Japanese Reading Report: 12 January 2025

This week I finished Monster and then read a bunch of new manga. I also watched some more Darling in the Franxx and some Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu.

MONSTER

So the first thing I did after finishing my report last week was read the final volume of this manga. The volume overall was quite good, and I was happy to see the conclusion to so many characters' stories, however I felt that some of the story threads opened throughout the series were not wrapped up very cleanly and was left a little bit unsatisfied by the very end.

I think the ambiguity of the ending is kind of interesting, but I actually wish it was a little bit more ambiguous. I constantly think about that one guy who "corrected" the ID of Johann by darkening his hair to be more like Tenma, and that just never comes up or matters.

ＢＩＬＬＹ ＢＡＴ

Despite my feelings about the end of Monster, I could feel that Naoki Urasawa was cooking up an interesting mystery, and I liked the art and characters of his world. So I decided to read another manga of his.

Billy Bat is about a Japanese comic artist (Kevin) living in America in the early 20th century. His comic series, Billy Bat, is fairly successful, but when he discovers that the titular bat strikes an eerie resemblance to a similar character in Japan, he travels there to verify for himself that he's not plagiarising the character.

The story quickly opens up a series of mysteries. The bat design shows up in a historical scroll, appears scrawled on a wall under a bridge, and even shows up in places no man has been before. Kevin eventually meets a Japanese mangaka writing his own bat-based comic. The mangaka gives Kevin a draft of his latest comic, which shows knowledge of events that he can't be aware of, and of events that haven't happened yet.

Definitely gonna keep reading this one.

ぼくらの (anime)

So I finished the rewatch of this, and it was just as good as I remembered. The final series of episodes exploring the final pilot and his struggle to protect the world was really well done. I think the only weakness is that I wish it was more clearly established how high the stakes were for the opponent in the final fight. While both fight hard, the final opponent feels a bit more faceless than some of the others.

ぼくらの (manga)

So after finishing the anime, and after finishing Monster, I had a small window where I was unsure what I wanted to read, and decided to read the original manga version of this story. Eventually I moved onto reading Billy Bat (mentioned above) so I only read two volumes of this for now.

The story basically flows the same way as the anime, however some elements are moved up, and the order of pilots is shuffled around a bit (or rather, the anime makes these changes). Koemushi shows up much sooner and establishes the stakes a bit more clearly without pulling any punches. The details of some stories is also changed, but the broad strokes seem pretty similar.

ゲキ・ガンガー３　熱血大決戦

This is a 25-minute-long OVA in the universe of Martian Successor Nadeshiko. I spent a while tracking this down, and to be honest it wasn't really worth the effort, though it was quite fun. The start is just a compilation of bits from Nadeshiko, but the second half is a small episode in the style of Getter Robo or Mazinger short movies I've seen before.

The art style, characters, and writing all perfectly mimic the Go Nagai era of mecha anime. It feels very cosy.

ダーリン・イン・ザ・フランキス

Still slowly moving through this series. It still hasn't really captured me, though I did come to appreciate that it's a semi-contemporary anime that is 1) anime-original and 2) includes gag episodes. I'm sure those things exist in other anime, but increasingly anime is made up of manga adaptations and "no filler" short series.

In a twist that should come as no surprise to anyone the main crew have discovered that the society they're growing up in is built upon an older, more human society that had romance and warmth. They're still unsure how to deal with this for now.

フルメタル・パニック？ふもっふ

This is technically a rewatch since I watched this show's English dub many many years ago when I was a teenager. The writing is extremely funny and each episode has been a joy to watch.
I especially liked the episode where the main crew have to help with the school lunch and the PE teacher continuously tries to sabotage them, falling victim to Sousuke's countermeasures each time. It's so over the top and so fun.

ゼルダの伝説・知恵のかりもの

I've been sort of geeking out on Zelda stuff lately and I also just happened to have a copy of this game waiting until this happened, so I've been playing it in some of my free time.

This game is conceptually pretty cool, but I think it actually does better early on than during the late game (where I am right now, around the 4th-6th dungeon). When Zelda has access to just a few items to summon, I feel like my choices are somewhat creative and it also doesn't take minutes to scroll through dozens of bad options to find what I think I should use. Later on the number of summons you have access to is just so bloated that you either spend too much time menuing trying to find the right item or just cycle between 4-5 cheesy items that can solve most problems.
I need to deal with combat? Eh, a Lizalfos or Wizrobe will do. I need to get high? Water cubes work in 90% of cases. Need fire? Throwing a Fire Zol is still the most reliable option for that. I went through an entire dungeon with air vents in several rooms without figuring out what the purpose of the vents were and just flew on flying tiles or uses aforementioned water blocks to travel horizontally and vertically respectively.

The dialogue is nothing special. I've played a handful of Zelda games in Japanese at this point and, I'm not sure if it's the writing, my ability, my age, or what, but the writing just never feels as engaging or as charming as my memories of the older games in English that I played as a child. Ah well. It's still pretty fun to explore and collect new things.