🍂🐛 the roly-poly study story 🍃🐞

[ghelgheli]

hello <3

when I was a rotund little baby, my older cousin gave me the nickname “ghelgheli”, which I would impressionistically translate from Persian as “roly-poly”. this is my study log! come say hi

Bio

I chose the title for the rhyme scheme, but this isn’t just a study log: I mean to use it both to report my progress in Japanese and as a diary of sorts. I could never keep a diary of my own, I think because I felt discouraged that nobody would ever read it! No such problem here. I often share my thoughts on things I’ve read and the goings-on in my life, and I’d love to hear from you all as well :]

—Gamer—I love books—film nerd—amateur photographer—aggressively unemployed—possessed of a useless PhD—always listening to music—been known to write—

The Story So Far...

As an undergraduate I took almost two years of Japanese, dropping it in my final semester out of some kind of ennui (I still feel bad about this!). Subsequently, I had a lost decade of my own that I’m only just now getting out of. On September 17th, 2025, I resumed Japanese study and I’m intending to maintain an intensive pace. I’ve studied numerous languages piecemeal over the years and I’m tired of saying I kinda know a bit of a bunch of different languages.

In terms of my long-term goals, practically speaking, I would like to: become an advanced enough reader to comfortably read any manga (my target is Planetes) or book and browse any website smoothly (I like to collect magazines and photography and these are often for sale on Japanese-only websites); develop my writing enough that I can comfortably discuss media in Japanese (I use Letterboxd and would like to write reviews in Japanese); and become a fluent listener and productive conversationalist. Theoretically speaking, I want to pass JLPT N2 at least, and N1 eventually.

I’d estimate my grammar at ~N3, vocab ~N4, and kanji N5. I can comfortably understand much of what’s said in less-abstract anime, but reading is still a slog.

Past Weekly Reports

2025

11/03/2025-11/09/2025
11/10/2025-11/16/2025
11/17/2025-11/23/2025
11/24/2025-11/30/2025
12/01/2025-12/07/2025
12/08/2025-12/14/2025
12/15/2025-12/21/2025
12/22/2025-12/28/2025

12/29/2025-01/04/2026
01/05/2026-01/11/2026
01/12/2026-01/18/2026
01/19/2026-01/25/2026
01/26/2026-02/01/2026

Library

Top Shelf:

Completed:

• やがて君になる
• 少女終末旅行
• 血の轍
• ハピネス
• 惡の華
• ぼくは麻理の中
• おかえりアリス
• スイートプールサイド
• リリ

Reading:

• ホリミヤ (Vol 2)
• はなにあらし (Vol 3)
• 付き合ってあげてもいいかな (Vol 3)
• ギャルと恐竜 (Vol 2)

Current Inventory

Vocab (incl. kanji):

• WaniKani
• Bunpro
• Anki (currently Core2K and deck of vocabulary mined using Yomitan)

Grammar:

• Bunpro
• (occasionally) A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar

Reading:

• graded readers from Tadoku and Sakura
• manga around Natively L15-25

Listening:

Youtubers, with the approximate levels I think their content mainly corresponds to:

• Ken-san Okaeri (N5-N3)
• Japanese with Shun (N5-N3)
• Nihongo Con Teppei (N5-N3)
• Japanese Super Immersion (N5-N2)
• Okkei Japanese (N4-N2)
• Sayuri Saying (N4-N2)
• Speak Japanese Naturally (N4-N2)
• Miku Real Japanese (N4-N2)
• Daily Japanese with Naoko (N4-N2)
• Bite Size Japanese (N3-N2)
• Wasabi (N3-N2)
• MAI (N3-N1)
• YUYU (N3-N1)

(favourites in bold)

Writing:

• LangCorrect and crossposting occasionally to Hellotalk

Speaking:

• for the moment I just talk to myself sometimes

Schedule

• ≥7hrs listening weekly
• read daily
• ≥3 LangCorrect posts weekly
• 20-30 new vocabulary words daily, mostly via Yomitan mining

2026 Goals

• January:
  Bunpro N3 Grammar (01/09/2026)
  Bunpro N4 Vocabulary (01/14/2026)
  Bunpro N4 Practice Test (01/17/2026)
• March:
  WaniKani Lvl 21 by my birthday (3/10)
• April:
  Bunpro N2 Grammar
  Anki Core 2k
• May:
  Bunpro N3 Vocab
  Bunpro N3 Practice Test
• June:
  WaniKani Lvl 30
• July:
  Bunpro N1 Grammar
• September:
  WaniKani Lvl 40
• October:
  Bunpro N2 Vocab
  Bunpro N2 Practice Test
• December:
  WaniKani Lvl 50
  JLPT N2 …?

