Japanese Reading Report: 17 August 2025

ランス02改 反逆の少女たち

この素晴らしい世界に祝福を！

Completed the first season plus the OVA. I think Konosuba might be my favourite comedy anime (maybe second to Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu). The writing is just so perfect, creating Seinfeld-esque situations that continuously pay off at every moment. This week the episode where Kazuma visits the Succubus den was a big highlight. While filling out the questionnaire to determine his perfect "evening visit", he shyly asks about the limits for his dream, to which the succubus answering his questions repeats that he can do whatever he likes. 「大丈夫です。だって夢ですもの」. Of course, Kazume never really gets what he wants and the whole thing backfires when the succubus assigned to him gets caught by Aqua and Megumin while Darkness mistakenly walks into the scene Kazuma believes himself to be dreaming. It's a very funny knot of jokes, and I almost wish the episodes were longer to set up even more intricate payoff.

The OVA was also extremely good. This was basically just another episode, and the premise was basically that Kazuma accidentally equips a cursed choker that will kill him unless his desires are fulfilled. He uses the compromised situation to manipulate the girls into behaving to his whims, and of course it ends with a big blowup for him.
I very rarely rewatch anime, just because there's so much and it's all for the purpose of exploring everything that's out there, but this is TV I could rewatch easily.

食戟のソーマ

I watched this as a cultural trade with a friend who agreed to watch School Days. Even though my report on School Days was quite sparse (you can read the entirety of it here), it's an anime that left a big impact on me, and one that I think about a lot, so I'm basically willing to watch anything if it gets people to observe peak fiction.

Anyway, this anime. It's an anime about a school where cooking is everything. The titular Hirayuki Souma grew up cooking at his dad's traditional restaurant, and when he gets enrolled in the elite cooking school it's clear that the main difference between himself and every other character is that he's just a chill guy who wants to grill. I guess this anime is basically one big tournament arc, because every moment in the school is treated like a competition with almost no focus on learning. It's kind of ironic, because one of the reasons I don't really like cooking anime normally is because they usually lean too much into semi-educational content that doesn't feel integrated into the story (characters explaining how enzymes work while cooking in a casual setting). In this anime the explanations are rare and it's far more interested in the emotional appeal of cooking, even though these are supposedly students at a school.

As far as the actual content, so far it's fine. I like Souma, and I like his shy sidekick, Megumi. Whenever Souma cooks something I go, "Wow, I'd like to cook that." So I guess it's working.

ランス01 光をもとめて THE ANIMATION

I watched this final episode last sunday and I sort of wish I just reported on it then as well.

The final episode started off about how I expected. After confronting the bad guys, Rance gets captured and is about to experience the princess' torture. Sill comes in at the last minute, demonstrating magical abilities, and saves Rance. They pursue the princess and her aide down a tunnel, torture the ninja from earlier to get some answers, and then eventually arrive at a climactic sunset scene for the final confrontation. Sill restrains the princess while Rance blackmails the aide into giving in. After he's done with her, Rance then punishes the princess for her crimes against the kingdom, and with that he's done.
There's not really much of a followup within the kingdom, but we do get a scene of Rance back with Sill in his (hilariously modern-Japanese) home, bathing in his pile of gold coins (he remarks that it doesn't feel as good as he thought it would). The doorbell rings; it's the princess. It turns out that Rance's "punishment" worked too well, she fell in love with him, and she's not demanding his hand in marriage. Rance tries to escape out the side door, but the cute town guard from episode two is waiting there, ready to confess her love as well. Rance and Sill sneak out a window and dash down the street and Rance remarks, "I aint never gettin' tied down by some woman." I couldn't help but think of Sill at that moment. The credits roll, we see some teasers for other Rance chapters (the rebellious girls from Rance 2 were the only reference I recognised of course), and then finally, right at the end there's a post-credits scene. Sill, possibly responding to Rance's final exclamation, feels like Rance doesn't care about her. They're watching the fireworks and it almost feels like his thoughts are more occupied by them than they are by her, until, right when it seems like Sill has given up, Rance puts his arm around her and pulls her closer.

I know it's not really a model of a healthy relationship, but I really like Sill and I sort of enjoy the romance between her and Rance. Assuming that each game further develops the relationship, I think I'd feel pretty sad if he didn't finally confess his love for her at some point. I know for sure that I love Sill!

