Day 14: January 14th
What did I read?: マグメル深海水族館 Vol 1
How much did I read?: 49 pages
How long did it take me?: 1 hour 3 min
Finally, some real reading 
As much as I adore tiny shark, he’s not exactly challenging reading practice lol Today’s chapter focused on ラブカ (I love the Japanese name for these, it just sounds so appropriate to what the creature looks like if that even makes sense). Koutarou gets to go beyond his janitorial duties in this chapter when the aquarium director sends him to pick up a frilled shark that accidentally got caught in some fishing nets. The mama shark has died, but with the help of the fisherman, Koutarou’s able to take one of the eggs she was carrying back to the aquarium to hopefully be saved and raised there. In the end, the lil baby shark inside the egg lives, so we can imagine it has a nice future ahead of it 
Some gushy thoughts
I love how this manga looks at these less popular/less “conventionally attractive” sea creatures with such a fond lens. Like they’re not the sea creatures you’d think of as the ones people typically “care about,” but the characters do very much care about them, and by extension you care about them too. You always hear about people saving whales and dolphins and such but the characters care about trying to save these lesser known creatures with the exact same passion and warmth, and there’s something about that that’s just very lovely 
Some less gushy and more random thoughts:
- Why do I feel like I’ve heard of all these random sea creatures that come up, like are these less obscure than I’m thinking they are or am I really just that much of a sea creature nerd leaning toward the nerd thing, child me used to read a lot of animal fact books and illustrated encyclopedias
- I love how one of the fishermen just casually has a pelican friend named Momo, that’s very cute xD
- Koutarou is absolutely adorable when he’s excited about sea creatures I get you Koutarou, I love the sea creatures too
Also while I was googling ラブカ I accidentally found this book called ラブカは静かに弓を持つ and I kind of want to read it now 
The cover is super pretty 