Oh interesting - yeah, I can see why this would feel like quite an ‘un-novel’ like experience as that’s usually a big plus for the form in that you often do get those inside glimpses or clear viewpoints. Also makes sense that the story being known to you would make it less exciting if it’s written that way as you’re not really getting any “more” (as in a closer look at characters thoughts and motivations) from the novel version than watching it.
Haha - I remembered that you’d mentioned it but not much more than that! I can have similar issues with some bookclubs - I do really love readalongs (the ハイキュー one in particular is real fun) and like that they generally push me to go a bit more in depth with my understanding when reading - but keeping to the set pace can be hard.
Are there any games that you would recommend that you’ve found more manageable? I would love to start playing more games in Japanese but, as you say, many of them are very challenging and harder to do lookups etc which means I keep putting it off.
. I was playing Final Fantasy III out of nostalgia, and I didn’t find it hard at all, it was quite manageable. I haven’t touched it for a couple of weeks but I will resume it eventually.
It might be worthwile to actually mine vocabulary from the videos and put it on some SRS, it’s not actually a bad idea and seems entertaining. Some games I’d like to play myself, like FF8, but others I don’t mind watching.
So much vocab in しまなみ誰そ彼…I really enjoyed this chapter, though, and the ending of it featured some really stunning art. Now time to go to bed, since I already stayed up later than I meant to reading しまなみ誰そ彼 
Have you started on the second volume yet? 
Aaaand the charisma bon bon one just frustrated me haha.