oh, i see, i understand a lot more now

Looks a bit like a combo of Ciel and Noah.

Silly predictions called it!

Wiki sez it's the name Noah was called by when she first met Ciel.

Also the doggo shadow creatures at the start of his story are identical to the statues!

She also looks identical to Ciel, minus the blonde and horns...

Hehe, nice. Over 10 years and 4000 pages later, and we finally know who Ciel mistake Noah for.
I love this comic, here‘s to 10+ years more!

Holy reveal Batman

I was too excited with my first attempted comment, and sadly forgot to put in the 3 like a dum dum :’)

Basically, I think there’s a very interesting parallel here. Because Held had “the Dream” which will probably lead to an interesting interaction here. Then later on, Noah runs into someone noteworthy who’d had the dream.

Also it being Minori (or just, whoever had Ciel last) was one of my guesses but I tragically dismissed it because I didn’t think it would actually happen! And I just don’t comment often, I should comment more, this may have been my chance to actually guess something right, but alas.

This scene may be a way to hint at something Noah could figure out how to do later… which means this could be excellent foreshadowing for something… or we’re be screaming at Noah later as he avoids doing something that could fix one of his problems but he doesn’t know that for an extended period of time.

Did anyone else notice/point out the dog statues resemble the dogs from when Noah's first encounter with his dream world, when he wished for a guide?

Finally, we have an answer to "What is a Minori"

It her

I guess Ciel took on a form in imitation of... her previous "master", I guess? Though with a few imperfections, like the lack of circles. I guess we have some precedent for this in Burk's invisible followers.

What's really interesting is, then, how did Ciel know that name? What do spirits of Pandemonium know before their humans discover their power? Is Minori a relative of Noah? Or merely a predecessor in some unknown sense? After all, "my family's not from the Empire either." We don't have much insight into how hereditary magic really is, but we also really haven't seen people with the same "powers" outside of the standard set of Magic Potential abilities - even Espers have unique quirks to their manipulations. It's kind of a secondary reveal, but the idea that people can have powers in common is novel.

I think i missed a few pages but glad to see Minori's(formerly noah) transition is going well #trans rights #ciel always knew this would happen

Putting aside the already noted similarities, Minori here has floating circles while Ciel/Windows has floating squares. I wonder if this will be significant.

a million theories are running through my head after seeing this strip oh my god

i am so unbelievably excited for where this goes next

I love that platform thing, this decor game is really on point

Oh my, after all these years! And she bears such a likeness to Ciel too! :O

I wonder as to what the exact nature of the relation is here, my first feeling is that Ciel was/is in some way the spirit that was attached to Minori here, but the appearance and (from what has been seen thus far) that manner of speaking, it makes me wonder...

Given that Ciel first greeted Noah as 'Minori' I feel it perhaps unlikely that Ciel -is- in some way more-or-less Minori herself, but I wonder if there was some kind of fusion going on here between 'Ciel' (proto-Ciel, if you will) and this girl here that put together make up Minori as we see her here. Theobold and Artemius regard her as being quite young, yet it is known that Minori helped Artemius with her magic sight related problems some time years in the past, quite possibly (or even probably) before Held was even born. That plus the clearly very high regard Minori is being held in and the reputation she has, it makes me suspect that she was likely mentally either never a 'normal' human girl or that she at a -very- young age in some way transcended the boundaries of what I guess you could call the ordinary human mental development process. Of course it could just be that she was simply fortunate and gained advanced mental capabilities very early on (be it genes, magic influence, proto-Ciel's influence, or some combination thereof), but that she bears such a resemblance to Ciel really makes me wonder if there is more to it...

Still just the first page of seeing Minori though so I am really getting ahead of things here methinks, but ah this makes me so excited. XD

Also this most likely also explains why Theobold is telling the Clockmaker all this, as if proto-Ciel was once attached to and/or part of Minori here as in all probability it seems she was then it strongly suggests that Minori met her end at some point before the present. Does make me wonder when though, and it wouldn't surprise me too much if we learn that Minori died relatively recently, as there is good reason to believe that Noah and many if not most of the other Gloria kids were not magic users at all until just a short while before the official announcement of the Ved- er, Barnrose Project by the Emperor in Gloria. I wonder if it might even be that the same group that are behind the Barnrose Project in the Empire were in some way involved in Minori's demise, but probably that is far too speculative on my part.

Held's storyline is paying off BIG TIME.

Oh man sudden unexpected answers to a long running mystery? Yes please!

So given that Noah has shaped Ciel through his actions do we think Minori shaped Ciel into her likeness // personality?

I don't really believe Minori is a regular human being considering the floating rings, weird age considering she's lived for a while, etc -I'm more inclined for her to be Veda-like or Tobi-like in that respect.

Well, well, well, the plot thickens as a good soup should. This does raise further questions of course. I'd say there's a good chance that it's Minori that Chernyl remembered encountering as a child. https://www.neorice.com/hoh_noah_3295

I've been considering "gender flipped reincarnation" as an explanation for the Minori-Windows connection for a while... but is that really what happened?

@The_Squished_Elf: I'd say Minori's circles and Ciel's squares are likely to be representations of the same thing. They were a point of similarity even before today's comic

https://www.neorice.com/hoh_noah_314

Maybe Noah is this Minori reincarnated. It wouldn't be very strange.

Now, we all considered some connection to Noah's story at this point, but this was unexpected and it was amazing!

@Whispers Of Sorrow: I think you are absolutely right about Chernyl having met Minori instead of Noah.

But maybe there's more to it. And Noah was becoming quite powerful, considering his power with wishes, maybe it could have been him nonetheless. Let's wait and see.

"Minori is Ciel's previous host", "Noah is Minori reincarnated", nah, just nah.

Minori is, obviously, Noah and Ciel's time-traveling daughter.

Speaking of Ciel, it would be interesting if Minori has a male version who reminds us of a certain someone...

Now we just have to wait for a sewer whale to show up... https://www.neorice.com/hoh_noah_320

Reincarnation.