[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

Don’t worry, I hear he becomes a really great, relatable character by volume 83.

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Mhh, I thought Kyon was improving but I guess not :confused: (To be fair, Koizumi tells him not to upset Haruhi)

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Kyon does get better at gently steering her towards the Right Path, but yeah, Sigh is basically the only time he outright puts his foot down and says “no more”.

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I couldn’t help but notice that @Ditto20 has just tsundoku’d a bazillion books on Bookmeter.

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I hear there’s a sale going on. :eyes:

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ah nice a word I didn’t know!

image

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We should import it into English. :slight_smile:

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When I bought my kindle paperwhite I got the “with ads” version because ads on the lock screen generally don’t matter to me. It’s largely been non-ad nice backgrounds anyway. A few weeks ago it started showing ads again, which is fine. Mostly it’s been advertising 本好き 8 and 本好き 9. All of a sudden today it showed an ad for 本好き 26 and I was like NO NO NO NO NO!!! Can’t have an Amazon ad accidently spoil me on the 本好き arcs!

I tried to figure out how to pay to remove the ads since you can remove them even if you originally bought the “with ads” version, but it was impossible to do myself with my current configuration. Couldn’t remove them from amazon.co.jp since I bought the device on amazon.com. Couldn’t remove them from amazon.com since it’s registered on amazon.co.jp. Thankfully after I talked to customer service (had to talk to amazon.com in this case by the way), they were able to look up my device by serial number and remove the ads for me. For free too!

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Month of April:

I completed my goal of reading 20 pages this month but I discovered something so much better for me.

I found Otome games. It is a vocabulary goldmine. Sometimes the dialogue of the story is voiced too!

Next month I think I will keep the same goal of reading 20 pages just because I don’t want to overwhelm myself and I am determined to read 2 books this year still.

I love playing this game so much more though.
So I would like to finish all of the prologue this month. I’m on chapter 2 and there are 10 chapters.

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I finished volume 5 yesterday. Finally reaching content that was not covered by the anime.
Not much to talk about, I guess. Basically, new floors and new events, メープル getting stronger, …
I’m kinda sad that, despite reaching the 4th floor 主 first, カスミ did not beat him, メープル getting both the kill and the related overpowered skill (again). Poor カスミ also finally got some overpowered equipment… which happens to be extremely revealing (to the point of making her feel uncomfortable). Like, game devs, what are you doing. Also, author, what are you having the game devs doing. It’s one thing to have an avatar wear skimpy clothes, but in this case people look like they do in real life…
I’m also wondering what the players do for a living. They are spending an unhealthy amount of time in VR :thinking:

I also finished volumes 1-3 of 約束のネバーランド that I borrowed yesterday. Overall, it didn’t quite catch my interest. I see why the setting would be interesting, but I’m not really into spy/mind game things, even if you add some oni in the mix. I’m also not exactly of fan of the art style, with those weird perspectives/proportions (not exactly fisheye, I don’t really know what to call those). Anyway, volume 3 was enough to understand the meaning of the title, so I’m satisfied with that.
Why am I reading random stuff instead of the manga series I’m supposed to be reading for years, like ふらいんぐういっち, ゆるキャラ or 放浪息子, you ask? You are asking too many questions. Congratulations, your shipping date has been decided. [unintelligible] will be pleased.

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FIFY

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Despite feeling (the whole entire time) that I was falling behind, I’ve just finally wrapped up 雷の季節の終わりに, one day ahead of schedule. I gotta say I didn’t love it the way I did 夜市 and 秋の牢獄, but it was still quite enjoyable; I can easily see myself rereading it in a year or two to see if there was anything I missed this time through. The worldbuilding is great and it has a great air of mystery throughout the whole book.

One notable thing that might be interesting to people who have read his other work: the story is somewhat non-linear and introduces quite a lot of plot threads across the course of the book, all of which are tied up at the end without the need for any hard cut to a character backstory. Personally that kind of thing doesn’t bother me but I’ve seen some people expressing frustration about it so I figured it was worth a mention.

Probably my only real complaint is that my enjoyment of the book wasn’t consistent. I’m not sure if that’s because the quality was inconsistent? but I had a hard time getting into it at first, and there were moments where I wasn’t feeling a strong motivation to continue reading (though when I pushed through, the next section would hook me and keep me reading past my quota). Is that my fault or the book’s? Who knows!

Anyway, it’s a good book. Time to move on to the next one :sweat_drops:

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Finished volume 6 of bofuri as well, reaching a nice count of 14 books this month.

