I’ve thought about reading this - so looks like you’d recommend it?
I recommend it if you want something readable that’s not exactly high literature, and is basically a page turner with lots of people cheating on each other and death. 
Very easy to read!
I used to love The Jerry Springer Show, I’m in
mitrac’s home post
I’m tracking with マラ積読 TM rules
I’m enjoying reading my tundoku!
In the last week my score updates:
- +2 finished Frieren 8
- +1 finished desert Survival
- 0 bought a club read: Winter 2026 GOAT (mook)
Updated score 20 January 2026: -5 マラ積読 score and 141 tbr
My tbr is now according to Natively and if it’s not correct because some books/manga aren’t on there, I’m not going to worry about accounting for that anymore. It’s less than 10% error so I declare that good enough
There’s a couple of particularly prose works that I keep expecting to get cleared out before the next one of these posts, and I find myself wanting to cram in some stuff just for the sake of having more to post about.
Buuut I’m enjoying the weekly cadence (which you’d think I would have been able to devleop on my own after over a decade of doing essentially this same review-note-taking process) and I got enough done to reset to zero again before noon today, so I guess I might as well post them and treat anything I read as contributing to the next week.
So it’s just:
The (digital 積読) last volume of a short horror series from Kazuo Umezz,
and a couple more volumes of 20th Century Boys.
see my home post → here 
Things are already getting serious, finished my first VN of the year 
It was 月影のシミュラクル
My character count says 268.540 (close to JPDB’s, which says 285.757. I haven’t skipped content that I know of, but I’ve seen differences on character count with JPDB VS Textractor before).
I read it in exactly 3 weeks: 25k the first week, 87k the second week and 133k the last week! Super happy with that pace, if I had read ISLAND (my first VN) at that pace, it would have taken me 8 weeks only, instead of a year xD
I had bought it back in November 2022 (!). Probably because of this nomination post.
The verdict is that I wouldn’t go out of my way to read it, but it was OK. Reminded me of ISLAND on many points, and the structure of the VN was a bit different from what I’ve seen until now so that was a positive point. It served its purpose for me in any case, which is more Japanese practice before I get to the really good stuff 
small rant
I almost DNF, because in one of the routes, two teenagers (well the age is never mentioned and they look very young to me, so no idea how old between 12 and 18) started to get intimate. I don’t know if I’m just being too much of a prude, obviously s e x is a part of life, and can be an important one as a teenager too, but still, reading in details about it as a grown adult, it felt very gross to me. It’s less than 5% of the VN, but that in itself is reason enough for me not wanting to vouch for it 
Second point obtained, courtesy of Animal Crossing. Yes, you heard that right, there’s an Animal Crossng manga.
I don’t have a home post, but I will track this thread and post every time I complete one book. I post my daily reading update in the Read Every day challenge thread.
頑張ります！
I finished ルーム yesterday, another physical 積読. I reviewed it on Natively but I’ll probably have a spoiler-y rant about the book in my study log soon.
physical 積読 update:
I finished the second novel in my children’s mystery series. 12 more to go! (Then, of course, I could buy the spinoff series… but that would be tsundoku for another year 
)
digital 積読 update:
Three volumes of Naruto! I only bought through volume 17 so after that I won’t be able to post them in this thread anymore This is actually the most volumes I’ve ever read of a single manga series, I think. I didn’t read much manga before I started learning Japanese.
January 積読 wrap-up:
digital 積読 books finished: 6
physical 積読 books finished: 2
digital books purchased/acquired as freebies: 8
physical books purchased: 0
Weelllll, I thought I was being pretty light on the bookwalker acquisitions this month, but somehow they tend to sneak in there
see my home post → here
Finished 葬送のフリーレン that is, the 13 volumes I had bought in 2024 + volume 14 bought last year. Volume 15 came out since, but I think I’ll wait that there are more volumes out before continuing the series. It’s not like I’ve already ran out of things to read already, else I wouldn’t be here xD
In a better (and more sober) mood than last weekend, thankfully, and another week goes by…
I read another 20th Century Boys volume, and another issue of AX.
And some of the prose momentum I was looking for came through, as I finished:
a volume of two Edogawa Ranpo stories (陰獣 and 蟲),
a new book I impulse bought off the shelf late last year (彼女たちは楽園で遊ぶ),
and another volume of Eiji Yoshikawa’s Musashi Miyamoto which I’ve been picking away at digitally for ages now.