ハニー shrine from Alicesoft's blog

ランス０２改 反逆の少女たち

I've basically abandoned all hope of treating this game as purely erotic material. However, I think its other merits have presented themselves to me this week. I completed three chapters this week. I finished off the first chapter and then also started and finished chapters two and three in short work. While chapter one was somewhat basic, chapter two starts with a dramatic moment where Sill goes missing and Rance is forced to team up with Maria, one of the titular rebellious girls (it turns out they didn't rebel, the rings they were gifted are controlling them). Maria is totally different to Sill; she doesn't support Rance at all, she tells him off for being lecherous, and she's basically useless in combat until towards the end of the chapter. The game really makes you miss and appreciate Sill.

Chapter two also has some fun moments where Rance still gets his way. A cursed mirror won't activate a nearby teleportation device unless it sees a girls underwear, and Maria reluctantly agrees to help the quest progress (of course Rance sneaks a peek and we see cute art of the scene as well). The chapter ends with Rance saving another girl, Miri, from a hoard of Haniwa-like monsters (I noticed the mascot of Alicesoft seems to be this Haniwa, so maybe it can be seen as their Dragon Quest Slime). Before we get to know Miri the chapter ends and...

Chapter three has another really cool idea. Instead of Rance, we play as Sill for her own mini vignette. Sill teleported into an organic maze that resembles something like intestines. After bathing in a small oasis area, Sill spots an injured male adventurer who we find out is a knight called Bard. Just like Maria is to Sill, Bard is a bizarro Rance. Bard is completely honourable, polite, forthright, and selfless. He steps in to do the dirty work so Sill doesn't have to, and the two have great chemistry. Chapter three has some fun moments, and I generally found that it just flowed better than the other chapters. Part of that may have just been because it doesn't have a town to overwhelm you with options for progress, and instead the main mechanic is asking a young sorceress to give hints (they're mandatory) to untangle a 5-step knot that the labyrinth master has created. We completed the chapter, but before we found out what happened to Sill or Bard we return to rance.

I've only just started chapter four, but it started off strong. Miri has joined the party and she immediately defines her sexual identity. She's not only hornier than Rance, she's better at sex, and sees Rance as just "pretty good". I sort of expected Rance to be the most sexually dominant character in the game, so Miri is a welcome addition to the party. I didn't really realise it earlier in the game, but I guess Miri's sister, Miru, is one of the rebellious girls, so she has a personal reason to help us as well.
Anyway, we returned to the city and I've left it there for now.

ISLAND

I made pretty good progress on this. I've finished (sort of?) the common route and taken my first steps into my first chosen major route. I decided to start with Karen's route, since I like her and I think the decision made the most sense for where I am at this point.

Quite a few things happened on the common route. I spent some proper time with Karen and Sara, and also had an encounter with Rinne's mother, Kuon, outside her room. It turns out she's a mega genius, and she helped us work through some hypothetical science fiction reasoning for how time travel could work.
We also learned more about a mysterious illness on the island, called Baimonbyou for the discolouration it causes on the skin. Apparently this illness only affects people from the island, and the rate of illness has been decreasing. People think it may be a curse from a story told about the island, which also happens to be a story featuring three girls called Rinne, Karen, and Sara, and one man called Setsuna. After successfully enjoying a beach party, Setsuna, Karen, and Sara find a secluded hut on the far side of the beach. Since the tide is coming in, we decide to leave it for now, but it has become yet another object of interest in figuring out Setsuna's whole deal.

At one point in the story Sara explains her take on time travel. She says if she learned origami from her mother, but she went back in time and taught her mother origami, what's the origin of the custom? So far I think that situation is the closest to my prediction about the story. I that we are the first (and the last) characters, writing the myth as we go along.
Of course, the story has quite a lot going on, and it wouldn't be the first time I've "called" something and been totally wrong.

Occasionally the game will just ask, "So what?" And I sort of get that as well. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter if Setsuna is a time traveller from the future, past, or whatever, he's here right now and he's alive, so he should just do what he can to make the present as good as possible.

ラジアントヒストリア・パーフェクトクロノロジー

While discussing the meta time travel in Island, this game was also brought up as having similar themes. An RPG with a VN-like timeline, the premise is basically that the world is doomed to destruction, except in one very specific timeline that we have to find.

I played for a few hours, learned the basics of the time travel, and then made my first major choice. The end point of the choice implied that there is more to explore there, but maybe I'm lacking information to make use of it, so I'm on my way back to that first major choice to hopefully find a way forward in there.

I like the main characters so far. Stock, the protagonist, is pretty simple, but he's not a blank slate. He has a history with several other characters, and I imagine I'll learn more about him as I play. Stock's boss, Hais, is designed to be extremely suspicious, and I'm sort of hoping to have that design is a misdirection, so I've been trying to make choices that demonstrate my trust towards him.