Japanese Reading Report: 26 January 2025
Another fairly relaxed week. More BILLY BAT and Nichijou.
ＢＩＬＬＹ ＢＡＴ
Billy Bat continues to take me on a wild
ride through time and space, though the plot
did slow down a little bit this week. There was
a bit plot convergence where Kevin attempted
to prevent JFK's assassination, a sweepstakes
to win a trip to Japan, and a subsequent winning
of that sweepstakes by a girl who is now
searching for the fabled Billy Bat scroll from
the ninja arc earlier in the series.
A tertiary character, Chuck Culkin, goes
on a brief monologue about how he perceives
dimensions, explaining that to him an army
of 2 dimensional soldiers would be no threat.
He suggests that there could be beings
in the 4th dimension who feel the same way
about humanity. I wonder if the Billy Bats
are those beings, reaching into our
dimension and meddling with us like comic
book characters.
日常
This series definitely grew on my in the
latter half once the Shinonome (Nano and
Hakase) and school stories came together.
While I think some of the humour is a bit
too non sequitur for my taste, there was a lot
of played-straight, unfortunate-event
moments that were just perfectly orchestrated.
The commitment to the seriousness of several
bits right up until the punchline at the end
was also great.