Our lucky girl is going to shine!
While I have described Izumi as a “spoiled child” in this article, Hata seems to prefer calling her a “good girl”. Yet as I read through the elaboration, I found Hata highlighting more or less the same points as I did, so…
Anyway, it has now become clear that Izumi has not been deliberately left on her own. On the contrary, she has excluded herself from the crowd due to her complacency. Instead of using the 1-hour preparation time to form teams with her friends or at least try to find out what was going on around her, she simply retreated to napping. As she was not seen by anyone, of course nobody would form a team with her.
In other words, it is not that people consciously abandoned her because of her clumsiness or undesirability – at least Hinagiku was worried about her.
Especially with Isumi.
Hinagiku is indeed teamed with Miki and Aika, which is pretty much expected as Izumi has not been available. Meanwhile, Isumi is shown to be in Chiharu and Kayura’s team, which is a bit of a surprise – then again, the three of them at least had been to Ise together, so they are at least acquainted enough to work together. Yukiji remains a curious case: is she working on her own, or does she team up with two random people, whom would not have the slightest of idea of her true identity?
As we can see, the teams employ different tactics to find the “unusual animal”. Team Hayate-Nagi-Kotetsu rely on Kotetsu’s expertise in photography and his choice of camera (which comes with a handy GPS feature). Team Hinagiku-Miki-Aika take advantage of Hinagiku’s money from her previous victory and hire local people – presumably in deciding on and locating the “unusual animal”. Team Chiharu-Kayura-Isumi use Isumi’s mystical power to summon animals instead of finding them, but arguably have only summoned the dangerous instead of the unusual.
In all fairness, this is a wonderful picture.
Different tactics, of course, result in different kinds of photos. Hinagiku’s team take a picture with Hinagiku and an Amazon river dolphin, which is beautiful and joyful. Yukiji (in the name of Yukiko) submits a photo of her fishing up a giant pirarucu, and my guess is that you really need a teammate to capture this moment for you. Hayate gets desperate and assaults a crocodile (remember, he looks for the crocodile, not the other way round), giving the photo a “breath of the wild”. Chiharu takes the orientation to a whole new level by being eaten by a jaguar, which makes a horror photo.
All of the photos involve literally “contacting” the wild animals, with two of them hurting/killing the animal and one being hurt by the animal. If I were the judge, I would disqualify Hayate and Yukiji’s photos, because it is a very bad practice to hurt wildlife just because you want to take a good picture. Good “animal watch” photos should involve as little human interference as possible, and in this sense even Hinagiku’s photo has to be disqualified. As for Chiharu’s… well, falling prey to a jaguar doesn’t really count as “interference”, does it?
Can these be considered “animals” at all?
Anyway, while teams are trying to take pictures with a “wow factor”, Izumi decides that the only thing she could do is to take photos of fish. The fish she ends up taking photos of, however, turns out to be the “promoted” fish she created back in Ch. 447. These creatures have somehow made their way to settle in the Amazon, and honestly… this has to be the most unusual animal anyone could come across.
Here we are reminded of the “Izumi’s style”. While I think it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that this implies the outcome of the “ship war”, I do think that it reflects Izumi’s fortune as a whole. It is true that Izumi is not a competitive person. She doesn’t have any obvious advantage that can help her with any competition either. Yet with her quiet and humble way of living, coupled with the bit of luck that always seems to be with her, she would turn out just fine.
Izumi is not here to fight a war. Yet if you think she would be some random casualty, you would be quite wrong.
Hayate Report 
Seriously, I hope Chiharu is okay. A bite to the skull from a jaguar is not something to be taken lightly.
Anyway, the flashforward from before was just pointless as the orientation ended within 2 chapters. Furthermore, nothing significant really happened besides humor of course.
Either the mutant fish multiplied through breeding or its mutation was contagious and could infect other fishes. That said, its kinda like cheating that Izumi won through pictures of those mutants as they weren’t really natural creatures.
Assuming that Isumi is still around, she can heal Chiharu with her… hand soap. 😛
The thing about Izumi’s photo is that… there doesn’t seem to be a rule that the creatures must be a natural creature. The orientation only asks for an “unusual animal”.
Ah, that dolphin is called “boto cor-de-rosa” in Portuguese (literally “pink dolphin”), but the thing is that “boto” is a specific word for this and a few other species. We generally use “golfinho” for the “more common” dolphins.
There are some funny (creepy?) native folklore tales about the pink dolphin. Some say that the boto transforms into a handsome man (with a hat to hide his nose which does not transform) at nights when festivities take place and goes around looking for girls. He then takes them to the river and… *ahem* get them pregnant.
Of course, he turns back into dolphin and disappears when the morning comes.
Sadly, many of them are being killed by fishers to be used as bait for a certain kind of fish called “Piracatinga”.
Also, they are very smart and tend to eat fish from fishing nets, destroying them (much to the fishers’ chagrin – which is another motivation to kill the poor animals), although sometimes they get tangled and die.
Just some random trivia. 🙂
Man, those mutant fish-men are creeping me out.
I took the name “Amazon river dolphin” from Wikipedia, and the page does say that the dolphin is called “boto”, so I think we are talking about the same species.
I heard in some other countries fishermen and dolphins actually work together to catch fish, saving time and labour for both parties, and both get what they want happily. I hate it when they opt to compete instead of collaborate, to the point that humans try to kill dolphins just to maximise/retain their profit.
Sorry for the rant, but can’t help it.
Yes, it is the same species, I’m pretty sure. Classic case of exact corresponding word not existing in the second language (in this case English), so the closest word is used with some sort of adaptation.
Actually, I get just as pissed with such atrocities… So can’t blame you there.
I’m guessing there are many exceptions here, but it is a fact that thousands of these dolphins are being killed at an alarming rate.
I appreciate the variety of settings that this arc is giving to the manga. That said, will we leave it at a simple “they hired locals with money”? Also, what about the militants? What about the dangerous animals? You really have to turn off your brain to enjoy this jungle trip, haha. 😀
Going into the forest is head-scratching enough in the first place. 😉
I’ve personally stopped trying to make sense of the actual events in this arc for some time now. All I’m interested in for now is how the characters interact with each other in each chapter. Interesting to see Isumi team up with Kayura and Chiharu… I didn’t think they were even friends to begin with since Isumi only cares about Nagi.
I actually find this segment of the arc a little disappointing. It was given unnecessary hype with the flashforward in the last chapter and the supposed guerillas and drug cartels were never even used. And while seeing Isumi team up with Kayura and Chiharu is new, it wasn’t interesting as it was never given much attention.
I am starting to think that they are only mentioned to “motivate” all students to participate in this orientation. All things considered, I think the students are still relatively safe, as they are always just one press on the Completer away from being rescued.
Too bad pressing their Completers won’t help much when being chased down and almost eaten alive by a wild animal XD
oh well, here I play Mr. Geography teacher again…. please forgive me. Will stop after this haha.
About the guerrillas, they are actually called FARC (roughly translated as Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and they are sort of exclusive of Colombia only. It’s a very violent self proclaimed Socialist/leftist group that struggles with the actual country government. The story could take a very dark turn if they showed up, it’s not even funny. They used to kidnap important people or even civilians and demand ransom. Some people were held hostages for years.
If the Hakuou students are really in Brazil, I think they are pretty much safe from them.
Drug cartels, can’t know for sure. They are frigging everywhere. But once again, drug trafficking is an important fundraising activity for the FARCs.
I’d be more worried about the wild animals, landowners…. and politicians. 😛