Things are getting a bit more boring, since メープル isn’t so overkill at this point. Also, events are kinda weak (here’s a jungle/tower, go explore it)

Sadly, looking at the table of contents of volume 7, things aren’t going to get any better this time.

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@Naphthalene, I remember you saying you bought the sequel to わたしの幸せな結婚 before realizing it worked nicely as a standalone (and wished you hadn’t). Have you read any of it at this point, and if so, has your opinion changed? I’m reading the first book now and can’t put it down.

(Also is it me or is the entire book written without any katakana?)

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I’ve read the second book so far. It was good, but I did not enjoy it as much as the first one. Mostly, due to the nature of the first book, it can’t be “more of the same”. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but it also depends on what comes instead. The author explores a bit more some political aspects, but that fell a bit flat for me. The new characters were interesting though. I’m planning to keep reading eventually, but it’s not very high on my priority list at the moment.

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I decided I’m finished with デジタル・デビル物語 女神転生. I finished two thirds of the game, and had a great time with it, but it’s been two months, and in the last session I felt a distinct shift from “I’d happily play this indefinitely” to “ok I’m ready for this to be done and will be grumpy if the rest of the game isn’t a cakewalk.” And looking at what’s left… boy it sure seems like a lot. So I think it’s a good stopping place for me!

Below are a lot (!) of thoughts about the game.
I talk about systems and generalities a lot, but I’ve blurred specific details about any stage of the game after the beginning stretch.

my Digital Devil Story story

My first impression was, of course, from the manual, a transcript of which (I think) I found here. There’s a lot of information in this and it’s pretty intimidating, but it’s also very useful. And I find the setup strange and endearing. The wildest thing about it to me, is that the whole “oops my computer summoned demons” thing seems to be exactly what he was trying to do?? Like Nakajima, guy, maybe if you didn’t want Lucifer to show up and conquer humanity you shouldn’t have made and run a 悪魔召還プログラム. It honestly seems kind of unfair that he gets to be the reincarnation of Izanagi when there’s plenty of people who DIDN’T intentionally summon all the demons…

After actually getting into the game though, a lot of the intimidation factor fell away. The opening section gives a really good low-stakes environment to get used to the different systems, and I also found myself falling very heavily back into my Wizardry muscle-memory. These dungeons are so Wizardry-inspired that I honestly think the first section, with its scrawled messages on walls and an elevator for you to unlock running through the middle, is a direct tribute to the first Wizardry in miniature.

The main fun of a game like this to me is exploration and map-making. There’s something immensely satisfying and relaxing about watching a space fill in over time as you get incrementally stronger and stronger. And I love how in a grid-based game like this, you get the tangible artifact of a cool map to represent that progress.

My setup is kind of intense, but it contributes to that fun a whole lot. On one monitor, I’ve got the game. On a second monitor, I have the manual, a guide, and extra music or videos to watch while mapping. For a controller, I’ve got an NES-style 8bitdo that goes a really long way to making me feel like I’m actually playing the game on its own terms. Finally – in my lap I have a tablet where I map on infinite grid paper in OneNote, which is wonderful because I don’t have to worry about like, starting a map where I don’t have enough space, or leaving eraser dust everywhere if I make a mistake. Being able to just drag around maps at will and easily switch pen colors makes the whole experience that much better.

And honestly, in that experience, the game is fantastic. The dungeons are more than intriguing enough to make me want to explore further, and it always rewards attention to detail in mapping the space around you. Also, it’s great about providing incremental progress rewards. The experience slope in leveling up is surprisingly not all that steep, so you’re frequently popping a new level (the max seems like ~60), and even placing skill points (which seems like a rarity in both JRPGs and first-person dungeon crawls that are this old, at least the ones I’ve played). You’re also often working towards the next set of armor and weapons from a shop or, in the most interesting system, working on your next fusion.

This aspect is the most unique feature of the game, and (as far as I can tell) the only remnant of it left in modern persona games: you collect and fuse monsters throughout the game.

It works a bit like a much rougher precursor to Pokemon: Instead of “catching” a monster, you have to talk to it and convince it to become your 仲魔 (get their kanji pun?). This is kind of frustrating and arbitrary, but if you manage it, they hop into your computer and you can move them into your party and back at will, so the main characters Nakajima and Yumiko (who are always in your party) can be joined by up to 3 仲魔 from a total pool of 7 仲魔.