Historical Milestones

9/18/2025: Started WaniKani & Bunpro
9/23/2025: Bunpro N5 Grammar
10/23/2025: Bunpro N4 Grammar
11/5/2025: Bunpro N5 Vocab
11/14/2025: Bunpro N5 Practice Test

[pandoravakarian]

Welcome to the study crew!! Since you already have some experience from before, I would recommend trying to join the absolute beginner book club! Its a nice way to learn while being active in the community

[pocketcat]

@ghelgheli

Writing: idk I tried HelloTalk but it’s a little miserable to use

There’s also LangCorrect as a web option. It’s quieter but it definitely manages to avoid the gamification and dating-app like vibes of Hello Talk.

[ghelgheli]

@pandoravakarian

Welcome to the study crew!! Since you already have some experience from before, I would recommend trying to join the absolute beginner book club! Its a nice way to learn while being active in the community

Thank you!!! I had been looking at the ABBC earlier. I’m waffling because I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get my hands on the upcoming Gal & Dino volume(s), but if I can make it work I’m definitely interested in giving it a shot.

@pocketcat

There’s also LangCorrect as a web option. It’s quieter but it definitely manages to avoid the gamification and dating-app like vibes of Hello Talk.

This looks promising my main gripe with HelloTalk was the slog of a mobile-only app. I much prefer typing on my desktop since I’m a bit clumsy with my thumbs. The vibe over there was also a bit rank, yeah, and LangCorrect seems more my speed by comparison. I’ll try it for sure, thank you

[ghelgheli]

Weekly Report
11/3/2025-11/9/2025

I figure I’ll do this as weekly updates on Sundays, because in my head that’s when the week ends (apparently calendars disagree, but I will not be swayed).

Stats

Listened to 635/600 minutes
Read >= 8 x Tadoku Lvl 2 readers (only started tracking mid-week…)
Reached WaniKani 7 ^^
Mined deck passed 500!

I was tighter on the listening goal than I expected to be, but I think it makes sense considering it would come out to almost 90 minutes a day… feels like there’s never enough time, and I’m very impatient about learning when it comes down to it. But I’ll try to keep it up, because I think it’s doing a lot for me—no improvement without the listening, I’d flounder if it was exclusively study.

For Next week…

• Try writing on LangCorrect
• Take a practice N5 test on Bunpro
• (unrelated) Ace a job interview Wednesday

I’ve been looking for work for a few months so it’s been a load on my mind. One less thing to worry about would mean all the more focus to put on my language learning 8)

POTW

I’m an amateur photographer, so maybe I’ll try prettying each update up with something

[pandoravakarian]

Ooo yes love potw!! Keep that going also good luck on your interview!

[ghelgheli]

Weekly Report
11/10/2025-11/16/2025

I thought very little happened this week until I sat down to summarize it all so…

Achievements

Listened to 645/600 minutes
Read 7/7 days (Tadoku Lvl 3 x 8)
Reached WaniKani 8!!
Made a LangCorrect account and posted four times :>
Passed Bunpro N5 Practice Test
Survived job interview

Reflections

I’m all abuzz because of the job interview I had on Wednesday. They said they’d be getting back to me with whether I have an offer or not in ~two weeks and the news can’t come soon enough. Hate waiting so bad but this would be such a perfect opportunity T^T

On the writing front, LangCorrect has turned out to be both motivating and convenient. It is quiet, but because I can just type things out on desktop it helps me get into a flow. It’s daunting and a little embarrassing though, putting my compositions out there with all their flaws for people to see; it’s a bit demoralizing, too, when something I thought was clean comes back with heavy corrections. But that’s how the learning happens I guess. I’ve also found it helpful to cross-post sometimes to HelloTalk after the fact, since there’s more activity there. I think the cognitive work of writing functions as heavy reinforcement for me, so I’m deciding to add writing three LangCorrect posts to my weekly goals.

The Bunpro N5 Practice Test, which I’d set as a goal last week, was easier than I thought it might be. My only mistake was pretty funny: I chose the wrong conjunction, and the explanation was essentially that “the sentence was saying X, whereas with the conjunction you chose, it would mean Y”. And, well. I thought it was saying Y! But I’m not pressed about it.

