Japanese Reading Report: 19 January 2025

This week I read more Billy Bat, watched the rest of Fumoffu, and started watching Nichijou. I also finished Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

ＢＩＬＬＹ ＢＡＴ

This series very quickly went places I never could have expected. I don't think I've ever read anything containing Jesus Christ, Lee Harvey Oswald, and a multi-chapter Ninja epic seamlessly in the same narrative before. It sounds absurd but it's a surprisingly grounded story about the corruption of power and want.

The story still occasionally returns to Kevin Yamagata, the initial protagonist of the story, but his story is just one of several that I'm invested in at this point.

フルメタル・パニック？ふもっふ

Just like last week I only have positive things to say about this series. It was extremely good, very funny, and, surprisingly, wasn't as lewd or suggestive as I remembered it being. I think the combination of the level-headed-but-still-quirky Chidori and the military-brain-poisoned Sousuke just works perfectly for me. The final episode was even funnier than I remembered it.

日常

Wanting to ride the wave of comedy anime, I decided to watch this instead of returning to Darling in the Franxx. While the first episode didn't really grab me so much, the series hooked me after a few episodes. Some of the multi-episode jokes that resurface are extremely good. While some repeated jokes/bits aren't to my taste, the sheer variety means it's very unlikely for any episode to be no fun.

ゼルダの伝説・知恵のかりもの

So I finished this game, including finding all of the collectables and special summons.

It was alright in the end. The forest temple was probably my favourite. The dungeon had half a dozen entrances from the "outside" (still within an instanced area, but not technically part of the dungeon) which made it kind of fun to dip in and out of. I ended up basically exploring the whole place before fighting the mini boss for the first time, however after I defeated it once the rest of the dungeon was just a matter of teleporting to the room containing it and then the room containing the dungeon boss because the rest of the dungeon was already cleared away.

During some dungeons you get minor upgrades to your "kit", but not every dungeon does it and I think I was let down by the lack of upgrades in most of the end-game areas. I also wish the final dungeon was more involved. It was kind of lacking, and I imagine that's because they can't assume how many echoes/summons the player will have access to, restricting the design of the dungeons. Just another reason the traditional item system works best... I kind of want to play Link's Awakening again.