Japanese Reading Report: 22 June 2025

ラーゼフォン

Despite my growing interest last week, I didn't really make time for this show this week. Of the episodes I did watch, I really really enjoyed episode 19. The episode was all about Ayato fleeing with his friend, Asahina. Asahina knows that she's a Murian (a kind of non-human species at war with humans who take on human form but don't really seem to "know" that they aren't human until they're "activated") and the episode sits with this dramatic irony where it's not entirely clear if she knows that Ayato knows that she's Murian and if she just can't admit it because then it'd become, "Something they need to address to move forward." The end of the episode has another dramatic irony — Ayato pilots RaXephon to protect Asahina unaware that her life is powering the Murian enemy threat. As he defeats it, Asahina struggles to communicate the pain she's going through. It worked really well. Great episode.

花の鎖

I finally finished this book. Everything sort of came together in the final Rika chapter as I suspected. We were reintroduced to some characters from the previous chapters. Notably Kimiko, Satsuki's classmate, shows up and explains how she and Kouichi and their whole family line sort of owed Rika's family line (Rika, Satsuki, and Miyuki) for a kindness Satsuki shared towards Kouichi despite the drama caused during the Miyuki storyline. Honestly, it was kind of convoluted and a bit boring to read. I was glad to finally be done with it.

I think my favourite story of the book was Satsuki's just because her chapters were able to use parts of her past and present to create an interesting theme. Rika's story sort of felt meandering and, while she does some fun things and has some nice conversations, she doesn't feel like the driver of her own story. Miyuki was pretty interesting but it's hard to believe she was the same woman as Rika's grandmother for how much she seemed to have a self-defeating attitude in the past (to be fair her husband did die and that would suck for anyone).

英雄伝説　空の軌跡ＦＣ

Out of all the things I did this week, this was probably the one I gave the most energy to. I'm determined to see the story through to the end, so I'm trying to give it some quality time each day.

I finished one full chapter of the game. After Estelle and Joshua's dad left for Bose we did all his Bracer chores for him, including taking some foreign journalists up the 翡翠の塔, collecting a huge gemstone from a nearby mine (and subsequently solving a monster attack in said mine) for the mayor to use as a gift for the queen, then having to retrieve the same gem from some sky pirates who swindled us, plus a bunch of little sidequests along the way. Then after we had done all of that we found out our dad went missing on his way home.

Now we're heading to Bose to find our dad and maybe save some other people on the way.

ヴィヨンの妻

I thought I'd make this my next book to read because 1) it was already on my e-reader and 2) it's quite short (just 45 pages). But... In true Dazai fashion, it's kind of dull and the characters go on and on for pages at a time without breaks. Perhaps one day I'll get back to this but it's gonna be a drop for me. Next book will be in next report for sure.