
>yukio mishima
you sound like a fucking hipster, faggot. and your taste isn't fucking unique. yukio's books are good and wildly known. 
>>3018 (OP) 
i recommend the rising sun by toland john. a really interesting read even if you're not interested in gook ww2 shit. 
here's a pdf https://dmbukz2.cf/book.php?id=EnYkBQAAQBAJ

>>3025
>Is it true that the main girl is shittier in the novel than in the anime?
That's from the manga, it's fucking insane at times. I would recommend it only if you are curious, because the ending is not very good
The novel is more grounded in reality, many anime-like scenes are not in the book and the main girl acts more like a real school girl in this version.

>Hell I should rewatch the anime, it's been years since I watched it.
I only read the novel because I didn't understand the ending of the anime when I rewatched it. It's explained better in the novel. In the manga that happens halfway through the story, adding 20 extra chapters.

>>3018 (OP) 
Since it's already July, I am going to assume that people have read or are reading the novel.  

*What do you think about the novel?
*How do you compare it to the anime?
*Did it changed your outlook of the story?
*What do you think of the main girl now?
*Did it make you reflect on how you were when you first experienced the story and now?

Feel free to effortpost and shitpost away.

>>3075
It seems I must write my biggest post to date.

I was very young when I first watched the anime. I was pretty reckless, watching anime all night, always playing video games, all in an attempt to escape my immediate reality. At the time I was in high school and it showed me what could happen if I continued with that reckless lifestyle. After that, I dropped anime altogether. In my later years of high school, I even tried to become a normalnigger, of course this didn't work and only made me feel extremely miserable.
After finishing high school, I tried to watch the original series that got me out of that vicious circle of consumerism, and made feel worse ironically enough. I couldn't stomach the anime, what I was watching was so disconnected from myself that I couldn't empathize with the main character.
Right after dropping the anime halfway through, I decided to read the manga. It was strangely satisfying and uncomfortable at the same time, watching the main character fail time and time again at fixing his life, only for everything to crumble down at the end. Maybe it was because I was massive faggot at the time, but I preferred the dark angle of the manga to the idealistic vision of the anime.
After some years, I finally read the novel. Being pretty close to the anime, I couldn't avoid comparing it to the anime and feel a bit nostalgic. Having watched the original anime almost a decade ago, I believe it may have been the most influential piece of media in my life. Although the novel is still slightly different, it made feel strangely young.
All that said, I prefer the novel over the others. The manga is extremely flawed, making it a drag to read at times. The anime feels too fantastical for my taste. The novel is more grounded in reality and better written overall. However, I still have a soft spot for all of them, making me remember different times in my life. Nevertheless, I still consider the novel superior to the other versions.
I consider that the novel may be the best way to experience the story. It's better at transmitting the main idea. The characters are pretty consistent, working under their own logic. The ending is hinted through the whole story, in contrast to the anime. Nevertheless, I still understand why people may prefer the anime or the manga. However, I still think that the novel has the better story.

I only watched two episodes of the anime (Welcome to the NHK) a while back before deciding not to watch any more. I feel that there are a few particularly outstanding anime shows I saw that are worth re-watching, but the rest feel like dead weight even if they were decent.
Still, I am going to read the novel because it seems a lot less mundane than the philosophy that I have been reading recently.
I believe that book clubs revolving around a specific book and specific time are often destined to fall apart in the long run because it is very rare for people to be on the exact same book at the same time. Reading is like a process where you finish one book and are ready for another specific one that might entice your interest in that moment. At least, this applies with everyone who roams around somewhat in the books that they read.
For example, reading Welcome to the NHK did not appeal to me until several weeks after this thread was created.

>>3095
I came to that conclusion too. When July started, I was very busy and realized I didn't want to write about the novel at that time (Hence the time gaps). I don't think this dynamic is going to work in a small board like this.
Probably, this would be better as a "Rec Book Thread", it would mitigate most of the negative side effects.
I am going to ask the BO to change the OP later

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I know that the last try ran into the sand and maybe it is vanity to try it again, but I think if it only went on for a bit more robots would join or become more invested in it and even stick along if they don't like a book. 

For this time I have picked the book "The Sailor who Fell from grace with the Sea" by Yukio Mishima, who is probably known by most on this board. I picked it because I wanted to get into his novels for a time, but haven't done so, I have only read Sun and Steel so far and liked that one a lot. The primer does peak my interest slightly and I think it would not be a too odd fit for this place either:
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea tells the tale of a band of savage thirteen-year-old boys who reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call "objectivity." When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealize the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard their disappointment in him as an act of betrayal on his part, and react violently.


