📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

March 17 :snowflake: Home Post

It’s late so not a long post, but surprise surprise I played more 999! This route is definitely long, but man a lot is happening. Can’t wait to continue tomorrow :eyes:

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Main Post

Finished the last chapter of Gal & Dino volume 1. Cute, funny and wholesome. Took lots of screenshots and sharing some more today.

Volume 1 ch10-15

The extra stuff in the back was also pretty nice to read. In the end it is a pretty low effort manga I could read without worry. For the next manga I think it would have to be tanuki vol 3.

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Day 77!

I read Chapter 34 of Yotsuba today, which means I finished Volume 5. It was a lovely chapter to end the volume on I think, especially with the final page being everyone falling asleep on the train.

I learned the word for Hermit Crab - やどかり - which also means “renting a house” which I think is kind of cute!

(Home Post)

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March 18 :snowflake: Home Post

I keep posting so late :joy: but my reading has been far more consistent than my posts so that’s something! 999 continues to be a truly wild ride, though I’m not sure I’ll actually finish by the end of spring break since the endings just seem to keep getting longer :joy: but that’s okay!

999 thoughts

This ending has been real information-heavy, but man I still have so many questions. It turns out my crackpot theory might not be so crackpot actually :joy: The girl who died in the first nonary game was in fact named (あかね), which super can’t be a coincidence. Especially considering whatever like freezing-sickness she has going on, it definitely seems like something’s up.

There’s also been a lot of talk about サンタ potentially being ゼロ and certain people’s numbers being different than we thought, which would explain some things but wow it would have so many ramifications, I’m not sure they could all be accounted for. And honestly my primary suspect at this point was サンタ, but people talking about it when it seems like there’s so much game left makes me think that might not be the case. So idk :man_shrugging:

Regardless I am completely fascinated and like all I wanna do is play so I can find out what’s going on :joy: Zero Escape is powerful

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Day 78!

I’m taking advantage of having some free time today to do extra reading :slight_smile:
So today I read the first half of Chapter 2 of Happiness, as thats the ABBC assignment for this week, and then also read Chapter 6 of Volume 5 of Teasing Master Takagi-san.

Today I found that I was able to read a lot of stuff quite smoothly, with only a few cases of needing to look things up, or stop to decode a bit of grammar.
Its nice to have these moments of really feeling like I’ve made progress.

Though now I’m going to go and play some Pokemon Legends: Arceus.
…which will definitely involve plenty of vocab lookups and failing to understand grammar :sweat_smile:

(Home Post)

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March 19 :snowflake: Home Post

Whew, I don’t know what to do with myself :joy: I finished what I think is actually the main ending to 999? There’s still an ending I haven’t done so I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with that, but… man, that was a ride.

999 made my brain mush

I like don’t even know what to say :joy: it got so wild?? The whole point was to save (あかね) in the past?? Still can’t believe I was right about her and サンタ (whose name is (あおい), and then her code name is (むらさき) and I’m :pleading_face:), what an absolutely wild dynamic.

I still feel like I have more questions than answers?? Like I know things but I still don’t feel like I do, I’m a whole mess lmao. Like what about 八代(やしろ), it super looked like she was there at the first nonary game but I have absolutely no idea how to reconcile that, it really doesn’t seem like ages would work for that but what do I know?? Time and space are a construct here :joy: and who else was in the first nonary game, why were specifically these people brought back, were there people at the ship too? Did (あかね) seriously somehow set this all up from nine years ago?? Wow yeah I have a lot of questions :joy: maybe some of them will still be answered in the last route (or in future games perhaps?), but knowing danganronpa I wouldn’t be shocked if a lot was left open. We shall see!

Anyway there’s a lot to process, but language-wise it’s a really cool experience to be absoutely losing my mind over content in Japanese! Time to go wallow in it :joy:

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Day 79!

Chapters 11 and 12 of Mitsuboshi Colours today. I found both of these chapters much easier to follow than Chapter 10 was. Chapter 11 was very cute.

(Home Post)

Ooh, congratulations!
Seeing how much you’ve been enjoying 999 has encouraged me to add it to my “to play once I can read better” list. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Congrats!! :tada:
I recently came across a youtube video that described these zero escape games as really good for language learners, and I found out I apparently have access to them via a friend’s shared steam library. So because of that and your comments I’m now very :eyes: tempted.
You definitely made 999 sound really fun!

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@natarin Congrats on finishing! So glad you liked it!

Heavy spoiler thing I want to mention for natarin

So for this version of the game they have two displays you sort of switch between somehow for the dialog and stuff, right? With the original being a DS game, they made great use of the double screens – essentially the idea is that one screen was what Junpei sees and the other is what Akane sees, while transmitting hints and like leading him to the end. I’ve seen people kind of miss that distinction in the remake because unfortunately there wasn’t a great way to recreate it. And the final sudoku was upside down and required flipping your DS itself, heh.

