Japanese Reading Report: 01 December 2024

This week was my first Thanksgiving. It was very nice to spend time with my partner's family and be included in their traditions and lives. I managed to maintain my goals despite the busy period, though it would have been nice to read more manga.

痴人の愛

Normally I'd tag a book like this NSFW because of potential discomfort with the book's theme, however there was a time skip fairly early and ナオミ has quickly become an active antagonist towards 君子. This week they get married, ナオミ starts to engage in English-language and dance studies, and starts spending all of 君子's money, preventing him from accumulating any savings.

The English study chapter (and part of a dance chapter later) was fairly entertaining as, just like Humbert Humbert in Lolita, 君子 takes every opportunity to comment on how uncultured other people are, how bad they are at English, and even goes as far as to talk even more about how ナオミ feels just like a compromise for him.

When describing one of ナオミ's superficial interests, 君子 mentions that she refuses to ride in train carriages below second class. I feel like train carriage classes are sort of a thing of the past, so it was a cute cultural thing to note.

エンジェルビーツ

I watched this series and (part of) シャーロット at my partner's request and honestly didn't know what to expect. It turns out this is basically a comedy series with a strategic beating of pathos thrown in to catch the viewer off guard.

The story is basically about a new "student", 音無, who wakes up at a school for dead people and finds himself quickly fighting against "angels" on the side of the living humans.
Because death is meaningless in this world, violence is used frequently for comedy at a scale I'd never really seen before. 音無 dies again within the first episode (and wakes up shortly afterwards), and other characters' lives are thrown at problems like Lemmings. Thankfully the story finds interesting workarounds for a world without death, and the stakes for the main cast are raised towards the end.

While 音無's story was quite compelling, especially after finding out his backstory through some hypnosis-induced memory stimulation, I was moved by the other characters' backstories and resolutions more strongly. There was a love story element that built up over the second half of the series and, while I found it fairly moving, 立華 (the love interest) is written to be intentionally fairly emotionless and even after the emotional turn I didn't really connect with her.

カードキャプターさくら

Just a little bit of this this week. The first episode gave a little more backstory to さくら's relationship with her mother. The second was a nice little vignette about a child who wants to respect their father's painting, leading to a mini-museum heist. The next two episodes introduced and elaborated on a new Cardcaptor character - a tsundere Chinese boy.

ダンダダン

The resolution to the Nessie mini arc. Watching this episode I mostly couldn't help but notice that every character involved ends up on the hero side as the story progresses.

MONSTER

I have about 15 manga volumes to read before meeting my goal for the year, and I decided to read this series as a way to enjoy this story for the first time and to complete the goal with a single series. A highly skilled surgeon, テンマ, regrets his hospital's focus on "priority" patients at the expense of common folks. At a critical moment he goes against his boss's orders and saves the life of a young boy. This turns out to be the worst decision of all time.

Apart from some complicated medical terminology, the inclusion of some overly long German words, the story is mostly pretty straight forward and engaging. I love テンマ as a character and find his pure devotion to saving lives enjoyable to watch.

シャーロット

The second of two anime I watched to enjoy with my partner. I had heard that this was also a spiritual successor to エンジェルビーツ, but I was surprised how different the details have been so far. There is still a call to action for a male protagonist which quickly brings him into a rag-tag group of teenage found friends, however this series is set in the (sort of) real world with the twist being the existence of X-men-type super-powered teenagers. Like its predecessor, this series is mostly comedic with a light mix of emotional moments which I'm sure will ramp up.