I will give this one two weeks of time, more than enough time to complete a novel and I think if the time window is too large it might be harmful too. I will post questions to instigate discussion when after a week or so, when I have finished the book.

I also created a strawpoll to have something where we can gather and vote on the next book(s), long books are also viable but we might have to split them. I will try to keep it alive this time, hopefully until it reaches some sort of stability.

>>3612
Strawpoll Link: https://strawpoll.com/polls/3RnYpxjvpye

>>3612
I'll read it. Not sure if I'd be able to contribute much in the way of interesting discussion, though.

>>3612
Starting off, the way Mishima described the butchering of the kitten was brutal and made me feel nauseous, and this brutality in itself sets the overall feel of the boys' philosophy, of "objectivity" found only by revealing the true nature of what a kitten is. Peel away the skin and all you get is the fat, muscle, and viscera that makes up the cat's anatomy, although I'm hesitant to call it actual objectivity. A kitten is a kitten, alive or dead, it's probably more of a kitten alive than dead and broken apart into its components. Perhaps this story is supposed to provide some sort of cathartic experience in something, although I don't know what that something is. Is it a hatred for society? Or is it a hatred of concealment? Or perhaps the hatred of the dulling of danger and threats, in trying to hide away a being's capability for harm through civility? Or is it trying to tell us that the components, and not the revealed being, is what reality truly is? 

The way everything is described is very asian. The worse thing in the universe, fathers, are cast in the light of being evil only due because, I feel, the way they act somehow embarrass the children. It's shameful, in their docility they hide away the virtue that originally made them men. It's some sort of neurotic anxiety over something not being right. It almost worships cruelty, but it doesn't really do that. It explicitly worships callousness, but it doesn't really do that. Why does the chief entertain those who follow him? What does he want? He shows the evilness of fatherhood by pointing out and almost sympathizing with implicitly disturbed way his group feels about their own dads. 

I don't know what the story is supposed to be about. I started off disliking it, but ended with feeling sympathy for the kids, and appreciation over how cruelly the relationships are described, in pointing out how dumb and naive the sailor is but nonetheless describing his original, childlike ambition as still being better than merely being a father, someone who pretends to be more than he is.

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The book was an interesting read, it is astonishing how beautiful the language is, despite it being translated, I wonder what it'd be like to read in the original language. First the book starts slow, it builds up with warm captivating images, pulls the reader in, gets him on board with the characters, only to smack him to the floor at a certain point the cat, a wake up call to reality, if you will (almost like in zen). The rest of the book seems like a melody that rises until it concludes into a shrill crescendo and suddenly crashes down completely. In the book there seem to be three extreme poles, the disillusioned nihilistic youth, the sailor with his heroic dream and the tempting bourgeoisie comfort in the form of the woman and the rest of society with their sedentary life. The boy group also tangentially reminded me of the way this /r9k/ came from; a few years back I remember this place being overwhelmingly nihilistic, not taking any of the superficial phony world for granted, disillusioned with it just like the boys, later
many drifted more towards Christianity and or later to traditionalism, which is an unlikely positive development, going into the direction of the sailors "grand purpose". 

>>3624
The kitten almost seems like a perverted initiation ritual for the boys, to do away with their last bits of morality and become completely "objective" as they say, embracing nihilism. To be more specific it is the one boy, "number one" or "chief", Noboru still believes in heroism and in the sea, at least to beginn with. Ryuji is the role model for him, the true heroic man, or rather the man who has potential for that ideal, who could actualize himself into that. And this in the opposite is exactly what is wrong with the boys fathers, or all fathers for that matter, a father should be a role model, a leader a heroic inspiration, but instead they are all husks of men, without even a spark of that heroic flame, which Ryuji carries at the start of the book. They are worse then death, for in death there can still be glory, but they rot away and they spill their rot and dirt all over the heroic image, even going so far as mocking it. In this way they are worse off alive than dead, bringing only disgrace. Mariage in the current age, and in the book is an almost certain tool to kill man off, to sever him from any potential heroic aspirations.

As I said, I think the story is about these three poles, with Noboru being a central character and being torn between them. I think ultimately the true tragedy of the story is Ryuji destroying the boys dream, but even worse, destroying his own dream and himself in the process. The killing of the boys is only a reaction, harmless in comparison, for he is already worse off than dead at that point, it is an angry lashing out at best, not really doing anything in the grand scheme of things but setting a record straight and ending a meaningless existence.
There seems to be hardly a "moral" of the story, maybe a warning for men not to abandon themselves, their grand purpose. But really it leaves the reader to himself, instead of giving him say an heroic path out of the nihilistic hell. But I guess that characterizes the author, who struggled to find that grand purpose himself all his live, without ever concretely grasping it, maybe he did at the end, but I am not sure.

