Japanese Reading Report: 29 December 2024

It's my last report of the year! This week was fairly lean, in large part thanks to the focus on Monster and Gundam mixed in with holiday festivities.

ＭＯＮＳＴＥＲ

Quite a lot happened in this week's Monster reading. As I suspected last week, being able to focus solely on this during my reading allowed me to progress quite far, though I still ended up reading less than I had hoped to.

The events between volumes 8 and 11 could broadly be split into two major arcs. The first was the University arc, which I brushed against last week.
Johan causes a lot of grief in Munich while drawing closer to Schubart, a nearly blind, very rich man preparing a ceremony to donate his private library to the University.
In this arc Tenma buys a sniper rifle and prepares to use it a few times, though none of them really pan out. A picture book that Johan and Nina/Anna read as children is found in the library. It causes Johan to fall unconscious. Karl, who reconciled with Schubart, sort of becomes a non-character during this arc and, while he's shown to come to Prague (the setting of the second big arc of the week), he sort of disappeared for the rest of my reading.

After the events in Munich we find out that Johan's mother may be alive in Prague, so most of the characters head that way. So far I think the Prague arc is my favourite since the beginning of the manga. Two new characters, Grimmer and Suk, are introduced. Grimmer is a freelance journalist investigating 511 Kinderheim and Suk is a low-ish ranking police detective who finds himself in under his head when investigating the death of his superior.

In this arc so far, Johan has demonstrated his feminine side (somewhat), Tenma and Grimmer had a nice picnic, and things started really heating up once Nina finally got here.
I'm currently reading Volume 12 and in this one Lunge has covertly entered the fray while he's meant to be taking a vacation.

機動戦士ガンダムＵＣ

This series was fairly enjoyable but, more than anything, it mostly just made me want to enjoy more classic Gundam again.

One of my favourite things in this series was all of the little background actions characters would take during scenes that would otherwise just be dialogue or thoughts. A character making tea, a character unwrapping a meal, moving to the hangar to prepare for something important. It always feels like the conversations come as a natural part of their lives.
I suppose the only time it feels unnatural (in a way that you can't really work around without making the show much worse) is the pauses in action to allow characters to make a big speech.

The main plot of this one is that Banagher is the only pilot who can use the Unicorn Gundam, a mobile suit which is also the "key" to getting the Laplace Box. He spends a lot of his time bouncing between the Federation and Zeon factions while attempting to prevent any unnecessary deaths along the way. Minerva Zabi, the last remaining heiress of the Zabi family is also fighting for peace in her own way, and helps Banagher.

I enjoyed the character of Riddhe. A pilot from a political family, he has the best intentions at the start of the series and helps Minerva escape to Earth. After Minerva leaves him he has a crisis of faith and becomes a minor antagonist for a little while.

I didn't really care for the way the series tied in the Char's Counterattack ending or other UC timeline details. Ple Twelve felt a bit unnecessary, for example.