[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

Yeah, overall tone goes a really long way for me with stuff like that.

Like Ranma 1/2 is a total mess of やばい stuff on the face of it, but the gender swapping and everyone being (relatively) cool with it feels so freeing compared to the general baseline that I still think it’s fun. And everything’s a ridiculous amped-up martial arts fever dream anyway.
Hibari-kun is like that too - it’s very um, 80s about how it depicts things, but it’s also a story about a trans girl who’s really cool and great at everything, and the story never actually undercuts that, so the positive aspects win the day for me personally.

Or if I just already trust Son Goku and Kiryu Kazuma are good dudes I like watching, it’s easier to stomach any troubling parts of their adventures as exceptions and not the rule.

Art probably plays a lot into that tone too. Akira Toriyama and Rumiko Takahashi are like, all-timer fun action cartoonists, for example, so the “this is fun action” vibe is really powerful.

So I definitely agree! I think Ranma 1/2 just earns more trust overall and deploys the rampant nudity and convoluted gender/consent games at least a bit more thoughtfully than like a hypothetical generic dude-centric manga that’s just randomly lascivious in jarring ways.

One thing that goes a long way is everyone’s pretty much a badass in Ranma, including Akane, both Ranmas, etc. So even when they’re captured or whatever, it never really feels like control is taken away from them in a way that puts them down. It’s all just part of the chaos. And everybody has an edge against everyone else at some point.
A shonen manga with a lewd shot of a captured girlfriend whom the male protagonist saves doesn’t have that benefit. A harem story with bland protagonist dude as center of the universe tends not to either…

(anyway I’ve rambled a lot at this point!)

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Hi, I’ve been lurking this thread for a long time getting book recs :eyes: I’ll join this challenge when I leave Japan and I’m not surrounded by Japanese 24/7

I was really glad to see this comment and a few of the other recent ones because you highlighted some of the difficulties I’m having with getting into more Japanese material. I’ll put Dungeon Meshi on my list, but do you (or anyone else) have recommendations or ways to avoid and sort through the material for people who aren’t super into the more uncomfortable gender stuff and fan service?

I’ve also seen so many “boring or mean guy falls into a fantasy world and everyone loves him” light novel and manga suggestions that I’ve become a bit wary of most recommendations.

I’m admittedly not much of a manga reader (I think I’ve read Full Metal Alchemist and Mob Psycho 100 all the way through and that’s about it…), but I would like to get more into it to build up some confidence before I attempt another novel.

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Thanks for the response! That’s a good question – I’m not sure if I have a great answer, but I’d be curious to hear if other people do!

For me, I suppose the only tip would be to just seek out recommendations from people you trust well enough to be sensitive to that kind of thing. For me, I’ve picked up a lot of manga from my closest friend, and I trust them enough to know that if they’re recommending it, it’s either totally fine for me or they’ll have prefaced it with a warning or something.
Being able to ask them about it and discuss it goes a long way too.
(I got しまなみ誰そ彼, 不可解な僕のすべてを, Hibari-kun, 呪術廻戦 from that friend and have yet to read 青のフラッグ)

That doesn’t necessarily need to be people you know in person though either - if you can find a critic or a site or something like that that’s consistently good about stuff like that, that can help too. There’s a twitter user whose taste and perspective I click with quite a bit (it’s @MinovskyArticle), and honestly for a solid chunk through quarantine I feel like a major pick-me-up was just pumping money and language-learning enthusiasm into stuff recommended by either them or my friend.
(I got ヨコハマ買い出し紀行, サトコとナダ, Skull-Faced Bookseller Honda-San, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken, and a lot of other stuff from people I relatively trusted talking about them on twitter)

I think generally, also (with probably exceptions), manga for older audiences are going to be at least less overtly trashy about that kind of gender stuff particularly. Finding a magazine that seems mature (like, emotionally mature) and looks like your kind of thing and then picking out series from it that strike your fancy could be a way to go (that’s kind of what I did with ハルタ before I just started reading the magazine itself).

Also, this is sort of an opposite tip - but (before I stopped to focus on Japanese-language manga) I loved going to the library and checking out a lot of manga volume #1s.
I would just kind of throw whatever in there - I would search the catalog by newly arrived for publishers like Viz or Seven Seas and then check out anything that looked sort of interesting. Most of it was unmemorable, but there were some fun surprises too, and you can feel kind of smug in a “knew it before it was cool” way when something you read and liked turned out to be a big deal and you didn’t realize…
But I guess I just mean, part of the fun of manga is a single volume can be very very low stakes. Not clicking with something didn’t matter so much that way and it felt fun to sort of “beach comb.”
If there isn’t a library (or manga cafe?) nearby, free ebooks on a site like Book Walker might maybe give some of the same effect (or at least I’m hording them in the hopes that it will…)
(I found ハクメイとミコチ, バルバラ異界, and I think the works of Tillie Walden (not manga but I really really like her stuff) from poking through the library like that)

(I honestly can’t remember where I first heard about Dungeon Meshi. I think either I came across it from the library and grew to like it and that’s how I came to trust the twitter user who posts about Dungeon Meshi, or the cause and effect was reversed and I tried it because of them)

Not sure how much that all helps, but good luck!

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Me being like “I’ll never remember all those recommendations, I need to store them somewhere… Oh! I know! Bookmeter!”

Pretty spot-on depiction of how I feel about it right now.

Time to just dump everything into a single post instead.

