[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

More of the former :slight_smile:

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I can’t remember the last time I heard that in a non-sarcastic sense. :joy:

Most have been so cool to see Swedish. I’m envious. :smiley:

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New set of manga arrived!

  • おとなになっても 6 (honestly I should just start buying this series digitally. It’s not much of a collector’s item and it publishes every 5 months or so, so getting it physically is a bit inconvenient.)
  • とんがり帽子のアトリエ 10
  • 蛍火の杜へ (kinda bought this one on a whim, so it might go into the “I’ll read it when I’ve run out of stuff to read” bucket)
  • お兄ちゃんはおしまい 6

  • 少女終末旅行 2-6 (already own volume 1 from the book club, which I reread recently to decide whether to buy these. I would have gone with digital for these, except the quality was bad.)

  • そらコミュニケーション 2 (end of series)
  • きんいろモザイク 3-4 (hopefully I get into this so I can read even more of the series, because honestly I’m running out of Kirara series that catch my interest :sweat_smile:)
  • ブレンド・S 8 (end of series)
  • こみっくがーるず 8 (though I still haven’t read volume 7)
  • ぼっちざろっく 1 (new Kirara series to try out)
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I finished a book called ラノベ古事記

It’s… well I mean, it’s a light novel version of the Kojiki!

I went in with expectations that were a bit low, figuring either it would be too dry or too inane (and it was just a bit long and intimidating), but once I actually started reading it, I enjoyed it a whole lot and it went very quickly!

From what I can tell, it sticks very closely to the beats of the 古事記 (which is an extremely old main source for Japanese mythology), with the ラノベ elements being mainly a lot of anachronistic jokes (it’s the kind of book where a god descending to earth to find someone will pull out a phone and say “hey siri”) and each character being assigned a stereotypical light novel archetype. This modern veneer isn’t gigantically funny… and the canned character concepts can be off-putting sometimes (for example, カミムスビ, one of the three genderless 独神 at the start of the narrative, in later traditions and stories takes more of a female/matriarchal role, and this book renders that by giving them a hackneyed オネエ type of character, which doesn’t… seem great).

But as long as you can look past that corniness, it’s an extremely approachable rendering of the 古事記, complete with helpful chracter relationship diagrams at the start of every chapter. I even have to admit the stereotypical character archetypes stapled onto everybody do make it a lot easier to remember who’s who amid all of the extremely completed god-names.
How characters behave in myths is… different, let’s say, than how modern characters would, so there’s some surprising fun to be had too in having these modern-acting characters follow the beats of the myths and start birthing new gods everywhere or pooping on each other’s temples in rage. Again, there’s no attempt to warp the stories into an actual light novel format, it’s just a thin coat of paint (which I think is a good thing since it better preserves the actual stories.)

I found it a really handy and fun way to place a lot of names and anecdotes I’d heard about here and there (like Amaterasu, Susanoo, the shrine at Izumo, the three treasures, etc. etc.) into a full structure, seeing their relationships and how it all fits together. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in Japanese mythology (again, if you can look past the shallow light novel elements), and it makes reading a more serious modern translation of the 古事記 at some point seem like a much less intimidating prospect. The author is apparently very passionate about the 古事記 and started posting about it as a blog before doing this, and I think that love for the material comes through here.

I didn’t know it at first, but this is the first part of 3, arranged the same way the 古事記 itself is in 3 volumes, with this one covering the lineage of the gods up to the first (legendary) emperor, and the next to covering the lineage of various emperors and maybe not involving the gods quite so much.
I felt positively enough about this that I ordered the other two volumes and may try to read them sooner rather than later. It seems like these’d be good to have around in physical form for a quick “wait, blahblahblahのみこと, who was that again??” every so often…

