[2025] 多読/extensive reading challenge

I didn’t vote in the poll since I can’t decide! :persevere: On the one hand I like churning through a series, but on the other one of the major benefits of tracking reading to me is that keeping up with a lot of stuff at once is way more feasible since you won’t forget where you were… both fun!

ハルタ83号

There’s two new series starting in this issue.
My impression of the first one, 虎は龍をまだ食べない by Hachi Inaba, is that the author is great at drawing tigers and dragons fighting - but maybe less good at drawing large breasts that look like they exist in the physical world?
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I thought the second, 涙子さまの言う通り by Lunlun Yamamoto, was a really strong start! Sets up a mystery laden with ominous nobles and secret societies. Tonally, it reminded me a ton of Suspiria, but set in early Showa-era Japan, which is a combination I’m definitely up for.

It’s very hard for me to tell if any of these series are LGBT manga, both because this seems like the kind of magazine to relentlessly tease lots of potentially gay couples without making it explicit (Dungeon Meshi for example, has basically zero up-front romance, but plenty of ship material), and also because starting in the middle of a series, for all I know the characters are all related or something. Anyway, all of that is a lead-up to say that the chapter of ふろラン is 100% just two women being physically very close in a shared bath and then going on a nice date to an amusement park.

I’m still very much enjoying watching each of the series develop, and seeing the ratio of series where I know what’s going on slowly tick up as I catch up, new ones start, and old ones end.
The Dungeon Meshi chapter very much made me want to read ahead to see what happens, and I kinda want to catch up on this so I have more bandwidth for other magazines… so I might read more sooner rather than later.

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A quick stock-take of where I’m at with things:

  • 本陣殺人事件
    I quickly fell deep into this, and want to churn through it. There’s tons of Japan-specific architecture, tradition, and history terms, with lots of meticulous description, so it’s definitely a slower one speed-wise… ~60 pages into the ~200 page main story and ~400 page full volume

  • らんま1/2
    Ranma’s awfully fun – I feel like there’s a memorably funny visual gag on practically every page, and I’m jealous of Akane’s outfits. It’s definitely more episodic and tonally static than plot-driven though, so it’s ending up best as a cool-down in between heavier stuff. I’m on volume 7 of I think 20 and seem to get through about a volume every few days.

  • ダンガンロンパ
    Halfway through; very mixed feelings! I love feeling nice and accomplished solving mysteries and answering questions with time-limits in Japanese… don’t really like any of the characters or how they’re used in the story. There’s also some gender baggage I’m sure I’ll describe in more detail later… I was tempted to stop after the last session, but I have a harder time dropping story-driven games, so I’ll give it at least another shot or two.

  • 龍が如く維新
    I’ve played just enough of this to fall for it! I love 龍が如く and silver-age Superman style “here’s a story featuring people from history except they all look and act exactly like our regular cast” stories, so I love this. And the sword/gun combat styles are really fun! Looking forward to when this is my main game going for a good long while.

  • 週刊プロレス
    I’m behind by a chunk of issues again! Hampered by my being cool on wrestling lately, and having a lot of exciting things to read…

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