I’m so happy seeing all the Zero Escape / 999 love in this thread. It’s a great series. The sequel is even wilder and I think it prefer it over 999, but both are great. Zero Time Dilemma is… kind of a mess? But it’s a mess that I find hilarious, almost like the closest re-enactment I’ve seen of a videogame being a cheesy funny B movie. Not sure how much of that effect will be lost without the wonky English voices though.


Was just feeling the urge to check in again! I’ve missed a few days of doing anything beyond SRS because I had to travel a bit, but overall, it’s going well. I keep making it to 5000 characters minimum read, often 6 or 7k even. I think I’m entering the late stages of Shizuku’s route, which has been nice.

Tiny spoilers and an image

I guess every story is going to briefly touch on supernatural content, which I’m all here for. It’s been enhancing the drama and all in service of the greater thematic points both routes have been touching on. Tsumugi’s was pure bittersweet parting and struggling against impermanence, but Shizuku’s is looking like it might get a little complex, and I love how it’s touching on sort of self-worth issues, as you can see:

I’ll have 6 more routes to do after this so this game isn’t going away any time soon. I’ve also been steadily, often even just a page or less at night, pushing through Zoo 2, and I made it through that story I was struggling with, at least following enough to get the point, even if I think the enjoyment was hampered somewhat. The following story has been closer to the usual difficulty level, so I’m getting back into it bit by bit, and I’m 77% through!

I’m very much looking forward to the return of this challenge :slight_smile:

Since I've already brought it up here, a small digression on health, fairly positive for once, for anyone interested

It’s too early to say with any confidence, but I’ve been experimenting with a few things, and I want to say some of my ailments have lessened for longer than usual. It’s really just Pepcid and CBD – I know I have some GERD issues, quite possibly exacerbated by covid, and that can mess with your heart and all sorts of other things. And CBD sounds great for inflammation, which is the obvious candidate for most things I’ve been dealing with. It’s a gradual lessening of issues, no magic cure, and I’m not confident at all that they aren’t just abating for the moment to come back worse later, but at this exact moment I feel the best I have in probably more than a month, so I’ll take it.

Cardiologist confirmed there’s not a whole lot he can do for me and most of my palpitations are basically upper chamber extra beats… normal occurrence, but it happens like 5 times more for me than the average person. It’s not so uncomfortable I want to risk the side effects of the medication so that’s about all I’ve got right now. Could be worse. And hey, today in my visual novel I learned 動悸 (どうき), palpitation or throbbing of the heart :stuck_out_tongue:

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March 20 :snowflake: Home Post

Ahhhh I’m almost finished with the last ending but I need to go to bed :joy: I finished the main plot before spring break ended so I’ll count it as a win anyway, especially considering how much longer some parts were than I expected.

999 things as always

Alright, I actually am getting some more answers! I understand why I thought 八代(やしろ) was in the first nonary game, it was one of her daughters :pensive: still finding out more about that but it makes way more sense.

This route is a rough one, I felt so mean :joy: just leaving 四葉(よつば) and 八代(やしろ) behind, man 淳平(じゅんぺい) that’s cold :sweat_smile: super valid of 八代(やしろ) to slap him when we reunited lmao

I ran into some slang I had to decipher:

チャカ and ヤク were fairly straightforward to figure out with yomichan, but マルB?? Definitely had to google that, and it turns out it’s another term for 暴力団(ぼうりょくだん). And of course as soon as I figured out, the other characters were like “what are you talking about, what’s マルB” :joy: It’s police jargon apparently, so that hits differently knowing about セブン :eyes:

I’m really gonna miss these characters once I finish huh, it’s been quite a ride :') Tomorrow perhaps!

Oooh yay, that’s awesome!! It’s honestly pretty approachable for what it is, especially having an ocr or something :laughing: I hope you have tons of fun with it whenever you do!

Oh nice, you should totally give it a go! I think it’s a really good balance of feeling like a more challenging piece of media just by nature of the complexity of the story, but a lot of the writing is relatively straightforward once you pick up on the vocabulary it tends to use. There’s also a lot of times where it’ll use the same word or concept or whatever multiple times but a little spaced out, so it’s kind of a mini SRS haha, very nice actually! And ofc most of the dialogue is voiced, so that helps out too. I’m glad to tempt :joy:

Ohhhh interesting, that makes a lot of sense! Yeah it doesn’t come across that way as much; it’s basically either in dialogue-only format or novel format, and you really don’t see anything through (あかね)'s eyes until pretty close to the end when it swaps back and forth a few times. They might’ve just had to change the last puzzle entirely, it wasn’t an upside-down thing but I still overthought it for way too long :joy: it broke my brain way more than reading it ever did haha.

Oh? :eyes: Very exciting, I look forward to it!

Thank you all for the congratulations :blush: it’s been a great time sharing this with you guys!

