Reading Report: 14 July 2024

ヴァンピアーズ

This week I continued to read Vampeerz, got myself up to date with the latest ダンダダン volume, and read (and dropped) 嘘つきみーくんと壊れたまーちゃん幸せの背景は不幸. I also finished Gundam SEED and started watching some ３月のライオン (March Comes In Like a Lion).

ヴァンピアーズ

I wasn't certain I'd keep reading this series but I decided to buy the rest of the series on a whim anyway and it turned out to be pretty worthwhile. I'm a bit of two minds because I didn't want to read something that was just moeblob/warm-and-fuzzies content but I also found the serious stuff to be fairly unconvincing. The big winner moments for me were the flashbacks that explained character relationships in greater depth. In particular I adored the story for ヤンヤン and カラ, and the backstory for アルカミール was also quite strong. I felt the pacing had a few quirks mostly because I felt like アーサー, 咲耶, and 次郎's stories were a bit undeveloped. By the end of the story I wished for another volume that would just turn back the clock 6 months and do some more moeblob school stuff so I think that's a good sign that the characters are ones I'd want to spend more time with and learn more about. The ending was alright!

ダンダダン

Continues to be a simply amazing manga. Despite any fears that the story was effectively over after the last few volumes' big arc, this volume was so good. A bit of perfect comedic timing was that two vampire-related jokes that took place around the middle of the volume. The new (well not new but new as a relevant character) 委員長 character was hilarious and had a super heartfelt, sad story that resolved without feeling rushed.

嘘つきみーくんと壊れたまーちゃん幸せの背景は不幸

This is a book I got because an excerpt of the story was included in 面白ければなんでもあり (a book I read around this time last year) and the story seemed intriguing. Unfortunately I tend to buy more than I read so it was shelved and mostly forgotten about until now.
The story starts by introducing a small town that suffered child kidnapping and murders. As it turns out the two principal characters were kidnapping victims and both of them are a little bit twisted because of it. 美園マユ（まーちゃん）has kidnapped two new children and is holding them in her house. The main character（みーくん）is kind of nonchalant about it.
I decided to drop the book after the end of the first chapter because I just wasn't enjoying the way the book was written. Ah well...

機動戦士ガンダムＳＥＥＤ

Got to the end of this series. In the end I enjoyed it quite a bit. I definitely think it took some time to get going but the last few acts were pretty engaging and I enjoyed most of the character deaths and big moments that happened. Maybe the only exception was Flay's death. Her entire story felt like it sort of went nowhere, and while it was amusing to get a trick-death at the end I just didn't feel like Kira's feelings towards her were genuinely earned. I also felt that Lacus was a bit disconnected from the main story at the end despite having a big "I'm important" turn along with Athrun.

Just like Turn-A I sort of would like to unpack my thoughts mostly in relation to how I perceived the series externally before watching, but it might have to wait for another day. In short I think it leans on some cliches pretty hard but I don't really see a pro- or even neutral-eugenics argument in the story at all (though I haven't seen Destiny or Freedom to be fair).

３月のライオン

Watched this on a whim and it's honestly pretty great off the bat. My biggest takeaway linguistically is just realising how much more complicated every Gundam series is compared to anime set in contemporary, non-military Japan. Even the Shogi vocab is more comprehensible in-context, and the daily life stuff is really straight forward. The pathos goes hard as well.