[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

He didn’t realize who I was either until I told him about my old profile pic :rofl:

Wacky coincidence

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Uhh, mandatory army re-training for the whole week. Been a while since I did my service. Let’s see if I can get any reading done this week (or sleep, for that matter).

I weep for my Anki reviews.

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Late (?) for ハメフラ 11 as well, but got to read it finally (well, mostly I was kinda reading other stuff, like かくりよの宿飯 instead but anyway).
Finally progress on all fronts! (cue wall of spoilers)
カタリナ realized that love is actually a thing that can happen to her and she has to search her feelings; she talked about that with both ジオルド and キース (also she saw マリア get invited for a date and wondered for half a second why she felt sad about that :stuck_out_tongue:); we know how much time there’s left until the end of the game; she can finally use dark magic in a useful way.
On the negative side, it was mostly a デューイ plot this time. Like last time with whatshisname, that character is not a love interest of the main character, so meh don’t care. Also, the action scenes were a bit flat.
セラ: I’m gonna mess U up. *attacks*
カタリナ: *deflects (nice!)* Actually let’s talk what are your hopes and also dreams
セラ: No… no one ever wanted to know about me before what are those feelings kyaaaa *flees*
Me: what.

Edit: now I have the song “Sera was never” stuck in my head.

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Progress! On all fronts!
:star2: 希望 :star2:

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Yes, that’s especially reassuring after volumes 9 and 10 where the status quo was strong.
In particular volume 9 is basically a standalone; I liked it but it did not provide anything to the overall story.
Anyway, hopefully some more things will happen in the next few volumes. I guess the next one will be in 6 months or so :thinking:

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I’m working my way through 大海原と大海原 (1) nominally with the upcoming ABBC bookclub. I thought the bookclub started on September 1st but it actually starts on the 11th, so I tried to read ahead a little so that I wouldn’t fall behind as quickly as I usually do.

Now I’m accidentally 16 days ahead of the schedule having now finished the prologue and first chapter.

This should mean I’m on track to hit my target of finishing my first 3 manga this year.

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I’m done with the move and hoping that my new place’s air conditioning and comfier chair will only help with reading plenty!

週刊プロレス No. 2124

(@fallynleaf)
This issue is from the lead-up to the big CyberFight Festival show so there’s a ton of interviews around that, including one with each of the champions.
The one I paid the most attention to was the one with Miyu Yamashita, where she talked about getting used to holding a championship, fighting Yuka as the challenger, and how it’s not just a fight to win, but a fight to standout and leave an impression on such a big stage.

Also – it’s always strangely interesting to see wrestlers in street clothes, and geez she pulls off this outfit incredibly well and leapt straight to the top of the おしゃれな power ranking:

Meanwhile, something bad sure must have happened to Kiyomiya!!
Warning: Blood

I feel like that’s maybe too much even with the blurring… but 憤怒の狂乱 sounds too cool to leave out…

In Giulia’s column she talks about Maika because of the cover of the magazine last week. She’s speaks very highly of her, of course, and while it’s really cool to hear a wrestler pick apart a fellow wrestler’s style, the biggest thing I’m taking away from this is that Maika used to have blonde hair??


I had a real hard time picturing that with her current look, but sure enough.

Speaking of Maika, the editor’s column talks about the cover selection process, because Ospreay complained that the cover of his match that he won against Takagi showed him taking Takagi’s finisher, and because it sounds like some number of jerks online complained about Maika getting a cover.
They say that while once there was a time where “if you put Keiji Mutoh on the cover, it’ll sell” nowadays there aren’t intensely eye-grabbing stars in the same way, and they just try to do their best to pick important things from the past week and get people’s attention. And they thought Maika on the cusp of breaking fulfilled that.
They also say that the loser of a match still getting a spotlight is one of the special things about pro-wrestling, and looking at it another way, Ospreay could boast about having taken such a powerful move and the shot shows his ability as well (and it just made more sense variety-wise to lay it out the way they did).
But it diplomatically concludes just by saying it’s understandable for wrestlers to get wrapped up in it and they’re glad people are talking about the covers.

There’s a costume spotlight column that I often don’t find all that interesting because it’s either wrestlers I don’t know or pretty straightforward costumes, but this time it hit the jackpot because it explains Unagi Sayaka’s costume, which has a LOT going on…


Sounds like she wants to stand out even if people don’t know her name yet, and hates humdrum things. So she threw everything at the wall inspired by the Sengoku figure Maeda Keiji (specifically because of the manga 花の慶次, which you know I’ve now added to my bookwalker checklist), who was apparently famously a 傾奇者 (かぶきもの, confusingly), which is the word written on her cape, and means I guess a particularly out-there person of that period.
So I guess I’d call the theme in English “flashy, sexy, weirdo Sengoku general”??
烏天狗 is another cool word to learn from this ridiculous outfit. I genuinely didn’t even notice she had one of those on her cape until now…
She says she added the bell because it felt like it might be useful.