It’s nice to be familiar with the test format now: I literally stared at the first problem for a full minute trying to figure out where the various parts of question even were, but once it clicked it was easy going from there. If I do end up taking a JLPT it won’t be for another year, but besides the psychological preparation, I have a pathological taste for standardized tests and it was fun in itself. According to the long-term timeline I’ve set for myself, the Bunpro N4 practice test should be happening in January.

For Next Week…

Adding LangCorrect to my regular schedule!

POTW

Have this time-lapse I took of LAX on my last night in the city…

[Senii]

Congrats on the test and maybe-job! Sounds like you’ve been making pretty good progress

[trunklayer]

The time-lapsed photo of your city looks meowgnificent!

Also, kind of looks like an electronic circuit

Or a reactor from Space Chem

SpaceChem Trailer

Anyway, congratulations on your achievemeownts and best of luck with your studies and other cativities!

[ghelgheli]

@Senii

Congrats on the test and maybe-job! Sounds like you’ve been making pretty good progress

Thank you hoping to convert the maybe into a yes within the week

@trunklayer

Or a reactor from Space Chem

This is a hell of a throwback, I remember playing SpaceChem as an undergrad over ten years ago… just checked on Steam and it says last played Oct 3, 2013. Thank you for the nostalgia trip T^T

@trunklayer

Anyway, congratulations on your achievemeownts and best of luck with your studies and other cativities!

Thank you! It’s been nice familiarizing myself with the community and everynyan here ^^

[ghelgheli]

Weekly Report
11/17/2025-11/23/2025

Chugging along despite disappointment…

Achievements

WaniKani Level 9
Listened to 650/600 minutes
Read 7/7 days

• Yagate Kimi Ni Naru / Bloom Into You (Nakatani Nio) Vol. 1, Vol 2. Ch. 6-9
• Happiness (Shuuzo Oshimi)
• Tadoku Graded Readers Lvl 3 x 3

Wrote 4/3 LangCorrect posts
Didn’t get the job

Reflections

Mid-week (in fact, right after my last post here) I got the news that I was “not retained for candidacy” at the company I’d been interviewing with. After six months of unemployment, countless job applications, and a fresh PhD that is functionally useless outside of academia, this has been discouraging to say the least. JP study is one of the few facets of my life where I’ve been able to maintain a sense of progress. In that light…

On something of a whim, I decided to try transitioning into manga as my reading practice. Bloom Into You was my obvious first choice as one of my favourite yuri (which is saying something) and I picked up Happiness based on the recommendations I’d seen around. To my surprise, it was much smoother going than I was expecting—not without obstacles, especially grammatical colloquialisms and such, but nevertheless smooth enough that I found myself finishing Happiness within the week; I am soliciting opinions, if you have any to share.

I have Bloom Into You paced because I’m reading the colourized webtoon, which Bookwalker only makes freely available on a throttled basis. The panels are absolutely gorgeous, so I’ve found it’s well worth being bottlenecked, but… oh what I wouldn’t give to have those colourized pages in physical form. I figure I’ll move on to either Horimiya or The Flowers of Evil next alongside it.

Still, I realized that the text density of manga I can manage to read is low, so I’ve stuck to reading a few graded readers when I can for that particular kind of immersion. I’m thinking that in the vein of text-dense material, I’ll switch to “real” books through the Children’s Novel Club here whenever they start their next book. I’ve also decided to make it a JP-learning goal to read Planetes, which has been on my radar for some time. I love hard SF so it gives me something to look forward to.

Aside: I was “corrected” for the first time on my use of 僕 instead of 私. My girlfriend predicted this would happen, but the imposition of trite norms in the face of the fact that plenty of (native-speaking!) girls use 僕 for their own reasons made me laugh a little.

How has everyone’s week been if you made it this far, thank you for reading my little diary entry.

For Next Week…

idk just keep going i guess ^^

POTW

Last year I went to the Huntington Botanical Gardens around the wintertime… really pretty bits of nature. I’ve become enamoured with gardens like this, I think.

[ghelgheli]

Weekly Report
11/24/2025-11/30/2025

Busy busy!

Achievements

Listened to 725/600 minutes
Read 7/7 days

• Yagate Kimi Ni Naru / Bloom Into You (Nakatani Nio) Vol. 2 Ch. 10, Vol. 3, Vol. 4 Ch. 17
• Aku no Hana (Shuuzo Oshimi) Vol. 1-7
• Tadoku Graded Readers Lvl 3 x 1

Wrote 3/3 LangCorrect posts

Reflections

Sleep’s been weird this week, but I’ve been making good progress! I need develop a more efficient method of doing my LangCorrect posts; I end up spending like half an hour on each one, which is certainly a good effort but comes at the expense of frequency. Shorter posts more often would be better iteration.