In my experience with Persona, I always found the fusing of Personas kind of unsatisfying and arbitrary, because they just came and went and seemed to have no connection with what I was actually doing. So it’s really interesting to see the system in it’s original form! I found that the process of ‘earning’ 仲魔 through cajolery really did make me forge an almost pokemon-like connection with them, and gaining the levels to unlock a new fusion and then jumping through the hoops required to get the constituent 仲魔 needed to fulfill it is a big enough leap in power that the reward matches the rigmarole and feels fun. Even if logically it still doesn’t make any sense at all. Like, why does a dwarf + a cerberus equal the god Kali? What’s actually happening there? Are you like… git-merging the magic digital code making them up?? Who knows.

It also feels like an arbitrary system mechanically – it’s hard to discern rhyme or reason as to why the fusions are set up the way they are (although it’s clearly consciously balanced, as you generally have good access to fusions commensurate to your level and area). For this, I found the guide extremely useful. I tried to treat it like a wiki in a modern game – something to take out a lot of the trial and error. But I also turned to it frequently for the best leveling-up strategy, help on what to do with consumable or story items, and sometimes quick glances at the map when I was most concerned about where to go or confused how a particular route was feasible. I pretty much just didn’t take their maps whole-cloth.

I also used save states freely. When I played Dragon Quest I got a real kick out of writing down the kana passwords by hand and typing them in. But these ones are alphanumeric! So I didn’t really care. I still almost always saved in the safe zones, so I think this only really saved me some resource grinding and a couple nasty bits of trial and error.

The combat takes some getting used to, but it’s perfectly serviceable – you fight one enemy type at a time, but they can show up in a group. You don’t have the ability to target specific members of the group, so a lot of combat ends up being about watching the numbers whittle down as attacks randomly hit enemies until the whole group is down. You select what each member of your party will do before both sides enact the moves at the same time. Except for the “one enemy type” thing, I think this is exactly how wizardry does it.

The game thankfully provides an auto-battler mode to make this go much much faster. I spent probably upwards of 99% of battles in auto-mode the whole time just watching them play out. This points to one of the major flaws with the game: interface limitations.

A computer game like Wizardry has a full keyboard interface and (at least on modern computers), a snappy response time that lets you churn through scenarios almost like typing (I also love literally typing out magic words like “LAHALITO” to cast them). Here, the famicom… can’t really offer that. And so there’s a lot of compromises, like not being able to look at the automap and access your menu at the same time, or not being able to see actual damage counts and effects in autobattle mode, or having to laboriously summon and recall each 仲魔 individually. The worst aspect is that text scrolls onto screen line by line, which makes, for example, spellcasting multiple healing spells in a row, feel much much more tedious than it really is, as each spell in your spellbook and each possible target scrolls onto the screen one after another every time.

This all contributed heavily to my walking away – the final decision was crystallized for me when I realized that if I picture the final battle… I would just want to win with auto-battle turned on. That’s how much I’ve come to resent the slowness of any battle where I have to actually select spells or strategy. That’s… not really ideal in an RPG! I loved Dragon Quest 1 even though the battle system is dirt simple, so a deep strategic system isn’t really a requirement for me. But the unfortunate side-effect of the interface limitations here is that it actively made me avoid strategy as much as possible just to save a little bit of tedium.

The other major problem I had with the game is that the story and adventure elements that occur are very abstract and don’t really make any sense. The strange and mysteriously mystical atmosphere works great for ambience, but like, every key is a confusingly-named gem, every key item is some kind of statue or mirror used automatically without warning when it’s relevant, and there’s all around zero tangible connection to like, normal cause and effect. If there weren’t random pedestrians and signs in the dungeon to tell you things, (or more realistically, if you don’t read about it in the guide), you’d be out of luck for sure. I found a fun blog where somebody recounts their time with the game and their reaction to finding a “long sought after” sword I think sums it up well: ・・・え!?そんな剣を探し求めていたなんて私、聞いてないんだけど!?プレイヤーに内緒で勝手に探し求めるの止めてよ!!

This is off-topic, but a contrast comes to mind from Phantasy Star 1 – there’s a part in that game (as I recall) where you have to bribe a government official who loves cake. And you hear there’s a bakery at the bottom of the dungeon. So the obvious solution is to delve to the bottom of this monster-filled cavern to buy a cake, and when you get there, sure enough, there’s a baker, and he sells you a cake with an apologetic “sorry about the location.” That’s a great example where the logic is still gamey as all heck, but at least the motivation and cause and effect is coherent! I was very tickled by it, whereas with Digital Devil Story I just feel confused and distant.