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This one was not very successful and the divergence of interpretations and the lack of questions to discuss surely did not help it, the latter of which is fully my fault. Either way, as I said, I will carry on with this project and at least in the votes there seem to have been more robots than have participated here in discussion, a good sign, I hope all of these have read the first book and will continue tag along. 

The next book, as decided by poll, will be "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion", the primer reads as follows: 

Because of the boyhood trauma of seeing his mother make love to another man in the presence of his dying father, Mizoguchi becomes a hopeless stutterer. Taunted by his schoolmates, he feels utterly alone until he becomes an acolyte at a famous temple in Kyoto. He quickly becomes obsessed with the beauty of the temple. Even when tempted by a friend into exploring the geisha district, he cannot escape its image. In the novel's soaring climax, he tries desperately to free himself from his fixation.

This round will last another two weeks, I think that was more than enough time to read and contemplate on the book, though other robots might not be full time neets and I cant talk for them, so feel free to suggest adjustments. Also for robots who have little time, or who might find themselves to agitated to read a book at the moment, here is the audiobook: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=GOA9LNieUuY maybe it helps.

I also made a new Poll, this time I will be able to edit it, though I am not sure if I should start a new one each time to reset the votes. I also added  this suggestion >>3026 https://strawpoll.com/polls/ajnENvBzMgW

>>3626
>The book was an interesting read, it is astonishing how beautiful the language is, despite it being translated, I wonder what it'd be like to read in the original language. First the book starts slow, it builds up with warm captivating images, pulls the reader in, gets him on board with the characters, only to smack him to the floor at a certain point the cat
My personal feelings on how the book played out is different from yours. From the beginning it felt clinical, I'm not sure if the daily events as they were written was supposed to reflect the Noboru's own perspective, but it did feel like everything but the boy's perspective was broken dissected and viewed form his lens. It was objective, in the sense that it existed relative to a young boy's ambitious thoughts, even the dissection of the sailor's own ambitions stopped at the level of his raw emotions, and in his sense of wonder. As if everything ended once the realization of emptiness, of true objectivity, was made, as nothing else could be peered through. I think this reflects Mishima's own viewpoint rather than Noboru's, and not one I agree with. Tension rose with the cat but it seemed to mellow out substantially afterwords, but that probably reflects my own relief over not having to read anymore about the cat's internals (or about its homely anus). I didn't feel like the conclusion was a rise in anything so much as it was a descent into emptiness, any feeling of having risen being closer to awe. 

>without even a spark of that heroic flame
On the aspect of whether Noboru really respected Ryuji for his heroism, I have no clue what exactly heroism is supposed to mean here. It's not overcoming anything, it's just being an extension of the ship in which he works in. He is made a hero again by being killed, and dissected. He was made shameful because he told Noboru he was taking a small shower in the park, rather than something more courageous like saving a drowning boy in a river (I forgot what Noboru's exact thought about it). There's touches of a fire but even with how little I've read about Mishima, he has a very different understanding of what heroism is and it centers mostly around the act of dying. It probably is supposed to be an open question, but one with a vague pointer to a possibly correct answer.

>>3629
You are right about the ending, though there was a distinct converging endpoint in the death of Ryuji, it ended rather empty, just as you said.
What I meant by heroism, is not something he did but rather a conduct, a style, an inclination towards something higher than life, towards something that transcends the material and human realm. It does indeed center around dying, not only in a mere physical sense. Everybody dies in this world, but the death we examine here happens under high tension and is embraced rather than feared. It might be far fetched to compare Ryuji with say a Samurai that faces death on the battlefield, casting his life away for a higher purpose, but Ryuji lives in a world where that is no longer possible so he clings to what one might call an echo of what true heroism is, yet this sets him worlds apart from beings who embrace nihilism or from the bourgeoise.

>>3628
Do you have any interest in continuing this, anon?

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I finally get around writing a post for this book, there have been a few obstructions and distractions in my life but the main reason I am so late is because I am a lazy nigger, inexcusable >>3649.