I signed myself up for both the Advent of Code and the December Reading Advent so I have a lot to keep me busy. Also looking into studying for something like a CompTIA qualification to help with the job search. Input welcome there!

For Next Week…

I’m relaxing my listening goals to accommodate the two advent commitments I’ve made. Let’s say seven hours for the week ^^

POTW

In terms of composition, I think this is one of the best I’ve taken—from the twelfth floor of a hotel in downtown LA.

[pandoravakarian]

Can I ask which camera you use? The photos are breathtaking!

[ghelgheli]

Thank you so much ^-^ it’s an Olympus OM-D E-M1X

I got it for free second-hand via my then-partner who, awkwardly, became my ex shortly afterward. I got the cheapest lenses I could since I’m just starting out: a 40-150mm for most situations and a 14-42mm for when I want a wider angle.

[ghelgheli]

Weekly Report

12/01/2025-12/07/2025

I’ve been running myself like a train this week TO be HONEST!

Achievements

WaniKani Lvl 10
Listened to 495/420 minutes
Read 7/7 days

• 悪の華 / Flowers of Evil (Shuuzo Oshimi) Vol. 8-11 (FIN)
• やがて君になる / Bloom Into You (Nakatani Nio) Vol. 4 Ch. 18-22, Vol. 5 Ch. 23-26
• ぼくは麻理のなか / Inside Mari (Shuuzo Oshimi) Vol. 1-6

Wrote 3/3 LangCorrect posts
Mined deck reached 1000 words
Complete 7/7 Advent of Code problems

Reflections

If my present exhaustion is anything to go by, I might be overextending myself. Nevertheless!

Flowers of Evil was a deeply fascinating read, slow to get off the ground but so satisfying in the finish. At multiple junctures I was considering writing up my thoughts here as a separate post but I wasn’t sure about flooding my own log. I might start doing that this week, though, to help flesh out my impressions of readings I found particularly interesting. As far as Flowers of Evil goes, my short impression is that I think it achieved what A Silent Voice was trying to do. It’s a lucid treatment of the vicissitudes of childhood, the way that the vulnerability of the child manifests harm, and it’s so level-headed about how that harm can be addressed over the years without vindication or retribution.

Now I’m most of the way thru Inside Mari, which is the most interesting Oshimi I’ve read so far. I’m a little nervous at my current stopping point about what is to come next, but I think that whatever happens, Oshimi has managed inadvertently but with full brilliance to capture the devices of transmisogyny in the earlier volumes. It’s not just a story about Mari and Isao, but the coercion both are subjected to by the particular individuals in their lives and the norms broadly imposed on them from without. Paratextually, Oshimi expresses an intense form of transfatalism that leaks into the text. I’ve been linked a video essay I’m eager to watch once I’ve finished reading and I know I’m gonna have things to say by the finish.

Advent of Code has been a rabbit hole of fun. I didn’t realize how the scoring worked the first day, but since understanding that solving problems first gives more points, I’ve made sure to get working right at midnight every night. I think my competitive streak never runs out.

For Next Week…

I’m keeping my listening goals loosened to “just” an hour a day. Advent of Code ends this week, after which I might be able to resume my previous pace.

POTW

On the morning January 7th this year I was driving my girlfriend up to the Getty Museum in the hills overlooking Santa Monica. I noticed a strangely dense cloud in that direction and commented that it looked like smoke, but didn’t think much of it. By the time we’d parked, made it through the line at the front, and taken the tram up to the museum itself, the cloud had become a plume of smoke rising from behind the mountains in the west, carried by intense winds we could feel in the open areas of the pavilion. Within a few hours, the smoke was blotting out the Sun.

[ghelgheli]

Weekly Report

12/08/2025-12/14/2025

feeling like

Achievements

WaniKani Lvl 11
Listened to 455/420 minutes
Read 7/7 days

• ぼくは麻理のなか / Inside Mari Vol. 7-9 (FIN)
• ホリミヤ / Horimiya Vol. 1
• やがて君になる / Bloom Into You Vol 5 Ch. 27-28, Vol. 6-7, Vol. 8 Ch. 40
• おかえりアリス / Welcome Back Alice Vol. 1-2

Wrote 3/3 LangCorrect posts
Finished Advent of Code but at what cost

Reflections

This week has been kind of a mess. I get obsessive about coding problems and the latter half of Advent of Code had some real missions, so on several occasions I was up well past 4. Got all the stars though so it’s a win in my book and now there’s a void in my heart where those problems used to be…

I had less focus for listening as a result and barely made my goal. I want to get back to my previous level of listening commitment but I think that will have to wait until I’m done with the December Reading Advent as well, since right now I’m maintaining the fairly high commitment of 1+ volumes of manga daily.

