Japanese Reading Report: 02 February 2025

This week I flew home from America. I read some more BILLY BAT, watched Erased, and started watching Gundam 00.

ＢＩＬＬＹ ＢＡＴ

I was able to read quite a few volumes in a row during my flights home. The main two arcs of these volumes were the end of the current search for the 巻物 which apparently enables one to change the past. While the power still hasn't been properly tested, I love how much tension was built over a particular threat to "kill [your] parents" made by one person to another, the following several chapters dedicated to getting to know this person's parents, and then the reveal about whether or not it worked. Spoilers: So far there hasn't been a single case where the past and present are not in agreement, and the past has not been shown to be capable of changing the present, except through within the world as the reader experiences it. It's an interesting meta time travel that uses the story to "change" how you expect the present of the story to play out.

The last few volumes, read mostly on the second leg of my flights home, featured a newly introduced (sort of) protagonist, Kevin Goodman. He is slowly being introduced to the treacherous world of Chuck Culkin's Billy Bat in the 1980s.

僕だけがいない街

A short and sweet series (just 12 episodes) that tells a compelling story. I enjoyed it, but it's kind of hard to pinpoint anything that felt fresh or surprising. The "twist" discovered towards the end was pretty obvious from early on, and I wonder if I would have enjoyed the story more if it was less obvious to me.

The general story, without spoilers, is that it's about a guy who finds out that he's been given a chance to prevent a tragedy of his youth when he's transported back into his body twenty years earlier. Because he still has the mind of an adult, sometimes his speech and mannerisms come across as suspicious, which is pretty fun.

機動戦士ガンダム00

I only started partway through my flights home. The story so far is fairly interesting. Unlike other Gundam series, this one has several factions all vying for power. When a mysterious new faction called Celestials shows up, the instability turns to all out war.

This series reminds me a lot of Gundam Wing. There are immediately a lot of "very important boys" piloting Gundam-named mobile suits and I expect that it will all make more sense as the early dust settles a bit. For now I am enjoying the interactions between Setsuna and the Union pilots who keep trying to outgun his Gundam.