Still haven’t really had a sustained burst of momentum to churn through any one particular strain of 積読 stuff, but there’s been at least inklings of one for Miyamoto. I guess I’ll see if that takes.
Not my 元気-est ever week, this one, but I did read a couple of things:
One specific relatively urgent strain of digital 積読 for me is the Monthly Comic Beam catch-up series. I’m still subscribed to Beam on Bookwalker, out of mainly FOMO because they don’t leave the back issues up for very long, and at some point I decided rather than to just read through the magazine until I organically caught up and was up to speed on all the running series, I might as well just catch up with each series one after the other as I hit them in the issue of the magazine where I happened to leave off. I guess figuring in for a penny, in for a pound and that way I’d get the most of the issues.
Anyway, these three volumes of All the Marbles are one of those.
And I finished a five and a half year physical 積読 that I originally bought because of the famous name - ねじ式
Finished 逆転裁判1!
for my home post, it’s here
(played on Steam but the picture on Steam is of the Trilogy so I think this one of Episode 1 only is more fitting)
It was my first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (in any language)! 
I bought it in 2022 (!), since I keep hearing about it, and wanted to wait for my Japanese to be decent to play it. Decided to play it now and at first I tried setting up Textractor but wasn’t successful. For some reason, instead of go and read something else, I thought I’d give it a go anyway, with no crutches (!). And it turns out, I could read / play it just fine! (!!)
It’s definitely on the easier side VN wise, because unlike every other VN I’ve read until now, this one is basically dialog only. No lengthy description, philosophical inner thoughts or flowery vocabulary. Also not a lot of niche vocab, mostly crime related, and since I’ve already read a few crime novels I already had plenty of that vocab in my toolbox.
I really enjoyed the game / VN (it is really both) in itself and will be looking forward to continuing the series! (though after a break, like with all good things, have too much of it at once all the time and it doesn’t feel that great anymore )
Well, this inspired me to make my little Natively list and to set some reading goals!
MothKau’s dusty bookshelf
The List on Natively ・ 
Study Log
And I am fully copying @taiyousea 's really nice post to make my own, for readability purposes and also because I haven’t been here in ages and I can’t figure out how to make anything look nice somehow.
Contents of said dusty bookshelf
| Title | Genre | Level | |
|---|---|---|---|
 たまぽよ |
絵本 | 24? | |
 猫は、うれしかったことしか覚えてない |
ラノベ | 30? | |
 おばちゃんたちのいるところ |
短編集 | 32 | |
| 日本人の知らない日本語 |
ノンフィクション | 28 | |
 武士道 |
ノンフィクション | 30? | |
 あなたも殺人犯になれる! |
小説 | 27 | |
 そのままでいい |
other | 30? | |
 アフターダーク |
長編小説 | 30 | |
 海辺のカフカ |
長編小説 | 33 | |
 人形館の殺人 |
長編小説 | 33 | |
 ウインクで乾杯 |
小説 | 30? | |
 アリバイ崩し承ります |
小説 | 31 | |
 52ヘルツのクジラたち |
長編小説 | 32 | |
 森崎書店の日々 |
小説 | 32 | |
 5分後に笑えるどんでん返し |
短編集 | 29 |
First goal to warm up will be to tackle たまぽよ, which I reckon shouldn’t take me too long. I have technically read the 日本人の知らない日本語 series, but that was like… back in the late 2000s - early 2010s? So I’m keeping them in the pile. If/when Natively decides on the level of the books I requested, I’ll update this post accordingly, as well as cross each entry I have read again.
Thank you for reading!
Congrats 
Welcome!
I finished 図書室の怪談 悪魔の本, which is worth, checks calculator, 3 points!
Better week than last week, although it doesn’t really show in amount of 積読 finished (maybe focused more on 積見 and 新しいやつ)…
I did finish one quick bit of further catch-up with Monthly Comic Beam: ダニッチの怪（２）
and the other Yoshiharu Tsuge collection I had.
I finished up volume 3 in under a week! That means that I’m done with the first arc, Red, Green, and Blue. For the Yellow arc which spans 4 volumes, I will make one big post when all volumes are finished. I’m going to try and see if I can finish the arc within or around a months time.
(I forgot to reply to my home post. Derp.)
Also neat, we are at triple digits posts now.