And on the subject of manga: I finished ぼくは麻理のなか! And watched what appears to be the most popular youtube video about it! The video was just fine—not really about the manga, and I found it objectionable on some points—but the story surfaces a lot of structural phenomena that I’m itching to talk more about. This isn’t the place, but I’m gonna try and read every Oshimi I can (おかえりアリス is already doing some real interesting work) and then write something up. Haven’t done something like this since I wrote a Disco Elysium essay years ago.

Trying to keep these reflections shorter for now

For Next Week…

Keep up my December Reading Advent pace + continuing my relaxed listening requirements. I’ve not been feeling very well in the head lately so it’s just a matter of momentum.

Panel(s) OTW

I take so many screenshots reading my assorted manga and I realized it would be a shame not to share some, so this is a thing for now.

(おかえりアリス Vol. 2)

This kinda destroyed me tbh. Like yeah girl me too. Me and how many other girls too. Sheesh. Oshimi has some kind of psychological x-ray vision istfg

POTW

I few months ago I spotted this serendipitously perched leaf while walking a trail nearby. A sign of the fall to come! And now everything is covered with snow and only the conifers have any greenery left. I should take some pictures of the winter 'scapes tbh.

[ghelgheli]

Weekly Report

12/15/2025-12/21/2025

by the SKIN of my TEETH!

Achievements

WaniKani Lvl 12 YEAR-END GOAL MET!!
Listened to 425/420 minutes
Read 7/7 days

• やがて君になる Vol. 8 Ch. 41-45 (FIN)
• おかえりアリス / Welcome Back Alice Vol. 3-7 (FIN)
• はなにあらし / Hana ni Arashi Vol. 1-2

Wrote 3/3 LangCorrect posts
Did CodeCrafters’ Build your own Shell project in Rust BUT AT WHAT COST!

Reflections

I am very easy to nerd-snipe if you know how. My girlfriend mentioned CodeCrafters to me on Wednesday and I, with stars in my eyes, set out to do their free project of the month as fast as I could. I finished it yesterday evening to the detriment of my ability to focus on anything else! I could be having dinner, watching tv, reading, or whatever and I’d be incorrigibly lost in the thought of how I’d solve the next stage of the project. Now that that’s over maybe I can get back on track.

やがて君になる somehow hit me harder this time despite being a reread—I literally needed a few minutes to compose myself after the last panel, and the experience has only solidified its position as one of my top 5 long-form yuri.

As for おかえりアリス: I think it is the logical conclusion of everything Oshimi has written so far, and this is praise and critique in equal measure. I’ll have a lot to say later, but for now I invite everyone interested to read the first impressions I wrote after finishing it:

discord scribbles

I wanted to participate in the solstice readathon and I might still make a post over there, but truthfully I’ve felt exhausted to the point of illness and I wasn’t sure I’d do it justice. It’s been overwhelming enough getting everything else done ;-;

For Next Week…

Have at least one good night’s sleep!! tbh!!!

Panel(s) OTW

POTW

For a while last year I had this big flower fascination because, as someone once said to me, flowers like to be photographed! This was at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in LA.

[ghelgheli]

Weekly Report

12/22/2025-12/28/2025

merry crisis

Achievements

WaniKani Lvl 13
Listened to 435/420 minutes
Read 7/7 days
Wrote 3/3 LangCorrect posts

Library Log

yes I’m still working out how I want to organize these reports…

I’ve been making my way through 血の轍 this week—currently on volume 11/17, so I should be done by the next report! There are some significant differences in plot between this one and other Oshimi works I’ve read, in that the focus is less on relationships between adolescents and instead primarily on the relationship the main character has with his mother. This gives Oshimi an opportunity to flesh out the structures that characterize the parent-child (property) relation, which is hinted at in other stories (e.g. overprotective mothers in ハピネス or ぼくは麻理の中 or troubled communication between the child and the parents in 悪の華), while keeping in thematic resonance with the concerns he has expressed elsewhere regarding adolescence, alienation, and abuse.

