I finished this month’s Harta!
ハルタ ９３号
This one was special to me for a couple reasons, the first being a close friend suddenly got really into Dungeon Meshi and read everything up to the most recent chapter in scan form right before this issue came out, so I got to share excitement for it with them and see if I could read up to the new chapter without skipping to it in the magazine before fan translators put something out which was fun, and the second being that I knew this issue had the debut of an ongoing by 田沼朝, an author whose name I recognized from one-shots I particularly loved in previous issues!
That debuting series is called いやはや熱海くん, and I enjoyed it a whole lot! It’s about a high school boy who gets confessed to a lot by girls, but has crushes on boys. I think Tanuma is very good at giving characters life with realistically awkward but interesting dialogue and fun (but not outright goofy) facial expressions. The characters and general tone are laid back and a bit stand-offish but also very warm. I haven’t gotten around to translating any more manga for fun and to share with friends since I did this author’s first Harta one-shot, but this made me want to find time to do that again. Anyway it’s a very promising start, and I’m happy for the author to get an ongoing! Looks like it’s on an every-issue schedule too which is means a nice additional thing to look forward to each month for me.
A 読切 that stood out to me this time was 逢魔が時より by 古月よしこ, about a strange encounter on a train. The art and eeriness were fully developed enough I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing a follow-up in the future…
And this strip from ようこそにんげん by しりもと seemed very relevant to Wanikani! I’ll have to quote the last panel next time I burn an item! 
manga report
- あさドラ! (3-6)
These are really good! I had no idea how things would develop going into the series, and it turns out the directions it go involve kaiju and pro wrestling so it’s safe to say it’s up my alley! Seems like it’ll be a fun roller coaster ride. I’m very very curious about how the zipper angle is going to develop. Oh also – one of the physical volumes (I think 5? I especially liked that one, I think) has a really cool insert - a reproduction of the illegible scrawled note about the monster weak point, which I thought was a nice special touch. - メトロポリス
This is the 1949 Osamu Tezuka manga that I read before watching the 2001 movie adaptation. I enjoyed it! It’s very much from Tezuka’s earlier period, where he was doing very broad but also very fun and inventive sci-fi adventure stories - at some point quite a long time ago I read an English edition of another from this period, called The Mysterious Underground Men, and this feels quite in line with that. I didn’t look at the date carefully beforehand, and from my impression of the movie before watching it, I was definitely expecting this to be more like a later Tezuka work like Pheonix, so it was a nice example of Tezuka’s work’s timelinessness that while I could tell it was earlier than that, I absolutely would not have guessed it was from 1949. The whole thing is so bursting with life, and there’s a lot of stunning crowd shots with fun little things put into every corner. But it does feel much more like light fun entertainment than a big weighty story.
Which made me especially curious to see how the anime adaptation written by Katsuhiro Otomo would be – and they do go in a very different direction, making pretty much a wholly new (and visually stunning) story inspired by the original rather than directly adapting it. It’s cool and definitely worth checking out, but I did find myself pining for things dropped from the original, like the gender-swapping, or the part where someone wears the skin of Micky Mouse. - 波よ聞いてくれ (2)
This is developing in an interesting way! We get to hear the first part of the protagonist’s radio show, and I just sort of assumed from the first volume it would be like, a soapbox or call-in type of show where she’d voice a bunch of aggressive opinions or something, but it turns out it’s a semi-scripted faux true story drama, about her murdering an ex boyfriend, and there’s aliens and stuff, which is a much weirder and more interesting direction than I was expecting. I’m reading more, but it’s slow since there’s a lot of words and the topic of Sapporo local radio DJing isn’t necessarily an inherent page-turner. - テラン 2022 （WINTER）
This is the second issue of Terang, the magazine of all one-shots that fill in the gap months in Harta’s release schedule. It’s neat, and I liked reading it! And I’d still recommend it as a possible way to get a sense for Harta’s vibe in a standalone way. But I confess there weren’t particular stories that jumped out to me as needing to highlight. - ダンジョン飯 (2)
I’ve read this one before! But this time I read it out loud! Interesting to get to see Dungeon Meshi from a few different new perspectives recently… The party can be really pushy to each other about eating monsters in the beginning! I suppose that never quite stops but I do think the comedy being mainly “let’s get Marcille to eat stuff she doesn’t want to eat” tapers down as more of the series’ heart develops. I think when I read this originally in English I was at the stage of “oh huh! there’s something more fun here than your average video game logicish fantasy comedy” from episodes like the mimic. - ヴァンピアーズ (7)
Quick and fun! It seems like a future arc is developing so I’m seeing more how the series could continue for a while after this one.
For most of this year so far I was really churning through the manga volumes focusing quite a bit on the number. But I got tired of how it felt like I was pressuring myself to read short and quick things instead of long or slow things, so I recommitted to my stated numerical goal of 0. Still plan to read plenty of manga I’m sure!