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I had the same thing happen when I went to go look for ideas for @cineebon. Just when we needed you most, bookmeter!

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I’ve received the books today! Sent on 18th by DHL Express, delivered today. That’s just 2 days. Amazing considering it went all the way from Tokyo! (shipping cost: 2,280 JPY)

Really happy with the packaging too. Much better than the recent Amazon packages I received.



The books themselves are in perfect condition. Mandarake listed them as quality B (worse than A and S). To me they look unused. Each book is wrapped in plastic and has all the extra paperwork, like included promotional leaflets.



Overall, great purchase and amazing service. Of course, I’d prefer to buy new to support the creator but in terms of the product quality this seems just as good as buying new.

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This is disturbing news… out of print books without digital editions are my last 積ん読 avoidance bastion…
hmmmmmm…

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That sounds expensive too :sweat_smile:

If I’m reading the prices right, it really does seem cheap…
not that I’m looking or anything…

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@Ditto20

I know you mentioned having 〆切前には百合が捗る on your plan to read list and I just finished it so just in case you were wondering…

Shit was 10/10 kyun kyun af. It was nice to have something not in the high school setting, but it still was pretty cute. Deffos going to read volume 2 when/if it comes out.

I was a bit skeptical at first, but I can say that by the end The yuri did indeed hakadoru. It seemed a bit sudden, but also aware of that fact.. Theres a few directions the series could go in/things it could focus on, and I’m excited to see where it goes.

EDIT: Also 忘れえぬ魔女の物語 was good, but I think I like it best as a standalone, so I don’t know if I’m going to give volume 2 a read.

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I have a question about the process of ordering from Mandarake. From their help page, it says that when you place an order the price may not be finalized (in case they need to check stock and shipping weight) and that they send an invoice afterward. In that case, are you “forced” to go through with the purchase, or do they give you the direct option to change your mind given the final price (without being dinged for canceling)? Their policy says “no cancelations and we’ll suspend your account if you cancel too much”, so I’m not sure how to take that.

So you’re saying it was 〆切前に?

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Well, one of them yeah. One of the main characters is kinda a master procrastinator and goes over like all of her deadlines.

Also something I forgot to mention about the series that I liked is that both of the girls are like the main character. It constantly switches back and forth from their perspectives. It’s not particularly rare for the perspective to switch, but this series keeps it pretty 50/50 which is very uncommon ime.

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A very sad day at the beginning of this week…I turned on my ereader just like normal (after reading with no issue the night before) and…

It resisted all my attempts to get it up and running again; somehow the screen refreshing part just suddenly failed. I was even able to connect it to my computer by plugging it in and guessing where the “Connect” button was on the screen, but that doesn’t do me any good if I can’t read anything :frowning: I have a new one on order but it’ll be a few days before it gets here.

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When I ordered, they didn’t have any ‘cancel’ option on the order page after sending the invoice. I guess you might need to contact the shop to cancel, but I don’t have any experience in that.

Kind of weird if you ask me. Did they at least tell you an estimated or maximum shipping cost when placing the initial order? Or did they give no information? I’m not willing to commit to an order when they could just be like “yep that’s 10,000 yen in shipping! troll face”.

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They have estimated shipping prices on this page depending on shipment location and weight: MANDARAKE | Shipping Options

Also, you should be able to see the weight of the books on their product pages.

I went back and checked. The set I bought was 1735g and shipped to the US for 2,490 yen, so it matches with the estimated price on that page.

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I did end up buying some stuff… and one thing I did notice was if the invoice was coming later, they did not ask for a full payment method at checkout, while the shop that provided the full price immediately did ask me to enter my card number, etc. (the multiple shops aspect is the major caveat about the cheap rarer books idea…)

So they at least shouldn’t be able to actually force you to pay, and I would assume (?) they wouldn’t actually ship the thing until the invoice went through (and you paid it). (but I don’t know about the cancellation aspect yet)

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Thanks for the details @harundoom and @rodan. There are a few older / out of print manga I may try buying from there eventually. But I’m not in a rush, so I’ll probably hold off for a while.

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Finished 伯爵と妖精 7! With this series I want to read it at every opportunity and I forget other things exist. I went to my 読んでる本 page to mark it completed and that was when I remembered that I am reading other things as well. Therefore I am going to try to read last week’s and this week’s worth of すべてがFになる before I start 伯爵と妖精 8. It’d be nice if I could finish 日常 v1, and maybe read some on other things in progress, but I will be (hopefully) realistic and limit my goal to catching up with すべてがFになる. :sweat_smile:

Continuing keywords

1 あいつは優雅な大悪党: mythical sword and merpeople
2 あまい罠には気をつけて: fog man and kidnappings
3 プロポーズはお手やわらかに: proposals, kelpies, moonstone
4 恋人は幽霊: spirits/possession, medium, selkies
5 呪いのダイヤに愛をこめて: diamonds and goblins
6 取り換えられたプリンセス: pirates, changelings, dragons
7 涙の秘密をおしえて: banshees, death omens, betrayal

8 駆け落ちは月夜を待って: ?

If I had to choose a favorite (which I don’t, but just to think about it, okay), it would probably be #6… or #4, or #3… or #5 or #2. #1 I didn’t have a grasp on anything yet and didn’t realize how much I was enjoying it until the climax (which was glorious, which is a tendency of all these books [to me]), while #7, while I enjoyed it very much, was maybe a little too painful to be a favorite, lol. I’m hoping some of that pain pays off in #8!!

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