I had a harder time getting hooked onto this book than onto the last one, in fact, I did not get fully invested until the last chapter or so. The characters are disturbing and hard to identify with, because they are all over the place, especially the main character, but as I understand it this book was written in part as a psychological examination of the real arsonist, who was presumably mentally ill.  Besides that, there are a lot of Zen concepts woven into the text, which  at times only add to the confusion. Mishima sure knows his stuff when it comes to his country's past and religion, yet he is not a Zen master himself and so he examines these concepts from "the outside" or "from below". I have read  that these Zen text are designed to be a mere confirmation of the experiences and superior knowledge for the initiated, but for the uninitiated they are empty of meaning at best and confusing at worst ,leading the reader astray , no matter how carefully and hard the latter studies them. 
If I am not mistaken this seems to be general theme with Mishima, a theme that he has in common by Nietzsche, by whom he was heavily influenced, that is, the rejection of metaphysics and yet the presence of the dimension of transcendence inside the person, that is unable to express itself fully or to break through, though in this case there is a lot more eastern influence interwoven and the focus is more on prose than on philosophy. 
Either way, I did need the full two weeks to finish the book this time, the last one I managed to read in a few days, this one was clearly a bit deeper and more complex than the first one. After looking back, I must say that I like the story, disturbing as it may be, and I might need to give it another read at some point. There are many things that one might discuss about the book, and if any robot here wants to discuss something else I am more than happy to try and talk about it, meanwhile I will confine myself to two central issues, that are interwoven. 
The first one is the Koan "Nansen kills a Kitten", which is discussed and interpreted multiple times in the book. It gets interpreted three times and only one time it touches on the subject of beauty, the second issue I wanted to discuss. I know it might be silly but I will attempt to make a third interpretation of the Koan. The cat represents beauty and the monks are intoxicated by this beauty, unable to fully appreciate it in a full pure and ideal, platonic way. Because they can not free themselves of it Nansen cuts the kitten, releasing them from the spell, because they are unable to do so themselves. Joshu on the other hand shows, by putting the filthy shoe on his  head and essentially becoming ugly on purpose, that he is not shaken or intoxicated by the polarities of beauty and ugliness, furthermore by becoming ugly himself he could have "neutralized" the beauty of the kitten and thus have saved it from death and the monks.
I am not entirely satisfied with that and I don't know hot to reconcile it with the story either. In the end Mizoguchi burns the temple, ending his attachment to it, but also curing himself of his stuttering, of his ugliness, or rather of his attachment to these things. His ugliness and the beauty of the temple where undeniably connected ,like the poles of a magnet. A radical act of setting himself free.
To fully appreciate or worship beauty then, one not only hast to be not intoxicated by the object, but one also has recall the essence of beauty and join those two things. I have not been able to do this so this is speculation on my part.
Overall i am not unsatisfied with the book, there are too many questions still open and I do not have a personal satisfying interpretation from it as a whole.

This is one of the best books I have ever read in my life, and it perfectly captures the fleeting feeling of having witnessed a fragment of beauty, and in the recent and very modern realization of its ephemerality and the intrinsic nothingness that lays behind all sense impression. Or rather, if "The Sailor who Fell from grace with the Sea" was the mindless prattling of an egotistical boy, this is the matured realization of a man who has witnessed enough of himself to be capable of speaking of the things he felt he needed to say. Mizoguchi's description of the grey waters resonates with me, his obsession with the dark and turbulent and how he describes it as the source of ugliness and of his power, is a nearly perfect description of compulsive, ugly beauty. He witnessed the ugliness and the fragility of the world as it was taught to him and was caught up in that sensation, both in the sense of what lays underneath it and by what is draped over reality. Well, I can repeat myself, but it the book really does make sense to me, and I understand why he decided to do the things he did and what he felt about the golden temple. The end of chapter eight, which I feel is the climax of the story, that which set the tone for the rest of the story to follow and from which the story is made complete from.

This is a book I will have to get back to after some time, when I make deeper connections to what parts of the story is supposed to connect to what. 

>>3655
>A radical act of setting himself free.
I felt like he was completing the temple, and proving Kashiwagi wrong by way of arson and burning the impression of the temple, both as he viewed it and as it was as a thing in itself, in himself. Zenkai was meant to represent the common man, simple and who viewed the world immediately as he saw it without any lens or any attempt at impressing onto his sensations his own opinion. Zenkai told Mizoguchi that he was a serious student, and that there was nothing he could not know about him just by looking at his face. Either Zenkai did in fact know, or he was merely stating the fact that the common perception of Mizoguchi is all there is to know about him. The temple itself is ugly. Mizoguchi found more beauty in the tiny model of the structure, like a bansai tree, his conception of the temple as beauty in itself was far more important to him than the actual object of its beauty. It's really, actually, ugly, worn down, its inhabitants are wretches, the Superior is morally bankrupt and his attempts at persuading Mizoguchi were fundamentally born from a place of powerlessness. How can someone claim to have power when he spends his time whoring and eating, like the Superior? He had no real control over himself, and the final attempt at persuasion truly was the perfect manifestation of his fundamental powerlessness. His rebukes came from a place of ugliness.

