I will say that while you’re still looking for beginner manga reads, rental oniichan is great in terms of level and difficulty. As a beginner, you naturally have less choice in what materials you can read so easy manga that you don’t like as much still has value as learning material.
Rental oniichan discussion
Anyways, you can check the plot summary and so on, but the basic setup is that this girl Kanami’s parents die and her older brother becomes abusive overnight (content warning for a couple scenes in the first volume), so when she meets a kind stranger she asks to ‘rent’ him as an older brother. He then teaches her all about kindness and being loving and having friends and respecting others and so on and so forth. But only while she’s paying him. Will their relationship ever evolve past a rental one ?!
I think the reason I don’t like it has more to do with me being a cynical bastard than anything else; I’ve seen a lot of people on the forums enjoy the story and find it very touching. Personally, when a story seems engineered to be touching, sensitive, and tug on the heartstrings, it kind of irritates me unless it’s done very well. I also don’t particularly find the dynamic of ‘young girl and adult older brother figure doing heartwarming things’ to be interesting. So it might just be a me problem and you might like the story! I’m probably going to keep reading anyways because I bought all 4 volumes and it’s nice to have an easy manga to read with the bonus of finishing a series.
Thanks for the heads-up !
I stopped thinking I could read this manga at “become abusive overnight”
It was one of my fear when I read the summary, but the abuse wasn’t really named. Now I know. And I know I don’t want to read that ^^
I understand your other doubts, by the way. The dynamic seems quite odd from outside too.
Yeah, totally fair. There’s also a lot of stuff about how Kanami wants to forgive him despite the abuse, which is a perspective I don’t really agree with in these kinds of narratives.
Another nice thing about this manga is that it is finished after 4 volumes. You can read enough to get used to it and get comfortable, and you end up having read a whole series that has an ending!
It’s not completely overnight, and you’d need to read multiple aspects across three or four volumes to understand why he ended up the way he was.
But I imagine it’s not the overnight part that’s the issue, but rather the whole “becomes (physically and emotionally) abusive” part.
I felt it works really well in the overall story, giving Kanami a goal of trying to fix things with her brother, while also using her rental brother as a stand-in for who her real brother used to be. It also puts the rental brother in a situation of knowing he can’t always be there to help Kanami.
Another weird start to the day. And because I saw @taiyousea picking up my favorite manga series to try, I decided to reread it. Something comforting and this second time in Japanese, I’ll actually look things up, first time I read it I just wanted to see how well it went without look ups.
So started reading Alice 19th. I was going to finish the first chapter, but I’m not sure if that even ends in this first volume? I went flipping through and found no chapter title pages except the one at the start of the volume for chapter 1.
Ukiyo-e book
Hehe, I don’t mind. I had to go looking for it though, because I couldn’t find it at Adlibris nor Bokus (the two main online places to buy books in Sweden). But after looking up the author by finding which box the book was hiding in, I found it on Italian Amazon and on Goodreads. Linking to Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/901413.Ukiyo_e
I have a feeling it might be out of print unfortunately. Considering I didn’t even get a UK or US Amazon link in my top search results, but maybe it is there. I didn’t need to go check because I already own it. Very glad I kept it though.
pixiv reading kind of day (don’t know how many characters it was but it was maybe an hour’s worth?). was gonna go on layton again cos london life is still there but maybe tomorrow.
glad to hear you enjoyed it! i know what you mean, it can be a painful read in places, especially when some of the characters have so few people in their lives (that they’re out to or otherwise) to talk to about their worries. yeah, it could’ve got very crowded if it tried to resolve everything. i thought that aspect was interesting though, it felt to me like we’re getting small slices of their lives and stages of their growth as people and it takes longer than what we can see for them to figure it out, it felt very human. having said that the internalised homophobia plotline with tsubaki felt like it went by a little too quickly
genuinely one of the prettiest manga i’ve read, some of those double-page spreads look amazing while also expressing the emotion of a given scene really well!
i have! i read it early last year and really enjoyed it (it’s one of my favourite series) so i’m always interested to see what other people think!
可愛いだけじゃない式守さん vol. 1, 2 chapters along with the ABBC
I struggled a lot on one page, but it went ok with the rest so I’m glad.
I like the manga so far, even if for now the story lacks a little of depth. But it’s only beginning so I’m not worried
Thank you for your thoughts on Rental Oniichan@soggyboy, @Akashelia and @ChristopherFritz !
I’m an oversensitive reader on some topics, so tough content like that isn’t for me I’m afraid
4th and 5th January
Read one page of ハリーポッターと賢者の石 in two days. I’m making very slow progress through the book, but am also enjoying the story, so hopefully it will stop feeling too difficult if I persist
6th January
Borrowed and read the story ねずみの嫁入り after finding it was available on Libby. Read another paragraph of ハリーポッターと賢者の石。Also read the story of Jack and the Beanstalk in Japanese.
I’m also reading the English translation of Sanshiro by Natsume Soseki, and today I read pages 10-15 of that book.
Hey everyone! This is my first time joining one of the community events here, and is also my first time posting at all on the community forums! I am an early beginner, so my goal is start at the absolute easiest content I see on Natively and work my way up, seeing how far I can go and learning vocab along the way!
You’re right that it feels like we’re getting just a little peek into the lives of the characters, that’s a nice way of viewing it! And I agree that Tsubaki’s plotline felt like it got resolved a bit too abruptly (but I was glad that it got resolved).
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the series! I’m happy to hear you enjoyed it too!
There was a book club for volume 1 a few months back (with a few more recent comments about the ending), so you can see some other people’s thoughts on it if you’re curious! Here
Bit of a lighter day today, as I had some weekend activities, but still caught up on the BBC’s manga chapter for the week and read some more of 本好きの下剋上第一部３.
As I wanted more simple I chose a graded reader from todaku. Level 0.
This time without a dictionary. I am seeing the power of reading already or rather being exposed to the language. You begin to recognize some vocab/kanji in the wild. Nice feeling.
. Kanji form is 土竜, but the 龍 version isn’t in the IME.
i.e. 仲間外れにされ.
2024年1月6日 
macalys’ Home Post (and Thread) 
可愛いだけじゃない式守さん vol. 1, 2 chapters along with the 
Days 4-6 | 1月4日 ー 1月6日
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