Stylistically, some of the chapters near the start have this aggressive shading that approaches chiaroscuro at times. Some panels achieve something like a photorealism, or as if a picture has been passed through a monochrome filter. It’s striking! And of course, his faces continue to impress:

The current chapters are dense with legal terminology which has slowed me down a lot. I’m pulling through imagining a future where my comprehension is high enough for these sentences to breeze by.

Reflections

My sleep remains a mess and it’s entirely my fault. I keep staying up late for some coding related reason or another. This week I’ve gotten into codewars + I’m working on a vscode theme because the ones I found didn’t satisfy me. Last night I forced myself to bed only to scroll on my phone reading about DFA and regex. Did you know it’s possible to generate a regular expression that matches exactly all n satisfying n % m = p for any n (in any base representation), m, and p? I sure didn’t, but here’s a generator for any case with p = 0. I’m currently trying to wrap my head around the methodology (1: general method for constructing the DFS; 2: converting a DFA into the equivalent regex) so I can program it myself. Resources are surprisingly scarce.

UPDATE a few hours later: I figured it out algorithmically on paper and generated a regex by hand that matches exactly all binary representations of natural numbers divisible by 5 :]

(it’s ^(0|1(0(0(1)*01)*0(1)*00|10|11(0(1)*01)*0(1)*00)*(0(0(1)*01)*1|11(0(1*)01)*1))*$)

I will be implementing this in Rust shortly UvU

For Next Week…

uhmmm maybe this time I’ll manage to go to bed before 3am at least once…? pray for me everynyan. also because the new year is coming up I’ll be arranging my 2026 learning goals, and I love plotting >:3

POTW

In the spirit of the new year, here’s an LA gas station on NYE 2024! I really like the converging lines in this one.

[ghelgheli]

Year End Review

2025

Stats

Minutes Listened: 4635
Manga Read: ハピネス、惡の華、ぼくは麻理の中、おかえりアリス、やがて君になる、血の轍 (12 Vols), はなにあらし (2 Vols), ホリミヤ (1 Vol), ギャルと恐竜 (1 Vol)
LangCorrect Posts Written: 23

Thoughts

I only get about three months for this particular review, so I’m excited to see what my cumulative totals will be for 2026. Still, it’s a little incredible to look at the numbers directly. Almost 80 hours listened, five manga read in full and others in progress, hundreds of words written! Hoping 2026 will be even more successful (and that I will find employment, tbh, even if that digs into my study time).

I’m sleepy and there’s things to do, but on a different note I implemented the aforementioned generator for regular expressions that compute modulo. Very pleased with this.

I hope everyone’s had the most wonderful new year and that 2026 will be a good one for all of us!

[ghelgheli]

Weekly Report

12/29/2025-01/04/2026

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Weekly Goals

WaniKani Lvl 14
Listened to 450/420 minutes
Read 7/7 days
Wrote 3/3 LangCorrect posts

Library Log

I finished 血の轍 late last night and the final volume came with a torrent of emotions. I was actually a mess for a bit—as far as Oshimi’s stories go, this one is exceptional in its unrelenting sombreness. There’s no clean recovery of the good life, there is no resolution by young adulthood opening the path to a free life lived well. There’s only extended melancholy and, finally, relief. But relief that comes too late is so bitter, isn’t it?

I was impressed by how level-headed the text is about the violence that structures the family. It’s not a story about a villain and a victim, but a representation of agents in a matrix that coerces them in cross-cutting ways. This wasn’t inevitable, and it could have been otherwise, if only the characters at the periphery hadn’t forced things to be the way they are. I think Oshimi only skirts the sort of apologia that is often made for mothers, keeping the focus on the son and the fact that in the titular trail of blood, his are the last and bloodiest tracks in the sequence. I’ve always thought of Oshimi as a youthlib sort of writer, but this has to be the most persuasive example of that.

Some screenshots from the second half…

(soft spoiler)

Reflections

I’ve felt like I’m lagging in my listening the past couple weeks, so hopefully I can turn that around, but it’s hard to stay focused when I’ve got a bunch of other stuff on my mind. Also need to figure out what I’m reading after this. Maybe Girls Last Tour? But I also feel like I need to be an Oshimi completionist at this point considering this is like my fifth manga of his that I’ve read. Maybe I’ll double track drift it…

For Next Week…

Start a new manga, lay out my 2026 goals, GET A JOB PLEASE!!

POTW

I’ve always had a fascination with textures and the way shapes can stipple in a picture.