Yeah the precise amount of money isn't that important after all, but it's good to have a scaling imo. It's a huge difference after all and Mori doesn't earn that much (or at least didn't do until so far).
That thing about Mori saying that he couldn't trust anyone anymore indeed was shocking for his developement. Yet I can't believe that he really ment it 100% seriously. At least to his employer/professor he seemed to have a very good relationship, and we even saw him smiling a couple of times in the latest parts. I hope for your idea too that that student girl will give him some confidence again.
I really wondered about that streak, too! Nice to know what it is after all, I thought "wtf, flying rock?". Kinda chose to ignore that without lookint at it further, what a mistake.
Ch. 106 was weird indeed, but I liked it
Very symbolic about the relation to women, imo the chapter was very well done though. It was easy to follow even though it was so abstract.
I think the symbolism and images he sometimes throw in often serve the purpose of symbolizing the feeling of a mountain track in a way "townsfolk" can understand. When Mori was climbing that japanese mountain and steadily thinking of K2 for example ("Now I would have to dodge an avalanche!"), he was shown standing on a broad street surrounded by big cars and trucks for a few pages, with a truck heading right at Mori. Probably to give us an idea of the extreme force, fear and noise and stuff of an avalanche heading right your way when you're trying to climb.
Obviously there is deeper symbolism than that, but I just remembered this one first. Such comparison of mountains to cities occurs a few times in the manga.
I also liked the scene when Mori saw that woman who tried to make a move on him as a praying mantis. Probably shows both his disgust and fear (a huge ugly bug and his fear of females - after all the female mantis is known to eat her sex partners)
Yet, after all it can be a little difficult to keep track of different timelines and symbolic scenes thrown in. Sometimes we are at two or three timelines at once and then get a symbolic scenes like that on this street inserted
Sometimes I think I read such manga too fast. I'm a focussed reader (no music or stuff) so I can usually keep track quite well, but sometimes I just think "damn are you stupid? How couldn't you notice that earlier?" to myself. The irony of that 32 yr old doctor for example, who dies on the northern alps when running into the avalanche. If I got it right, he had hallucinations of his dead friend's father chasing him, who on the other hand chased him to get more information about his son's death - leading to the only one knowing what happend living in paranoia and dying of it. (Or his mental condition was the cause of that accident to begin with, but I think there's no hint on that)
Was he even a doctor or do I just hallucinate that? I think he was shown in a brief flashback as a doctor who seemed kind of sociophobic (rather playing on a handheld than bothering with patients). I hope I can find that chapter again, I don't remember it very well.
All that stuff revolving around Mori's teammates was really nice imo. I wonder if we might see that old co-leader guy again, he might've survived, right? I really liked Ch. 81/82, "Niimi Taku's Lonelines" and "Nighthawk". Pretty poetic almost, and nicely done. Niimi was a cool character.
(had great panels:
-1 -2 -3 -4 -5)
What I also noticed is that Kokou no Hito often shows sequences of pictures which follow the structure of the mind, how people think or how their eyes move and what they observe.
An example for latter case:
Ch. 100
The confusing/chaotic stuff I mean with "like people think" seems to be mainly incorporated in the structure of storytelling. When there are several timelines at once plus those dream/imagination/symbolic scenes in between - that's pretty much showing Mori's mind from the inside I think. After all, thoughts are poorly structured and can be quite chaotic.
On a small side note: Damn, I feel personally insulted
After I read the last chapter, some stupid side tried to give me advice what manga could be similar... "Category: Drama. One Piece"
What a comparison, Shonen li la lollypop world against this type of depressing and dark serious drama
Even more interesting to read a story about it though.
