I'm in my 3.5 era.

This was fine. It didn't rock my world but it was good. I think if you'd never considered things like this before it could totally mess with your mind, but I've always found the concept of infinity really interesting and so the topic wasn't like WOOAAHH to me. Also the self insert of the author as the main character was a bit much for me.

I understand why this book wouldn't really have any answers to it, but at the same time without any answers this is just a decent thought experiment. Meh!

Sooooo okay, this was cute and sweet. I think it touches on a really serious topic with a lot of tact. It's clear to me that the author of this deeply understands the importance of children's mental health, and as the publisher's note points out, Japan is not a country that by-and-large handles that issue well. I can see this story bringing so many teens & adults who still grapple with childhood trauma, comfort, especially in Japan.

I also really enjoyed the cast of characters. The children do all read as their own strong, unique characters which adults often struggle with when writing children, so a lot of kudos from to Tsujimura.

That all being said, I unfortunately don't think this was a very good translation. It felt SO stiff and stilted pretty much all of the time. There were lots of lines that I could tell were direct translations when I know they shouldn't have been. A lot of clarification of Japanese honorifics that I've seen handled a lot more deftly in other translated works. I just found the sentence by sentence reading experience lacking a lot of charm and....skill.

I also had a bit of an issue with the major "twist" of the story just being something so illogical to me that the kids wouldn't have figured out sooner given how close they all get. A lot of leaps have to be taken to think that would never come up and maybe it would have been a more interesting story if the author had made the choice to let the kids discover that earlier in the book and see how they grappled with it.

And it's way too long, sorry.