Japanese Reading Report: 22 December 2024

This week I finally finished 痴人の愛, I had a フルーツバスケット season 3 marathon, watched season 1 of ホリミヤ, completed ダンダダン, continued to read Monster, and started 機動戦士ガンダムＵＣ. I also played a little bit more ドラゴンクエスト３リメイク. Overall it was a pretty good week for immersion.

痴人の愛

So I finished this book. I can't say for sure why it was recommended to me after I read Lolita. Both intersect in their protagonists' enthusiasm about pursuing an underage partner, and both incorporate some interesting narrative techniques - both break the fourth wall and talk directly to the reader and both also use lengthy soliloquy as a technique to show the first-person, male protagonists' fervour, but beyond that the shape and purpose of both stories couldn't be more different.

This book ends just about where it begun - 君子 is hopelessly in love with ナオミ and she, despite being arguably in a disadvantageous situation due to her age, takes advantage of 君子's love to get everything she wants. I definitely feel like I'm missing a huge piece of historical context, given I was not alive in 1920 and I'm not Japanese. Perhaps this story subverts a standard romance format of the era.

Ultimately I will say I was shocked at just how many aesthetic narrative decisions matched Lolita, and it made me wonder if Nabokov brushed against this story at some point in his life. It was sort of eerie when 君子 actively referred to the 読者 and made arguments to support his actions and thoughts.

フルーツバスケット S3

Despite being fairly weak this was probably the standout for the reading period. The ending felt a bit like nothing, like everyone was able to more-or-less get a happy ending, but the late-story episodes had some nice punch. I especially enjoyed the way Akito's character developed later on, and how that story intersects with Tohru's. I think they kind of (spoilers for the main boy who isn't chosen) drop Yuki off to have the most boring storyline very early on in S3 (maybe even as early as the end of S2) which was a bit of a disappointment. Some of the other Zodiacs fall off the story even worse, though I wasn't so bothered about that. I think you can count the number of times Ritsu shows up on one hand lol. The retelling of the Zodiac and the God story recontextualised by the late-game story was pretty good. I also liked (boy who is chosen spoiler) Kyou knowing Kyoko and dealing with her death and guilt around it in his own way except that it just felt a bit too late in the game.

ホリミヤ

Didn't really do it for me. I think Miyamura is pretty interesting at the start because his school and home identities are so different, but he basically just becomes a normal, cool teenager (without any of the visual edge) after two episodes. Outside of that the most interesting thing is that there are a lot of 片思い moments for every character not named Hori or Miya(mura).

ＭＯＮＳＴＥＲ

I manged about two volumes this week. Hopefully now that 痴人の愛 is done I can dedicate all my reading to it and finish the series before the end of the year.

Volume 7 and 8 sort of diverged from Tenma storytelling to focus on some other characters in the surrounding world. A young university student called Karl reunites with his rich, sad, old dad with the help of a suspicious Johann. A private investigator who thinks the whole situation (and a surrounding "suicide") is suspicious tracks down all the information he can about Johann, suspecting that he stole his identity from another boy with a similar appearance, but ends up dead under suspicious circumstances of his own.
However there's another wrinkle. In a questioning about Johann with a locked up serial killer (introduced earlier), the questionee rejects the picture, fills in the blonde hair with dark ink (correcting the colour), and then kills himself. If the killer really has dark hair it could still be Tenma...

機動戦士ガンダムＵＣ

Watched the first episode to fill in a daily quota. After all the romance anime... it was like finding an oasis in the desert. So much good dialogue, politics, intrigue. Can't wait to watch more.

ダンダダン

I liked when the two boys were fighting over who liked Momo more. Jiji is such a funny guy.

ドラゴンクエスト３リメイク

There wasn't much progress with this - mostly some exploring (the pyramid, some smaller dungeons) and I reunited two lovers to retrieve some salt. I'm on my way to ダーマの神殿 to follow up on the salt quest so I can finally get my boat.