Phew. 18 months later, I just re-read レンタルお兄ちゃん first volume.
Re-reading something is a great way to measure progress. In summer 2023, it was a goal to achieve during my summer vacation, with the help of the vocab list and ABBC threads.
This time I just picked it up and was done in a couple evenings reading sessions. Sure, I had a rough memory of the story, but still.
It really is an excellent beginner manga.
That’s awesome progress! I love revisiting stuff too, it’s so motivating.
Detective Milky has been removed from the list of nominations due to low interest in the polls. We now have 15/20 nominations, leaving 5 slots for enterprising club members!
I’m planning on running the next book poll in a week, so get your nominations in now!
Just a question, what happened with the nominations for the next book?
Greetings.
Nobody has submitted any new nominations! So we’ll proceed with the current list, unless anyone has any last minute nominations today.
Never saw your original message but I can maybe make a nomination after work today? Feel free to go ahead without it though 
Sure, we can wait for more nominations! We only have 15 at the moment so there are 5 slots.
Red, an energetic boy from Pallet Town, is the best Pokémon trainer in town. Professor Oak is interested in Red and gives him a Pokédex, and he sets off on a journey to complete it. Red gradually grows through encounters with Green and Kasumi, who also aim to complete the Pokédex. Then, Team Rocket, an evil secret society, stands in their way. What is waiting for Red? The adventures and excitement of the popular game “Pokémon” are brought to life in this comic book!
amazon.co.jp (Physical and Kindle)
Bookwalker (Ebook）
(Available through other retailers)
This book makes a great fit for a number of reasons but also has some drawbacks which I’ll address in the pros and cons. Generally though, this series is a very well loved piece of one of the most well loved pieces of media in the world. Pokemon Adventure’s brings a more serious tone to the pokemon franchise and is widely considered the best piece of Pokemon media excluding the main games. I toyed with the idea of nominating this for a while, but decided to go for it because I think one of the most important things for sticking through a manga is interest and Pokemon is likely to have many fans here. On a personal note, this manga was the first one I ever read when I was a kid and I loved it then!
I haven’t read it yet, but I tried flipping to random pages and it seems reasonable in difficulty, with the caveat that the text density is rather daunting, and may warrant a slower reading schedule from a pages/wk perspective. This will definitely be more of a challenge than some of the more recently picked books, but is far from the hardest the group has tackled and would likely serve as a great bridge to the BBC! Check out the examples below to see for yourself though! Full Bookwalker Preview
My first time nominating so lmk if I missed something!
Maybe you’d like to move it over to the BBC? The guidelines are pretty clear on it:
In general, lower level books are better for the ABBC since we get plenty completely new readers.
If anything above 22 is strictly not allowed, I guess I’ll argue that the guidelines are decidedly not pretty clear and need to be updated. That said, Natively levels, while helpful, are very loose and decided by a select few readers who decide to grade their books (Case in point, Horimiya is L23 now, no longer L22). Curious on what others think but unless people disagree, I’ll stand by my decision to nominate it here. I recognize it might be a harder read for absolute beginners, but it doesn’t feel out of reach in my opinion and seems closer to ABBC material, especially with the full furigana.
The BBC reads ~L21-26 and has had plenty of manga with full furigana. Almost all of your cons (L23, Kansei-ben, super high text density) make it fit in really well with the BBC, while ABBC readers will probably have a hard time with any single one of those cons. And a Natively grading from 33 people is as solid as it gets.
Of course you’re also welcome to keep it here. I’m just not sure why it needs to be when it’s perfect BBC material, hence my suggestion.
Fair enough, you make good points - I’ll move it over then when BBC is open for nominations! Thanks for the heads up. It’s always hard to get a good read on what each of the groups ranges are, so I appreciate a voice from someone who’s been around a while!
I’d like to nominate something but every time I find something within the level I read a bit about it and its either yikes or quite boring lmao
Thanks! I think I agree with Tobias that the difficulty factors you mentioned (text density, vocab, kansai ben) would be fine if it was only one aspect. The previous Cardcaptor Sakura book club I think was tough for some members because of the kansai ben, but had a lower text density and easier vocab.
Lol yeah I’ve noticed this too sometimes haha. I have something I might nominate, but I don’t really want to run a club in the next couple months (if it wins) so I’m gonna hold off.
@jablekanji I believe the bbc is always open for nominations as long as there’s room available, which right now there is.
@WeepingWeeb I have a similar problem with the imc, all the higher level manga that I enjoy have too much adult content to be nominated…
Regarding nominations, I just bought a fair amount of lowish level books, so I’ll probably have something ready by the next voting cycle.
Just posted there, thanks for the heads up! Curious about the adult content rules, are there reasons a ‘mature reading’ bookclub hasn’t cropped up? Is the intention just to keep as many users in one spot as possible since we’re already a relatively small group? It’d be nice to read some series’ in bookclubs that are mildly violent or deal with more mature themes
As far as I know the reason clubs have content restrictions is because that content is triggering for many people, and we want to avoid anything that would turn away large groups of potential readers. As for why a mature content club hadn’t popped up, I don’t think the issue is having too many clubs, after all there are dozens of offshoots happening right now, I think it’s more about the fact that it would be difficult to discuss things like body horror or sexual violence without violating community guidelines.
I mean, technically there were a couple, The Promised Neverland was probably the latest of those, before that there was ウスズミの果て. They are just less popular, because any sort of graphic content or potential content warning will put off some from reading it.
If this ends up being a book club anywhere, I would ABSOLUTELY love to join
