Reading Report: 02 April 2023
This week was surprisingly productive considering school things. I started reading 月まで三キロ mostly to help with some troubleshooting for another project but I was just drawn into the story so I kept reading it despite some funky formatting at first. Anyway, read more below.
月まで三キロ: 8̷̜̀6̸͉̍ pages.
Page count is a bit funky this week because I read it while jumping around a variety of font sizes and formats while getting more accustomed to digital reading through CMOA (rip Amazon). Anyway as for the actual stories in this book. 月まで三キロ: I really enjoyed this story. It's about a man who feels like he's at the end of his life, considering death, and wanting to 下見 potential locations to do that. He ends up in a taxi with an older gentleman who just talks his ear off about moon facts while leading him to "a better place to do that". The story is cut between moon facts and flashbacks/explanations about how the MC's fell apart, notably his divorce, his mother's death, and his father's dementia. Eventually the taxi driver gets to the location and reveals that he was also thinking about death. The driver used to be a professor and he tells his own tragic story about the loss of his son. It's a really touching story and the way familial relationships are compared to the relationship between the earth and moon is really elegantly done. 星六花: I'm only partway through this so far but it's about a woman having a midlife crisis, afraid that she'll be alone for the rest of her life, but with a glimmer of hope having met a meteorologist guy at a 合コン-type thing. They seem to share an interest in science which is cute.
魔法少女三十路 (partial)
I didn't finish this one and I probably won't... the cover was really cute -- a woman in her thirties sitting on a subway seat in magical girl attire. Of course the premise is very gag-like and the story is also basically gag writing. I think I would have preferred something a little bit more serious, with more emphasis on the tragedy of the situation, the possibility of a fresh start, or just something meaningful. I guess the whole genre is poisoned by Madoka in my mind...
ドラゴンクエストXオフライン版
I don't usually include games but I feel like I should in this case since I ended up spending a lot of free time playing it. I've already played the MMO version so nothing in the story was a big surprise, but it has been nice to basically go through the game without struggling through any language. The addition of VA is very nice, and there have been a few more details I've noticed when playing, but mostly I feel like the game doesn't capitalise on the potential of an offline adventure with the (it is a DQX version 3 spoiler) 神の器 in your party. I can't help but compare it to DQXI as well. That game has its own share of problems but it notably has the entire party carefully introduced to the story at a gentle pace, and they're all active participants in the goings on during the story as well. The main party in this game is (understandably) crammed in but that means they have nothing to say about the current events during cutscenes, they'll only comment with the party chat feature, which is also fairly bare bones.
Life Stuff
I am through all of the first assignments for each of my classes. Of course there's no rest for the wicked and I'll be starting work on all my second assignments right away. Easter break is coming up but I'll be focusing on filming for my Video Portrait assignment during that week so it's not as much of a break as I wish it could be.
My sleep has been a bit worse lately, a problem I can only attribute to Dragon Quest, aha... sometimes I wish I could be as hyperfocused on studying-related stuff as I get with videogames when I'm really getting stuck into them. But really I just need to pace myself and make sure I'm going to bed at consistent times. At least so far I am at 100% attendance at school and have handed in all projects well ahead of due dates.
Daylight Savings has changed back which is just Australia's way of playing a little prank on me. It's nice to be 1 hour closer to Japan's time, but it sort of puts me at a worse time zone for communicating with America which is a problem for me right now. Anyway, until next time...