Mizoguchi's actions were the logical conclusion to his understanding of what the temple wanted, to escape from beauty and back into lewd and sensual, into the mundane from which it was born from. To burn in a fire and to reborn again (and it looks like this is what actually happened in real life). Even Tsurukawa, who Mizoguchi perceived as the embodiment of a jovial and carefree young man, had a hidden nature that was fundamentally common, he was really and actually a sad guy. Mizoguchi made a comment that Tsurukawa would be like his mirror, and he would perfectly reflect the exact opposite of his own stated feelings as if Tsurukawa himself had felt them, and because he had felt them he knew how to respond. As if Tsurukawa himself wanted these feelings to be of this more happy, carefree nature. At the same time this also reflect how much of Mizoguchi's own thoughts really aren't his own, not unique, are pretty mundane. The source of his power is ugliness and ugliness is very common, and beauty is merely the reinterpretation of these ugly things. 

I like this book. I like it a lot.

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Just from the connection of Kashiwagi with the prostitute, and how the prostitute itself lived in her own world and understood the world only through her own logic, unaccepting of anything else and any other interpretation, Mizoguchi is Uiko, the girl who died in a rebellious fit of passion along with her lover. Kashiwagi doesn't attempt to escape his ugliness, he wishes to accept it, but is terribly insecure about it nonetheless. The prostitute doesn't mind sensation of flies resting on her flesh, she's already rotten, she doesn't mind evil and instead tolerates it. Perhaps she feels like a saint when she does so, as if it is a good deed, like how the girls feel when they coddle and care to Kashiwagi and his clubfeet. Mizoguchi was charmed by Kashiwagi and as if sparked by his intepretation of the world, decided to form his own, and he did so and he did it it with the purity spiraling, zealous passion that converts to religions all share. The way he described the feeling of Uiko betraying her lover, as if she once again belonged to the community, reveals the ugly nature of the community of which he belongs to. And it's not like what she did wasn't in itself ugly, it was, but it nonetheless showed the spark of "metaphysical resistance", the attempt of the Sosei to break away from the temple, to break away from the community and return back to ugliness but in doing so revealing once again the source of beauty.  

>The cat represents beauty and the monks are intoxicated by this beauty, unable to fully appreciate it in a full pure and ideal, platonic way. Because they can not free themselves of it Nansen cuts the kitten, releasing them from the spell, because they are unable to do so themselves. Joshu on the other hand shows, by putting the filthy shoe on his  head and essentially becoming ugly on purpose, that he is not shaken or intoxicated by the polarities of beauty and ugliness, furthermore by becoming ugly himself he could have "neutralized" the beauty of the kitten and thus have saved it from death and the monks

From my perspective it's very easy to link it back to pretty much every major plot point in the story, going back to the question that someone meets with commonly, always different in some way but nonetheless being the same, as I paraphrase Kashiwagi. Kashiwagi was right about everything but on Choshu really wanted to say. The two men were fighting over which interpretation of beauty the kitten represented, but after being asked by Nansen to speak, and thus save, the kitten, none can answered. No interpretation was inherently right. Choshu, on the other hand, saw that the beauty of the kitten is ugliness and it's disorder, the very same disorder that causes the men to fight over the kitten to begin with. It's not a polarity! Beauty and ugliness are one in the same thing, that knowledge of something may change your interpretation of an event, like how feelings of joy can make someone's smile seem friendly and feelings of anger might make a smile irritating, all of it is merely the interpretation of a single smile. By putting your shoes on your head, it's nonsensical, it's counterintuitive, to think of beauty as fundamentally being ugly. Really, it's nothing at all.

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It is about time for the next book.
This time it is only a short story rather than a full fledged novel, so maybe a few so far uninvested robots will give it a read. Either way I am looking forward to reading more of Mishimas work, even if this club should die or if it decides on reading something else. 
Also since this one is so short and the cinematic adaption is so special (directed and starred by Mishima himself), I think it is justified to add the movie to this iteration and the subsequent discussion. You can view it on https://yewtu.be/watch?v=bO-w-cn-pJM.

>>3658