… Oh yeah also there’s an interview about that Jun Kasai documentary, with him and one of the filmmakers. Sounds like it’s a pretty grounded look at what he’s like in and out of the ring day-to-day.
One detail I remember is he said initially he had trepidations about it since he didn’t want it to show voyeuristic home squabbles and stuff and I’m pretty sure the show he named as an example was Big Daddy, the show that Utami Hayashishita was on as a kid (about her dad and huge family).

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Thank you as always for these! I love that photo of Miyu! It’s always fun to see her in street clothes because she’s so amazing in the ring, it’s hard to envision her as just a normal person, haha!

This is one of my favorite photos of her in street clothes. I liked this look so much, I bought this portrait when it was for sale, haha

And yeah, Kiyomiya had some rough luck in matches over the past couple months. He got busted open pretty badly at least twice. Very alarming if you’re someone like me who has trouble with blood :sweat_smile:. And blonde Maika is just incredible, omg.

It’s interesting to hear about the reasoning for their cover choices. I’ve heard people talk about how shupro covers tend to be indicative of politics in terms of how different companies are positioned within the industry, so it can be interesting to see shifts over time. I feel like this year, I’ve seen quite a few more non-NJPW covers, but that might just be because I have greater awareness of non-NJPW companies now, and I’m also paying more attention to NJPW’s position in the industry, because I’m curious if Japanese fans are perceiving their recent booking decisions as negatively as western fans are.

I love that spotlight on Unagi’s costume! I’ve always really enjoyed her gear because it’s so colorful and visually interesting. Even when she was a pretty new rookie in TJPW, her gear stood out to me.

Also, apparently Kota Ibushi had an interview in a recent issue, leading up to his match with Tana for the US title. Do you happen to have that one? If you do, I would love to know what he says in it! A Japanese fan I follow on twitter mentioned that he talks about his heart in this interview, and I’m always interested whenever Ibushi discusses his feelings.

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Looks like even if I weren’t very behind, I’d be pretty behind - the most recent issue I have looks to be from early August and it mentions that Ibushi/Tana was signed. Maybe next issue though, I’ll keep an eye out!

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I haven’t really been reading much lately(in fact I haven’t finished a single book for the entirety of August and the first few days of this month, though I did play both 大逆転裁判 games during the summer) but the tenth volume of 安達としまむら was just released and… It turns out I kind of ended up finishing the whole thing in about a day :slight_smile: Even if it starts pretty slow, I’d still say the series as a whole is one of my favourite things I’ve read so far(a big part of that is that it does a lot of things I want it to that not many other books do though, so my reasons for really liking it are obviously not necessarily something that would apply to everyone).

I liked basically everything about the new volume too - the stuff about Adachi and Shimamura moving in together as adults and about their second valentine’s day in high school was all pretty great, and Shimamura actually properly talking with Tarumi was also a long time coming(with this Shimamura has now told two more people than Adachi about their relationship, which I can’t help but notice is(obviously intentionally) kind of contrary to her own thoughts about stuff from earlier volumes). As a whole I’d say much of this volume was about giving time to show off the growth the characters have gone through in earlier ones, Shimamura in particular, which was actually really nice even if nothing particularly “important” happened outside of the conversation with Tarumi.

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Don’t know anything about that series but a friend of mine posted this from the latest volume and I thought it was pretty good

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Brown kindle background gang unite

There are currently some sales on Amazon for those interested.

  • First two volumes of ゆるゆり are available for only 22 yen each.
  • All ten volumes of ぼくらのへんたい are available for 330 yen each, which I think is about half off.
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Finished bunny girl senpai a week ahead of schedule. I think my reading speed is finally starting to see improvement. Gonna move on to 京都寺町三条のホームズ vol. 4 and probably stick with the three week pace this time, since I want to try and get some games in this year as well.

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All of it? How did you like it compared to the anime and movie?

I’m still fighting with Edogawa Ranpo’s 怪人二十面相 and want to move on to 赤いカブトムシ soon, because it uses way more kanji.

Also, has anyone heard of the 天空の扉 manga? I found it a couple of days ago, but the only info is Amazon and no database I came across has anything on it.

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Just the first book; the anime is based on the first four and the movie on the next two. Each book has a different title and only the first is actually called 青春ブタ野郎はバニーガール先輩の夢を見ない; each other one is named after the girl it focuses on.

I already liked the anime quite a bit (haven’t seen the movie yet) and the first book was overall better imo; the show kept all the important bits but there were some details that would have been tough to adapt and as such were a nice bonus when I read them. Definitely planning on continuing the series after this.

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Have you guys seen a lot of typos in published books? I have seen like 3 in the past couple months now and I feel like thats like…a lot. I don’t ever remember seeing one in an english book.

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Does “printed and scanned” count? So stuff from Aozora Bunko, for instance?

So far I’ve seen no typos, but at least 1 consistent use of a weird, uncommon rendaku for 一つ一つ.

I don’t know why I said printed lol, I meant published. Them p words can get pretty confusing.

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I’ve seen a few, I’m pretty sure - here and there. It happens! In English too.
I think the level where you’re confident enough to spot mistakes but still reading closely enough that something being slightly off matters has gotta be pretty much ideal for spotting them. I think it’s just a lot easier to completely gloss right over them in your native language.

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