manga report

  • 修羅雪姫 (1)
    This is better known in English as Lady Snowblood (I think it’s neat that they localized the name and it sounds cool in both languages) and as a movie starring Meiko Kaji, which is the reason I wanted to read this (i.e. to read it before watching the movie, because hey why not).
    It’s an extremely shlocky revenge story, about a cool lady with virtually no purpose or character other than to find and murder some bad people on behalf of her deceased mother. She has a tendency to kill people with a sword while nude.
    An element that I think elevates it quite a bit into more interesting territory, is the historical setting is suprisingly involved - it takes place in the Meiji era, and there’s chapters involving famous period settings like 凌雲閣 and 鹿鳴館 (the latter of which is portrayed sensationalistically as a orgiastic bacchanal for Western diplomats and Japanese officials willing to pander to them, which 修羅雪姫 does truly heinous things in order to infiltrate and dismantle, which seems like it has an interesting political context behind it to say the least), and the backstory involves the backdrop of a real uprising/riots involving a draft or a tax or something (I forget which). Combined with complicated historical speech and vocab, it makes what would otherwise be dead simple a pretty interesting and tough read.
    The situation with the edition that’s on bookwalker is… strange. The available volumes aren’t named at all clearly, and don’t collect contiguous chapters. I think probably what happened is it’s just a Japanese edition of one put out for foreign markets after Kill Bill would have made people more interested in Lady Snowblood the movie - and so I think (based on the first movie covering exactly the first volume I read) they probably split them up based on what vaguely resembled the two movies, rather than with any eye towards completeness. That honestly mostly drained my enthusiasm to read more… I’m a real sucker for completeness…
  • ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 第4部 ダイヤモンドは砕けない (8-12)
    I finished Diamond is Unbreakable (or “Diamond Is Not Crash” as the case may be), picking up where I left off in English a while ago.
    At this point, Jojo’s is extremely an excuse for a series of digressions roughly 6 chapters in length each involving a strange confrontation with some new stand-user with an elaborate and bizarre power. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that! And it’s definitely it’s own thing enough that you’re either along for the ride or you aren’t, but it does make it a bit hit or miss depending on how fun I think this section’s weird new guy is or not. In this section, I especially got a kick out of the guy who might be an alien who transforms into a barfing set of dice in order to fool Rohan out of some money until oops his house burns down, which has the least to do with anything but was very funny, and other good bits include plant cat, guy who lives in one of those metal telephone line tower thingies, and the very silly stand where you can’t let anyone see your back or you’ll die. I don’t know that I feel all that incredibly strongly about the over-arching story for the arc and its conclusion, but it’s completely fine. I like Rohan the most - I should read that Louvre tie-in…
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I appreciate how this book (JR上野駅公園口) went through the lengths of inserting a non-copyable character, probably an image, just to get the 吉 for 吉野家 right:

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Heh, that’s interesting - reminds me of 殺人出産 where they inserted a non-copyable character for one of the two variations of 叱 :joy_cat:

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What, 𠮟? The variant that’s actually in the Joyo kanji?

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I finished last month’s Harta!
ハルタ 94号

The 新連載 in this issue is スパイゲーム A.D.1600 by 加藤清志, about a hardliner espionage agent from the future getting warped into the past. Has a violent, action-y vibe that reminds me a little of Golden Kamuy, with some Spy Family mixed in I suppose. And time travel.
Something tells me it’s not going to be adhering particularly strongly to historical accuracy…
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A 読切 I thought was particularly interesting this issue is ウインクキラー, by 西田心. It’s a well done thriller about two schoolchildren confronting a teacher who can kill people by making eye contact and winking. The author draws pupils in unusually striking ways, which suits the material of the story.
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a ショートショート that stood out immediately following that one, is ここからそっちは君のもの by 野町達也 about a ghost stopping by hoping to rent half the apartment. The author’s art style is immediately recognizable as one whose work I’ve enjoyed in the magazine before.
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Otherwise, plenty of nice stuff from the usual suspects! Like the nostalgic (to me) experience of visiting a cathedral as a curious tourist in the Granada one, or another chapter in いやはや Atumi-kun which I’m enjoying watching develop, or this double page spread from the hotel one I suspect @Naphthalene would like a lot :smile: (spoiler tagged just in case you’d prefer to wait until whenever volume 3 comes out).


The third 八咫烏杯 competition results start up in this issue (eventually they’ll presumably be posted for free like past winners). There was an interesting one involving a Matryoshka doll inspired monster and the Butcher of Rostov, and an interesting one involving a pet hermit crab taking a human as its new shell.

Interestingly, there’s only one teaser for next month at the back – likely because next month is when all the ongoing series (including the ones that run on offset months) all show up together, before the off month in July. Since I took so long to finish this one, I won’t have long to wait!

manga report

  • 高橋留美子劇場 (1)
    This is a short story collection by Rumiko Takahashi (of Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha etc. fame) that I bought a long time ago. I enjoyed it! The stories are all more grounded in the everyday than the Takahashi series I’ve read before, but still have a zany charm to them it’s just mixed in more quietly. Slightly off-kilter stories about the frustrations of apartment living, that kind of thing. I think my favorite in this volume was the one where the husband’s boss’s wife keeps dumping the husband’s boss’s collection of souvenirs in front of this couple’s house (which isn’t actually a garbage pick-up site but just looks like it). That summary probably doesn’t make sense but it’s fun. Anyway I assumed there were only 2 volumes since that’s all I had from way back when, but apparently there’s 4
  • 名探偵コナン (16)
    Usually Detective Conan is very reliable, but I found the first mystery that concludes in this volume (involving a suspect with a bandaged face) kind of uninteresting and so I read it in fits and starts which didn’t help. The later stuff in the volume introducing 怪盗キッド is suitably fun though!
    There was also I think a story about an anatomical model running around the school at night which I assume must be a common trope / urban legend since something similar was involved in a Lost Judgment side story…
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*Immediately checks spoilers*

Ahhh, yes, thank you. It won’t stop me from getting volume 3 when available :blush:
That reminds me I still need to check my local Book off for volume 2.

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Yeah, I think so. Don’t remember exactly which of the two was in there, but here’s the discussion anyways:

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Phew, today I finished the final volume of two series.

