Intermediate Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: セーラー服と機関銃

I… kinda wanna vote for Your Name, just because I had bought it but never read it :see_no_evil:

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Okay, the problem was actually with Discourse. I was taking the percentage given by the poll at face value, but (obviously) Discourse is using some rounding magic so that all percentage are integer while still summing up to 100%. That skew the results a bit.
At first I thought of just counting the number of icons, but that doesn’t work if they are hidden under the blue arrow. Instead, I now use the percentage and total number of voters to recover the actual number.

Script is now updated, not well tested though. Let me know if there’s another problem.

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Excluding the number of people that voted “don’t know”?

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I had my heart set on seeing Penguin Highway when I was in Tokyo last October, ever since @seanblue posted a link to the trailer in the poll thread months before that. But I was worried it might have finished showing by the time I got there, in which case this was going to be a fallback option for the title alone.

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And? Did you wind up seeing anything?

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Does that mean you’re gonna vote to read it instead? :stuck_out_tongue:

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I thought it failed the page limit?

Oh wait, you mean reading the Pancreas book?
I don’t mind. I am not sure I even have time to read all the samples at this point, so I will probably just let you guys choose the book and I will tag along.

The pancreas one :slight_smile:

I think you can vote even if you don’t read all the samples! : o
Also you can skim samples~

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Can’t go wrong with Kino’s Journey for round one. Relatively short and slice of life story makes it a good choice as far as I’m concerned.

Yes, excluding those.

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I’m voting Kino’s because I already have it and told my friend I’d read it. She even gave it to me. ^^;

If we wind up reading a different book, I’ll just keep Kino at work and read whatever gets chosen. :woman_shrugging:

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宝石の国

Summary

Japanese

今から遠い未来、宝石のカラダを持つ28人は、彼らを装飾品にしようと襲い掛かる月人に備えるべく、戦闘や医療などそれぞれの持ち場についていた。月人と戦うことを望みながら、何も役割を与えられていなかったフォスは、宝石たちを束ねる金剛先生から博物誌を編むように頼まれる。

English

In the mysterious future, crystalline organisms called Gems inhabit a world that has been destroyed by six meteors. Each Gem is assigned a role in order to fight against the Lunarians, a species who attacks them in order to shatter their bodies and use them as decorations.

Phosphophyllite, also known as Phos, is a young and fragile Gem who dreams of helping their friends in the war effort. Instead, they are told to compile an encyclopedia because of their delicate condition. After begrudgingly embarking on this task, Phos meets Cinnabar, an intelligent gem who has been relegated to patrolling the isolated island at night because of the corrosive poison their body creates. After seeing how unhappy Cinnabar is, Phos decides to find a role that both of the rejected Gems can enjoy. Houseki no Kuni follows Phos’ efforts to be useful and protect their fellow Gems.

Availability

Personal Opinion

I saw the anime, and it’s perfect. The style in the manga is also beautiful and way more expressive and flexible than that in the anime so I still think reading the manga would offer a fresh and valuable experience.( stolen from my earlier post)

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

  • Manga is less stressful to read

Cons

  • Only if you haven’t watched the anime yet, I suggest you watch the anime first.

Pictures

First Three Pages of Chapter One




Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Just right
  • Challenging
  • Impossible, even with everyone’s help
  • I don’t know (please click this if you’re not voting seriously)

0 voters

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I actually picked up a copy of 君の名は when I was in Japan earlier this month, so I might actually attempt to read along if that won.

It’ll be challenging but I would try my best, if it won.

I might even give キノの旅 a go if that were to win as it looks interesting and doesn’t look too hard.

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Is it though? I know it was free on a promotion at one point, but I’m not sure if I managed to get it in time. It looks like it’s not free right now.

I went to see the 鋼の錬金術師 live-action movie when I was in Yamagata in 2017 - does that mean I should be nominating that for the book club? :slightly_smiling_face:

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Oh, My bad. I did get it for free and didn’t realize gomen;

No problem. Apparently I did get it actually, but for eBookJapan (I hadn’t figured out how to get around the region locking on Amazon at the time). eBookJapan is pretty meh and inconvenient, but free is free I suppose.

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Is it still free?