Beginner Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: ルックバック // Next: ポケモンスペシャル

シメジシミュレーション (Shimeji Simulation)

Summary

Shimeji Simulation is a surreal comedy by the author of Girls’ Last Tour. It follows a girl who shut herself in a closet at home for the last two years of middle school, but has now decided to attend high school. On emerging from her closet, she discovers that shimeji mushrooms are sprouting from her head. At her new school, she befriends a girl sporting a fried egg on her head.

Thanks to @_Marcus for the inspiration - my nominating it here is of course not meant to stop anybody running it as an independent club first if they want, but I thought it looked appropriate for this club.

Availability

Physical: CDJapan | Amazon JP
eBook: Kobo | BookWalker

Personal Opinion

We read Girls’ Last Tour together as a club and it was reasonably popular / successful - personally I think this looks fantastic in a bizarre way too. I’ve read the first couple of chapters on comic.pixiv.net and it has a fair bit more text per page than Girls’ Last Tour (it’s a 4-koma), but the chapters are short so it should be quite a nice read. The concept is obviously quite weird, which could make it confusing, but it’s not like a fantasy setting with loads of niche vocabulary or anything.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Short chapters
  • By the same author as Girls’ Last Tour
  • Why would you not want to read about a girl with mushrooms growing on her head?

Cons

  • No furigana
  • “Surreal comedy” might be confusing for beginners

Pictures

I highly recommend looking through the free preview available on comic.pixiv.net - just scroll down to the volume 1 tile and click the white 試し読み button.

First Three Pages of Chapter One

Additional Pages

Taken from chapter 2:

Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • 1 - No effort at all
  • 2 - Minimal effort
  • 3 - Moderate effort
  • 4 - Substantial effort
  • 5 - So much effort my head might explode :exploding_head:
  • I don’t know

0 voters

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