Japanese Reading Report: 18 August 2024

Here's what I read and watched this week:

違国日記

Finally finished this series. It wasn't my favourite series of the year, and there were times it was a bit of a slog, but the final volume was pretty strong and ultimately I felt like it was worth my time. There were still some threads and uncertainties that didn't feel totally wrapped up, but that in itself felt pretty natural for such a grounded coming of age story. My favourite moment was when we finally get a window into one of the reasons 槙生 has been so reluctant to embrace 朝.

わたしが姉さんの大切なあの子を大切に思ってもいい？
The simultaneous chasm and shared ground between 槙生 and her sister was really well expressed in the end. While I was pretty confident the ending would be a happy one, I think it handled some uncertainties pretty well. Overall I liked what I read.

エロゲー文化研究概論

I felt an uncontrollable urge to read another non-fiction book about some cultural niche I'm somewhat interested in. The first 40-so pages covered a sort of pre-history including the idea of what an erotic game even is, the difference between games with erotic elements (strip poker or truth or dare as examples) and erotic roleplay/play (like playing nurse & patient or mud wrestling). I shouldn't have been surprised by it since this has been a common point of reference in every book on eroticism I've read so far, but the lolicon boom of the 1980s made its appearance once again. One last interesting point was just how many totally sanitised modern companies have history developing/publishing erotic videogames. Enix, Falcom, Koei, and Hudson were all mentioned.

機動戦士ガンダムSEED DESTINY

I don't have too much to say about this except I was pretty happy with the Shin and Stellar arc. I liked how it ended for the most part (though some characters could have behaved more wisely... but that's just Gundam SEED in a nutshell) and I really liked the fight between Shin and Kira that happened in the fallout.