Reading Report: 21 July 2024
This week I managed to read a fair bit of manga and watch a bit of anime. In short I read two volumes of 先生の白い嘘, two volumes of 違国日記, and caught up to 光が死んだ夏. I watched six episodes of ３月のライオン and all twelve episodes of ヒナまつり. I also watched 超時空要塞マクロス ‐愛・おぼえていますか‐ (The movie retelling of the series plot??).
先生の白い嘘
I've had two volumes of this for a while and lately I noticed it was #1 in reader popularity for a certain category on CMOA. The story takes a while to really get going and only by the end of volume 2 did I really have a sense for what it was going for but basically it's the story of a various forms of sexual abuse and violence mostly contextualised by a teacher and student who bond over their mutual pain. I wasn't drawn in enough by the end of volume 2 and decided not to get any more volumes but the cliffhanger for volume 3 was somewhat interesting.
光が死んだ夏
A pretty good volume that expands on Hikaru's family history and the deity that lives in the mountains. Not too much in the way of supernatural events this volume but the final scene on the beach was very sad. I feel like at this point the endgame is fairly established but I look forward to being surprised.
違国日記
This series was recommended by a friend and I specifically remember him saying it had very natural real-world dialogue. There's almost no furigana and at times it almost feels like reading a language different to the one I've learned with other forms of media, but it's been very enjoyable so far. The two main characters have a very interesting (familial) relationship. It's also sometimes a cooking manga.
３月のライオン
I've been really enjoying this series and was very grateful for the episodes dedicated to actually teaching some Shogi basics. But the Shogi feels a lot like a container to hold all of the much more interesting human moments. Looking forward to watching more when my life is more settled down.
ヒナまつり
Watching this was sort of a salve for a larger problem that shocked my life. I needed something light and funny and it definitely is that. It's a very funny anime with some very cute moments. I loved Hina and Anzu but I definitely think Nitta holds the show together. His reactions to everything are perfect and his bad luck was very relatable.
超時空要塞マクロス -愛・おぼえていますか-
I'll start by saying I probably should have watched the TV show because the movie leaves a pretty bad impression for this franchise. I didn't get a very good sense of depth or even really interesting themes, though the giant, war-faring race had some fun dialogue that made them enjoyable to watch. Events just moved too quickly and the romance (which seemed to be the main point of the movie) felt so rushed and hard to swallow. Some elements were introduced and then didn't come up at almost at all until the end of the movie (the human pilot who meets the giantess warrior felt like a totally skipped plotline). I didn't even really like the music aha...