Paradise Residence Chapter 17 Manga
パラダイス レジデンス Chapter 17

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

It is the first day of the fall school term and as usual, Hatsune has overslept. She races to school on her minibike and is met by the Director. The old woman says she’ll hide the bike for Hatsune, allowing the girl to race to class. The Director is amused by the students that seem to come from the Kikka Dorm. Hatsune makes it into class, amazing Suzuka since she made it on time. Hatsune says she was saved by a goddess as the teacher comes into class and asks them for their summer homework, which Hatsune hasn’t done.

Meanwhile in the Director’s office, Ominato-sensei discusses the major repair needs of the Kikka Dorm. When the Director mentions getting air conditioning installed, Ominato-sensei rejects that, saying they don’t need it. However, the Director collapses unconscious on her desk.

Back at the classroom, Hatsune has been given a week to get all the homework done and is stunned when Suzuka says she got the homework done in the first week of summer vacation. They notice an ambulance and ask a girl named Haneda what’s going on, so Haneda says the Director collapsed. At the dorm, the girls discuss the situation on how the Director’s life is not in danger, but her absence could mess up their dorm repairs. Steph states that a substitute is coming.

The Director’s daughter takes over the director job and is not pleased to see the repair work scheduled for Kikka Dorm as it will the school’s profit ratio. In her mind, it be faster just to rebuild the old dorm. As such, over Ominato-sensei’s objection, the new Director decides to demolish the old dorm.

That evening at the old Dorm #1, Hatsune struggles with all the homework she has when Ominato-sensei comes by to announce that the dorm is to be demolished and that she has no power to stop it.

Thoughts/Review:

You know, when I read Ominato-sensei reject the notion of air conditioning not being installed in the old dorm, I actually got angry. After all, while there has been this thing about the dorm being on top of a hill allows it to get breezes that help, chapter 4 was all about how incredibly hot it gets every year, to the point to where folks can’t sleep. Speaking for myself, if I lived in a place where it was a comfortable 68ºF inside every day, save for a week when it gets hot inside, I want A/C for that hot week.

I get that Ominato-sensei is supposed to be very fond of the dorm. We learned in this chapter that she attended school here as a teen and lived in that dorm. However, I think she’s being a little too traditional with her anti-A/C stance. (“We didn’t have A/C as teens and it was fine, so no A/C for the girls today either.”)

Now that I’ve gotten the ultra important rant about someone being negative over one of mankind’s greatest inventions ( 😉 ), it is clear here that this story arc is going to be all about saving the dorm. Considering that this manga was all about girls living in an old dorm and its title is Paradise Residence, I can’t imagine that the dorm will be torn down so that some new, modern dorm (like Dorm #2 is shown to be) can replace it. We’ll see though.

As to the Director’s daughter’s (and darn Fujishima-sensei for his terrible habit of not giving characters names) approach to dealing with Dorm #1, from an economic sense, tearing down the old dorm and building a new one is probably the better solution. After all, an old building will continue to have additional costs in maintenance that a new building wouldn’t.

I found it interesting that Fujishima-sensei thinks that a British transfer student, speaking in Japanese, would refer to Ominato-sensei (Minchin-sensei as she’s sometimes called) as “Ms. Minchin.” I guess he could be doing this as a literary device (Japanese honorific usage in manga, anime, and novels are used in that fashion), but as a gaijin in Japan, I can tell you that all of my gaijin comrades adopted a “when in Rome” mentality and addressed Japanese folks with the -san honorific, including our Japanese coworkers on an American Air Force base. We never addressed anyone Japanese with a Western honorific, and more often than not, we gaijin were addressed with the -san honorific as well.

In the end, this chapter is just another pleasant slice of life journey of some cute Japanese (and one British) schoolgirls and their old dorm.