Japanese Reading Report: 13 July 2025

I'll be flying home on the day that I'd normally write my weekly reports, and my plans for the day before that are also pretty full on, so here I am writing my weekly report two days early. Apologies to anyone who gets a shock thinking they woke up on Sunday morning.

英雄伝説　空の軌跡ＦＣ

This is gonna be a weird update. So I played some more of this game, progressed through Luan a little bit more, and then I found out that the Vita version of the game has voice acting... so I started again from the start.

I redid all of Rolent. I enjoyed noticing a few nods within the story that went over my head in my first playthrough. In particular, it was amusing to notice Josette hanging around Rolent for much of the early game. Some of Joshua and Cassius' conversation at the start also gave me more of a "this is a big deal" impression, though I think I still lack the context to understand what Joshua's whole deal is.

I'm currently around the halfway point of Bose. Just like Rolent, there were a few story events I was aware of that I could enjoy more with foresight. I hung around Bose after Olivier first arrived and he boasted about the restaurant he steals from. I also actually went into the Amber tower out of curiosity (since you're never forced to go there for the whole Bose story) and it turns out there was a whole side story and event there! So I'm literally at the same point I was at two weeks ago; I'm in prison awaiting release.

I'm glad I pivoted when I did. The voice acting has been a huge improvement for the whole experience. There's voice acting for every story moment and also every side quest, so there's just a whole lot to enjoy. The combat and orbment systems were tweaked slightly, but it's not too bad. I also noticed some very scary monster-in-a-box encounters were either tweaked or moved, which caused a few instances where I avoided opening chests for a while only to open them and be met with nothing unusual. I'll sort of miss the first one that wiped my party in western Rolent.

タコピーの原罪

As a small content warning: this series can get pretty heavy and touches on themes of abuse and self harm.

I read the Takopi manga back when it originally released, and I liked it enough that I went on to read more of the mangaka's work. I was excited to watch the anime adaptation of this when it was announced, but I was still surprised to see it out this week.

So the gist of the story is that Takopi is an alien from a planet whose inhabitants know only happiness. He departs from his homeworld to Earth, meets a young girl called Shizuka, and commits himself to make her life better. Unfortunately, the story is sort of really about Takopi learning that happiness and friendship aren't simple emotions.

I thought the first episode was fantastic. The visuals and audio were great. They really used the additional dimensions afforded by anime to their full extent, and simultaneously create a lively and surreal experience. My only criticism is how much time was spent attempting to establish the serious moments as more serious. You want to give those scenes the time they deserve, but the first scene felt like it dragged on for a while. I thought the final scene of episode 1 delivered a similar feeling with a more efficient use of time.
Keen to continue this one.

ダンダダン

So season 2(?) of this is airing. I remember really enjoying this part of the manga, so I'm looking forward to seeing how they handle everything, but the first episode was just average. The fight scene in the house was pretty cool, and I loved the part where Okarun had to prove he was Jiji's friend.