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Yeah so the thing is, one screen was used for third person narration and puzzle solving while the other was first person and dialogue, and the idea was that the entirety of the narration and puzzle work was always Akane. Here someone explains it a bit more. But yeah, neat stuff. All the same, the original didn’t have voice acting or the convenient flow chart thing (you had to outright replay the game which was kinda tedious) so you get a lot of improvements despite how the twist can’t quite work as elegantly.

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what OCR have you been using for it? I might have just given in and bought it hahaha. You should be getting some kind of advertising cut :smile:

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isnt it spring now? is there a new thread?

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It will come on April 1st. These usually go for two months starting from the first day until the last day of the second month, and then we rest for a month until the new thread even if the season already changed. Currently some people are continuing the Winter challenge while the rest of us are resting until the Spring one :slightly_smiling_face: .

Edit: Actually, giving it a bit more thought, I guess it would be positive to have the thread going a few days earlier like we did with this one so it gains exposure. Something like next Monday seems fine to me, to give potential participants a bit more time to prepare ^^ . @windupbird don’t feel forced to make it yourself, you’ve been doing it for a while and we are super grateful for it :heart: but at the same time I think I speak for everyone if I say that you don’t have to feel forced to make them yourself. It’s still perfectly fine if you do, but also perfectly fine if you don’t feel like doing the next one <3 . You’ve more than earned a rest should you need it! :slightly_smiling_face:

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ok! thanks. i think i’m going to start in the spring one.

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Main Post

Have read some :raccoon: over the weekend, it’s still so cute and wholesome. Actually reading multiple chapters per day, because some are just so short and I need more. I think the first chapter alone already has so many great panels, but I have only made a few photos this time. Still I like to share something.

volume 3

It’s not just cute. I also learn stuff from it. Like they mention the kanji for duck (鴨) in the first story. 手品 for a magic trick. Some more flower related stuff like 椿 for a certain type of camilla. I’ll make another post when I’m finished with this volume, stay tuned. :eyes:

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Ahhh yay!! I’m glad I could have such an impact lmao, spike chunsoft sponsor me?? :joy:

I’ve just been using game2text, it generally worked pretty well as long you like scroll back into the history so the background darkens. Between that and the voice acting it’s been relatively rare for me to have to search for kanji elsewere, but sometimes they throw some real weird ones in there :joy:

But that’s super exciting, I hope you have as much fun with it as I have! I know I also ended up here super impulsively so maybe that’s just the 999 experience here haha

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Day 80 !

I started volume 6 of Yotsuba today, and read Chapter 35.
I also re-read Chapter 12 of Mitsuboshi Colors (which I read yesterday) for the purpose of populating the vocab sheet for the bookclub.

(Home Post)

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Funnily enough, I was just thinking about how it’s almost time for the new thread :rofl: March went fast!
I’m happy to make the new thread, but if anyone else wants a turn I’m also happy to pass the torch :slight_smile: If anyone does want a chance, feel free to speak up ^^ If not, I’ll probably make it this weekend!

(Also looking forward to having you join us @mikey2806 ^^)

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March 21 :snowflake: Home Post

Well, I’ve officially done it - I just finished up the last ending of 999 and wow, that’s a wild thought :joy: This is really the first long-form content I’ve actually finished so I’m kinda stunned honestly, what a journey it’s been! I’m sitting at 102.2 hours which is a non-negligible amount of time for sure, but like not as long as I might’ve thought it’d take me beforehand? I have no idea how long it would’ve taken me in English, but judging from like Danganronpa I’d guess 102 hours is about 2 or 3 times as long? Which is… really pretty good, all things considered. I’ll take it :joy: It’ll be interesting to see how the second game compares time-wise, how prepared am I :eyes:

I can definitely tell I’ve grown a lot over the course of the game! My reading speed has absolutely improved; toward the end I started having moments where I read lines faster than the voice acting could happen, which is also wild?? Growth :muscle:

Oh man 999

The only ending I had left was the submarine ending, and it might be both the most depressing and baffling one of them all! Truly I feel like I understand less than I did before, like who killed them?? Hello?? Alice? :eyes: Like yeah I still don’t really know who stabbed me in the first ending, but at least people were still… alive? This is really perplexing, and that really tracks Zero Escape, good work

Oh and an interesting thing from the main ending for people who know it, I’m curious: how does the door in the incinerator work in English? Bc in Japanese the whole payoff is like “the door you can escape through has キュウ on it” which of course is assumed to be 9 the whole time, but it’s actually the letter q. So like… how did they make that work in English? Very curious :eyes:

It’s really crazy to think I’m actually done, I’m gonna miss them :') I’m so tempted to just immediately start the second game, I have no restraint lmao. Ahhh maybe a little, just to see? Just a little peek :joy: Anyway thank you all for the encouragement you’ve given me, I’m glad I could share this ride with you! And knowing me it’s far from over, I’ll be neck-deep in the sequel before I know it :blush:

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