Japanese Reading Report: 08 December 2024

This week was fairly standard. I read 痴人の愛 on pace, watched to the end of シャーロット, started エロマンガ先生, watched a bit more カードキャプターさくら, and read a little bit more MONSTER.

痴人の愛

Another week with a lot of flip flopping between "Naomi is going to be the death of me" and "Naomi is my sweet angel". Early this week the main theme of the book was the dance hall and Naomi being quite critical of Kunshi's dancing. There was a chapter later which involved a sleepover with a bunch of dance-hall buddies of Naomi's. Kunshi was so upset about the situation, but even so he ends the chapter obsessing over Naomi. One day Kunshi is coming home from work mad and suspecting Naomi of cheating, but when he gets home he finds her sleeping and, when she wakes up, they make up and decide to go to Kamakura together. Because that place is so much further from work than their normal home, Kunshi starts coming home fairly late in the evenings. One night he gets out early and finds that Naomi isn't there... he asks about her and finds out that she's been going out every night to hang out with her dance buddies. Kunshi runs out, finds the group hanging out drunk on the beach, and stalks them. After eventually confronting the group, Naomi admits that she wanted to spend time with other people, but I think this one might be the end of line for her freedoms (oops).

シャーロット

Immediately from last week the story got very serious very quickly. The latest "powered" person discovered turned out to be 有宇's sister, 歩未. Her power is 崩壊 and, in a moment of panic, she accidentally awakens to her power and dies in the same moment. The next episode is all about Yuu's destroyed mental health and eventual recovery. There was another episode where 有宇 meets the singer for a famous band, ZHIEND, whose singing reminds 有宇 of his time in a facility with other powered people. He recalls his brother, a guy with time travel powers, and then we find out what his whole deal is, and we find out that 有宇 has a secret better power where he can steal the powers of other people and use them for himself. He takes his brother's time travel power and goes back to save 歩未.

The drama doesn't end there. 有宇's brother's best friend is killed and 有宇 loses an eye, losing the ability to turn back time. He and 奈緒 decide that the solution is for him to go around the world absorbing every other power so that there would be no more conflict. Doing so puts his brain on full blast and he slowly loses his memory, but a set of language cards (J-E) made by 奈緒 helps him retain his sanity all the way to the end.

Just like エンジェルビーツ I wasn't totally sold on the romantic angle. I think 奈緒 is a more interesting character with more relatable problems, but as a pairing I just wasn't seeing it.

MONSTER

Volume 2 sort of acts as a second opening of the story. We are introduced to Nina, the grown up (19-years old) version of Anna, Johan's twin sister. She's living a normal life with amnesia, unaware of her terrible past. Of course Johan has to get in the way, but Tenma manages to track Nina down just in time and saves her. They run off together, but Nina disappears to do her own thing when Tenma is in town getting supplies for the two of them. The rest of the volumes I read mostly involved Tenma doing little vignette stories, and tbh I liked it quite a lot. Tenma learns more about Johan (and Nina's) past, saves a kid called Deiter, and does a bunch of less-than-licensed surgery.

I really like Tenma. He's kind of scrappy, but he helps everywhere he goes. A real lone ranger hero guy, with a surgical twist.

At the end of volume 3, there's a chapter showing the BKA agent losing his family due to his obsession with the Monster case, and in volume 4, we get a chapter about Eva's mental downfall. She almost gets over her Tenma obsession by falling in love with a kindly gardener, but an unfortunate christmas dinner leads to her burning everything down to the ground. She approaches BKAman...
Nina is going undercover trying to find answers and Tenma interrogates one of the ex-cops from volume 2. Turns out a guy with the nickname 赤ん坊 (baby) wants to use Nina as bait to get Johan to show up...

カードキャプターさくら

I watched 10 episodes of this sort of to fill time while figuring out what else to watch after シャーロット but, to be honest, I also just enjoy watching it and would like to finish it before the year ends so that I can put together full thoughts in a wrap up post or something.

There was a variety of episodes this week. Episode 10 featured a sports festival that erupts into 4" flower coverage across the school. Sakura's dad and Tomoyo's mum both attend, and we discover that Tomoyo's mum was related to Sakura's mum, Nadeshiko. She has a sour spot for Sakura's dad because she sees him as the man who took Nadeshiko away from her. She also adores Sakura because of her resemblance to Nadeshiko. The flower coverage (caused by the Flower card) sparked a fantasy idea about a season where an Yggdrasil / World Tree would lose its leaves and paint the entire countryside golden brown.
Episode 12 is a time loop featuring the Time card. It's fairly straight forward, and ends after only a few loops, but I liked the gags that play off it. Particularly Sakura's anticipation of certain events, and Tomoyo reacting to Sakura's knowledge as though it was her thinking along the same lines.
Episode 15 was a touching story. Kerochan and Sakura have an argument and Kerochan accidentally gets drunk (eating spiked chocolates sent as a gift to Sakura's dad) and wanders off. He gets "adopted" by a young girl who thinks he's an odd cat, and he learns about her home life, how lonely she is because her dad died, and how her mum is so busy with work...
Kerochan working hard to save her when the Float card sends her up into the air was nice. Kerochan is fairly powerless so it's nice to see him try his best. Sakura and him make up after she makes him a little sleeping area of his own in her lower desk drawer.
Episodes 19 and 20 introduced a new character, Meiling, the bride-to-be of Xiaoran (the boy cardcaptor from Hong Kong). She's kind of possessive, and it remains to be seen what she will add to the show, but her rivalry with Sakura is pretty engaging two episodes in.

エロマンガ先生

An anime about a teenage light novel author who discovers that his younger sister-in-law is the erotic artist who provides art for his novels.

It's a fairly shameless ecchi anime, but the writing is fairly sharp and the comedy is over the top in an entertaining way. I'm curious if they will commit to the romance or if the story will stop short of anything truly controversial.