Reading Report: 28 April 2024

鋼の錬金術師 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST

This week was fairly normal. I finally finished 二十四歳職業OL、転生先でキシリアやってます. Slowly progressing through Dunbine and FMA. Started reading some manga. Finished 機動戦士Vガンダム　プロジェクト・エクソダス. Also did another rewatch of ポケットの中の戦争.

聖戦士ダンバイン

Steadily progressing through the show. Power levels are steadily scaling. Dunbine got a bit trashed, but ショウ got a new Aura Battler, Bilbine (ビルバイン). I feel like the writers have finally captured the elements that make チャム funny. Before she was kind of an innate background character but this week she has been consistently pretty funny.

鋼の錬金術師 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST

Making steady progress with this one as well. A bit slower than other weeks because I spent two nights rewatching ポケットの中の戦争 (6 episodes, still a 10/10 show).
In nine episodes there were at least five new tragic backstories for characters. I don't mind tragedy (in fact I love it) and I don't mind backstories, but I feel like the base level of pathos on display is always super high and it gets exhausting. A nice line out of context was 「人を殺す手じゃない。人を生かす手だ」.

二十四歳職業OL転生先で、キシリアやってます　下

Finally finished this series. While there were some guilty pleasure moments, ultimately both books rated right near the bottom of my all-time ranking of books read in Japanese. As it turns out the Gundam setting just isn't sufficient to redeem an extremely low-stakes, low-emotional impact, mostly unfunny book.

機動戦士Vガンダム　プロジェクト・エクソダス

Based on the cover and name I thought this would be a Victory Gundam spinoff manga. The first story (about 1/3rd) is a side-story for Victory where ウッソ helps a colony of Newtypes escape to Proxima Centauri (a 400+ year journey). It was sort of interesting, covering the inevitability of war, and a little thing about the human capacity to lie (even once you get psychic powers involved).
The second 2/3rds of the story was a side-story for ZZ (sort of) where ジュドー・アーシタ and アムロ・レイ investigated a rumour that the 伝説巨神イデオン was going to be used by ジオン残党. I have no familiarity with Ideon, but it's a pretty cool robot. It has basically been around since the dawn of time and basically wants to destroy everything. Thank god Judau was around to use the power of love and human will.