Reading Report: 05 March 2023
This week mostly involved reading a new novel, フィッシュストーリー by 伊坂幸太郎 and watching sparing episodes of Demon Slayer when I had the time. I've dropped 掟上今日子の備忘録 due to a lack of interest. School has also started so things are a bit hectic, more below ↓↓
フィッシュストーリー: 80 pages
Another book by 伊坂幸太郎 (終末のフール, ホワイトラビット). This is a series of short stories (about 4 in the book) but so far they seem to be disconnected, unlike 終末のフール which had a connected theme and setting. The first story, 動物園のエンジン was fairly interesting but took a longer time than usual to adjust to. It follows three characters as they try to figure out the mystery behind a public figure's death, a missing wolf, and why an ex-employee still hangs around the zoo all day and night. I like 伊坂幸太郎's writing style because the banter between characters always feels cinematic, like what you might expect from a Quentin Tarantino or Beat Takeshi film. Even when the characters aren't strictly lawbreakers, they behave with little regard for each other, but there's a core of vulnerability as well. The first story also takes place as a flashback for the character telling the story and has a few mentions of "I remember X doing this..." where it feels like the story is being told to us directly in real time, so there may be details left out due to human error. I also started the second story, titled サクリファイス. The lead character is an 空き巣 named 黒澤 which is a similar name and job as a character in ホワイトラビット. Just a fun reference I suppose. This 黒澤 is investigating a runaway guy called 山田 for his other job (his side-hustle I guess). His investigation leads him to a tiny town (the locals even refer to it as a 集落) called 小暮村 which has a custom of "sacrificing" (生贄) one towns member every year. As the years went on and life became more modern the "sacrifice" has changed to only include a number of days of solitary confinement with food provided by a family member (or nominee if the sacrifice has no family). So far 黒澤 doesn't really have any leads, but there has been a suspicious sound in the second floor of the home of the wood carver he befriended on his way to the town.
海が走るエンドロール 1st volume
A manga series I've had on my (digital) shelf for a long time. I decided now was finally the time to read it because the main character is in a somewhat similar position to me at the moment. This story is about a new university student of film who starts studying at the ripe age of 65 (I'm not even half that age but I still feel old!). It's also about a younger film student in his second year who has his own struggles. The first volume ended with them sort of deciding that they would make something special together.
FFX: I also spent about 150 minutes watching FFX be played. It's mostly cutscenes so it was about 120 minutes of dialogue. It's a game I'm very familiar with in English, and I've even seen a little bit of let's plays in Japanese, but it was still a nice experience to pay attention to the dialogue and discuss how things differed to the English version.
I also listened to about 7 hours of Audio; about 3 hours of that was the audiobook version of コンビニ人間 (medium focus). The rest was mostly 鬼滅の刃 (full focus).
Life Stuff
School has started. This week's reading was pretty interesting but it included some reading for both the first week and reading ahead for week two, so hopefully future weeks are a little bit less busy with that material.
I also had a few projects to complete and was able to do them well ahead of when they were due. Despite only being on campus for two days of the week, I've been treating the other three weekdays pretty seriously and giving all of my attention (9-5) to school work as needed. Any time I push past my anxiety and I'm pushed to express myself, it gives me this big urge to share a million thoughts I have with the world. I was tasked with making a two (2) minute vlog and I ended up filming about half an hour of ranting about Japanese book labelling, expression, and the very important point that erotic manga is a form of human expression that is desperately understudied. And then... I scrapped it all of course. My final vlog ended up being one take (with some cuts to remove dead air) and I barely spoke my mind at all... Maybe next time!