First was Blend-S. Overall the series was consistent, and the final volume was good as well. It found a good balance between maintaining the comedy and finding a good ending for all the characters. Not my favorite Kirara series by any measure, but it was enjoyable overall. And if nothing else, it was a good way to learn otaku slang and practice reading horrible handwriting. :joy:

Second was Bokura no Hentai. I bought the whole series half off back in September. I had trouble getting into it for a while, because of the three main characters I only really liked one and I disliked another one. The second half of the series got better though. Still not amazing, but consistently enjoyable and better than the first half. It helps that the character I liked had good progression and the character I disliked came down to Earth a bit and became more tolerable. Also, the last line of the series made me go :exploding_head:. I’m not sure if I simply made a bad assumption about the meaning of へんたい in the title, or if the double meaning was point, but that doesn’t change the fact that I had that kind of reaction.

Now I have to decide what manga to read next. I have too many options, so may post a poll later. :sweat_smile:

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I just read the synopsis and I really think the double meaning is the point, regardless of what happens.
The series sounds interesting, but I guess I’m a bit worried considering you didn’t give it a glowing review. :sweat_smile:

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Hmm, it’s (mostly) hard to explain why I didn’t love it. The one thing I can mention without significant spoilers is that one of the characters (the one I didn’t like) is very sexually charged, resulting in scenes I would prefer to not be reading. Besides that, it was just that some of the plotlines worked well and some not as well. Can’t really say more on that without spoilers. It’s not really all that different than 放浪息子 in that sense, where the Shuu plotline was great from start to end, but Takatsuki’s kind of lost steam towards the end (in my opinion), not to mention that weird incomplete plotline with the adult character in the last few volumes. The main difference is just that 放浪息子 had more (and better) characters and plotlines overall.

@Belerith also read the series, so maybe she can comment more.


Oh, and for what it’s worth, at least people reading manga in English translation recommend ぼくらのへんたい to people who liked 放浪息子.

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Well, I liked it - but I’m not a critical/analytical reader, so I can’t give you a detailed breakdown on why. I know exactly which scenes and which character @seanblue means they didn’t like - but I liked that character, haha. And yeah, the uncomfortable scenes were uncomfortable, but they worked for me.(same lvl of spoiler as seanblue’s) I grew a bit tired of how one of the other characters acted in the second half, but for me it all came together really nicely in the end, and throughout.

I read the whole series rather quickly once I’d gotten started - volume 1 in June, the other two in the first 2 October weeks. They were rather easy to read, but I don’t binge what I don’t like, so that speaks to that I guess.

I hope that was coherent, it’s kind of early am and I should probably be sleeping. :sweat_smile:

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That only adds up to three volumes. (I guess you should actually be sleeping :joy:)

For me, I read the first three volumes back in September of last year, then the remaining seven volumes from April to June this year.

Which character and storylines?

Speaking of characters (actual spoilers) it bugged me that Marika joined the crossdressing competition towards the end of the series, because it says she’s not really a girl, which is contrary to the rest of her character development.

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@seanblue @Belerith Thanks for the recommendation! I’ll get to it at some point.

I’m kinda stuck in terms of reading, right now, though. I don’t want to start reading anything else until I have finished either 獣の奏者 or the light novel that should not be named, but I don’t feel like reading either (for different reasons). So I’m watching random stuff on youtube instead (not even in Japanese) :see_no_evil:

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Indeed I should have. :sleeping: I meant the remaining 9 volumes of course.

Marika. I can’t say I remember specific storylines at this point, so this is going to be a bit vague. She started off as very passive and overly considerate of others, and then slowly started coming into her own and developed/learned to express her actual opinions and such, or maybe not to care so much. Which is great, I like that. But if felt that for a bit she went beyond that and behaved quite selfishly and inconsiderately. Which is fine, it’s teenagers. I still found her insufferable. Especially since she had friends supporting her throughout, so it’s not like she had to go it alone.

True. I guess it can be explained away as an opportunity to be ‘accepted as she is’ as in, looking and behaving like a girl is expected. But it doesn’t really make sense. Why did Marika decide to join the event?

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Interesting, can’t say I noticed anything like that.

I don’t think any justification was given in-story, but she even said something like “I’m a boy” so she could join. I imagine the author was thinking the same thing you just said, but I really don’t think it made sense.

Sounds like a good time to read some manga then… that way you don’t start a third book but you can still read something in Japanese and get a change of pace. Don’t you already have a bunch of manga on your To Read list anyway? If not go check out とつくにの少女 or ひとりぼっちの〇〇生活. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I am kinda leeching my spouse’s manga, but they have… different tastes, I guess?
They recently got 超人X, which is you round of the mill super hero 青年 thing.
Also 応天の門, a mystery manga set in the 平安 period. It’s great to practice funny sounding Japanese. “はよう見つけてたも” is now my favorite sentence.
I’m not really invested in either series (gave 超人X a 2-3 stars rating on Natively, too) but they are just lying around, so I might as well.

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This one sounds and looks interesting, judging purely by the covers. :eyes:

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