I’m very fascinated what, if any, connection this game has to the novels except for the protagonists and basic premise. I kind of get the impression the answer is “absolutely none” but I genuinely have no idea. I flipped through my copy and none of the illustrations looked familiar at all. I kind of can’t wait to read it and find out, although right now in my backlog system it’s pretty far back in a queue, if I don’t intervene at least…

My last gripe is with the resources in the game – particularly “magnetite.” This consumes when you have your 仲魔 out, and if it runs out they take damage each turn until they die. Higher level 仲魔 generally consume more magnetite, but each has a different rate. It’s an unpleasant system because it just guilts you into tediously recalling and re-summoning your full party each time you come and go from home base, since you don’t want to walk around with them all out if you aren’t fighting monsters. Generally there’s just enough magnetite-dropping monsters that it’s not really a huge concern, so it’s just something to be constantly needlessly anxious about. It seems like magnetite caps out around 8000 and change, money caps out at 65535 (gee I wonder how much memory they allocated for that) and ほう玉 cap out at 7. All of these caps are easy to hit, especially with grinding, but not quuuuiiiite large enough to feel at easy. (ほう玉, by the way, are one-shot full heal items that I relied on too much because I was lazy and they go so much faster than casting healing spells.)

So yeah! That’s the pros and cons.

My arc with the game went like this:

The first section is a great little starter dungeon where I got used to the systems and found they weren’t as horribly complicated and unforgiving as I was worried about. My reaction at this point was “oh!! I like this!! I just hope the dungeon layout opens up and gets more interesting.”

In the second section, the dungeon layout opens up and gets waaaaay more interesting!!! After going down square dungeon levels in the most traditional way possible, the shift to lateral exploration is actually really cool, and encountering the Flying City of ビエン (a setting from the book? No idea!!) is a fascinating surprise. But this was also my first encounter with a difficulty curve more like the one I was expecting. I found the petrification effects very hard to deal with and the exploration loop at this stage just baaarely feasible. Defeating the Medusa at the end felt like a major accomplishment, especially with the tangible reward of un-stoning theビエンcitizens and getting to fly the city around as a new base.

That point makes for a very good stopping place, but I decided I enjoyed playing the game enough to keep going. Before the third section, I spent a very long time grinding while watching movies, and this was a good call. My favorite batch of low-stakes but rewarding dungeon exploration came in this section, and it’s very much thanks to my copious grinding getting me to a point where I was safely beefy enough to progress with relative ease. A lucky timing on rescuing a fella who turned into Anubis and joined my team when I rescued also contributed. (Apparently the transformation is dependent on the makeup of your team, so I was just lucky to get a transformation that was significantly higher than my level at the time which remained helpful for quite a while.

The fourth section is pretty much just more of that, just getting progressively harder and more obscure with the adventure elements.

So… I was still having fun, but this is definitely not a game where time turns into a blur and you forget how long you’ve been playing it. Rather the reverse – it feels like it takes longer than it does, even when you’re having fun. I don’t know how long I played… probably like, 20-30 hours? But it feels more like 60. It some ways that provides a satisfying “look how far we’ve come” feeling… but in other ways, I wanna move on!

So I pulled my signature move: stopping a game I’m enjoying to watch the ending on youtube. I think it was the right call! I also read through a lot of that blog I linked earlier, and I think both gave me a nice sense of closure without nearly as much “I need to search for more videos to watch while I play so all this exploring feels less dull.”

If you’re at all curious about this game, I say check out the manual, blog, and guide I linked, pop it in, and give it a shot! What’s the harm. Each boss is also a good goal to shoot for and a good stopping place to decide if you want to keep going.

But – I would say you shouldn’t consider playing the whole game if you don’t want to map. I just don’t think it would be fun. In terms of story and connection to games like Persona, there really isn’t any except a superficial sheen, so if you’re gonna play a significant chunk of this, you need to be coming for the dungeons.

But if you ARE coming for the dungeons, I think this is a great choice! It definitely suffers interface-wise from being on the Famicom, but makes up for it by also basically being Weird Pokemon Vs. Computer Satan.

Apparently there’s a Digital Devil Story II also on the Famicom. I’ll likely check that out (and other MegaTen games down the line…) at some point, although I expect with the lowered novelty factor I’ll move on much quicker (that’s what happened with me and Might and Magic II anyway).

Gotta get around to reading those books though…

Oh also, P.S.: from a language learning perspective, this is definitely a “reward for progress” type of thing not a “helps you along” kind of thing. The vague nature of the world, Famicom-era character set, and tendency for crucial clues to come in the format of completely out-of-context all-hiragana tips mean I would not recommend this until you’re comfortable with it from a language-standpoint.

