Japanese Reading Report: 04 May 2025

真マジンガー衝撃！Ｚ編

Once again I sacrificed a lot of anime time to make time for school work with strict turnarounds. It'll probably be like that for the rest of the semester at this rate... Final years, am I right?

There were two mini-stories this week: One where Shiro (Kabuto's younger brother) meets a cute girl, Lorelei, who turns out to be a robot destined to fight Mazinger. Despite his pleading, she fulfills her purpose and is destroyed tragically. I thought it was a pretty good little arc, though I don't think there were any noticeable repercussions for Shiro watching his brother tear apart his crush.
The second story involved a bit of "time travel" (sort of). A few of the crew, plus Mazinger, travel to the era of titans and see how Zeus was betrayed by Hades. We also get to see more of Ashura's backstory, which I liked, and they are sort of redeemed and have joined the good guys for now. Interesting.

母性

So I basically went through a complete 720 degree spin reading this during the week. Right away the story presented a new development that made me strongly sympathetic towards the Mother. Following the death of the Grandmother and the loss of their house, the family is forced to move in with the Husband's parents, and the Mother and Daughter are treated very poorly. The Mother does her best to hold it together for her family, and I could see how she was working hard for her family until...
In the subsequent Daughter chapter we find out that the Mother was beating the Daughter every night out of frustration, and the Daughter just held in her own grief and absorbed it because she wanted to do her best to honour the wish of the Grandmother.

There have also been a few mini-stories which had similar "Mother-side" stories which are wrapped up and recontextualised by the "Daughter-side" followups. For example there was a chapter where the Husband's older sister moves back home but also falls in love with a possibly shady (it's really not clear if he really is or if it's biased reporting) guy in Osaka. The family wants to prevent the older sister from meeting with him, but on a day that the Daughter is supposed to keep watch over her in the house, she is "tricked" into letting her run off. Later on we find out that the Daughter wasn't tricked; she intentionally decided to help the older sister after overhearing a conversation between the Mother and Father about how sad her situation was. So, what you initially read as the naivete of a young girl ends up being yet another attempt to help her mother. But no good deed goes unpunished, and the development makes everything at the house worse for everyone.

I just finished the Mother-side of chapter 4 which involved her becoming pregnant, having hopes that she could "finally be a real mother", and then having those hopes dashed towards the end. Of course the way it all plays out makes her blame the Daughter somewhat, so I'm curious to see what the other perspective will reveal.