Digital Devil Screenshots

He probably shouldn’t have done that.


I love how atmospheric the shop screens and such are.


This might be my favorite monster. Both because it’s a fun joke (but I guess in-keeping with the theme) and they’re great for grinding.


This is the kind of thing all the special encounters are. A strange, vaguely mystical feeling weird thing you don’t really know what you’re supposed to do with or what will happen when you do.


I just wanted a shot of my late-game party. Such HP! I just like the idea of rolling around with Susanoo, Kali, and a sphinx. I think this is one of the monsters that drain EXP levels if you aren’t careful. Everyone loves those!


My map! (heavily zoomed out)
You can really see how much the terrain opens up after the first section. I love how fluidly it all interconnects. You can also probably see my bad handwriting.


For the next game, I should probably focus on Danganronpa since I started it and all…
buuuuuut I’ve really got a hankering for a 龍が如く game, so I might play 龍が如く 維新!
That would be a long-awaited accomplishment for me, since it’s a JP-only game in a series I love that I bought years ago thinking I’d probably never actually play it. I’d want to play 見参!first but… my PS3 died recently :frowning: so my current plan is to just play Isshin first and circle back someday.

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Finally finished ―メニー・メニー・シープ〈上〉the first half of the first book (story?) of the 天冥の標 series. I’m never sure how to deal with those 上 下 (and sometimes 中), but as usual I will count it as a separate book anyway.
So, fun fact, it took me almost a month to get through the first 40 pages, then a bit over two days to get through the remaining 300. The way it went is that two days ago, I decided I should at least go for the “Atlantis” rule (from the book “hearts in Atlantis”, I’m not sure if there’s an official name for it) of reading at least the first 100 pages before deciding to drop a book.
Well, turns out the story became amazing (from my point of view) around page 80, and never dropped from there. Problem: I had to return the book today, and there was already a line of reservations, so I could not just return it and immediately get it back.
Well, it turns out that reading 300 pages of hard SF in that amount of time is hard. First of all, the author is covering the pages with words rather than white spaces like some light novels I know. Second, those words have meaning rather than being mindless screams or sound effects. Finally, hightech lingo, for the win.
I’m tired, but I did it anyway. I have to admit I went for speed rather than comprehension (heh, 多読 style!), so some complex descriptions got a bit lost on me (which is a bit sad, since the author has a great style! As expected of an award winning book, I guess. But, you know, there is no time). Still, I’m feeling accomplished about it. Needless to say, I immediately booked the next volume too (hopefully I’ll be able to read it at a more leisurely pace this time).
Anyway, thanks to @NicoleIsEnough for introducing me to the 日本SF大賞, which in turn lead me to this series (2019 winner, by the way).

At the same time, I also finished bofuri volume 7 (I had only a few pages left anyway). It was, erm, not at the same level. I don’t know if it’s the influence of 天冥の標, but it felt extra boring, as it is mostly a boss rush. I do miss PvP events. At least, it’s the end of the current event, so there will be something new next time. I’m no sure how this book will be dealt with in the anime. They can either skip most of it through montage, or actually show the whole thing in details (but then they’ll probably run out of episodes since action scenes take more screen time…).
I’m still going to read the next volume. Even if I drop the series after that, thanks to the discount I will have lost no money in the end :upside_down_face: There’s at least that I guess.

Edit: oof, the big table at the top reminded me that, out of the 14 books I have read in April, literally all of them were light novels…

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Glad to hear you found something interesting among the prize winners!

And in May you already have one :tada: so that’s an, erm, :infinity: % increase if I calculated correctly :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Finished 獣の奏者 3 探求編! For quite a while it didn’t match my reading mood, but, as expected, once I got into it I was thoroughly absorbed. Looking forward to book 4 at some point. :yellow_heart:

eta: Also, with my watching goals (for a larger listening comprehension goal), when I finish a drama or anime or something without subtitles I always wish there was a 多見 (多聞多見?) thread where I could update my part of the table and leave a little review of what I watched. This thread is so motivational and also fun! I love seeing what other people are reading.

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You could make one! I was also thinking about doing something like that about a year or so ago. Actually, I just reread part of the thread for fun and found said post. It’s been a while!
Anyway I see my former idea was just about anime somehow, but including things like drama, podcasts, youtube videos, etc, would make a lot of sense. It’s indeed nice to see everyone’s reviews :slight_smile:

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