Japanese Reading Report: 11 May 2025

真マジンガー衝撃！Ｚ編

Despite getting a bit exhausted by this series by the end, I'm glad I stuck through it. The ending sort of repeated the first episode, though it wasn't a 1-for-1 replication. The story once again set up a million characters to get involved in the final fight, though I was a lot more prepared to accept them this time around. Baron Ashura played a pretty big role in the ending as well, which was cool. I really liked how important Mazinger's punch was for the final blow, and the ending was... certainly something.
If the general plot was like a stripped down Giant Robo, the very last episode was like a stripped down End of Evangelion. There was a real "we messed up" feeling at the end, which is kind of cool and ominous, except it doesn't seem like this series continues anywhere!

So yeah, this show was okay. I think overall Getter Robo is just a better fit for me, and that's probably owed mostly to the fact that it has a bunch of great 90s-era OVAs that elevate it above a lot of other anime. Perhaps Mazinkaiser will be the series that finally convinces me of the value of Mazinger, but I probably won't get around to it for a little while.

母性

Following from last week I read basically one full chapter but not much more. We got to see the daughter's perspective on her mother's pregnancy and miscarriage, and we also saw how the blame the mother put on the daughter was once again unwarranted.

At the beginning of chapter 5 we're introduced to two new characters, Toshiko and Akiko, sisters who become involved with the mother after her miscarriage. Toshiko brings the mother into a knitting/crafts club and gives her a new lease on life, and Akiko shows up one day and offers to do a numerology-esque service. Her reading is extremely accurate and the mother is totally convinced of her spiritual power.
After a little while, Akiko offers to connect the mother to her late mother. Once again her words meet all of the mother's needs and expectations, and it's about there that I knew nothing good could come from it. As you might expect, Akiko and Toshiko are scammers playing the long game. After hooking the mother with promise of communication with the dead they start to introduce the concept of オルグ (Org) (A corruption of Orgone, I believe). They say that the daughter has had a negative Org buildup and it's been causing a lot of the bad things that the mother has been through. For a fee the pair sell the mother a medicine intended to help, and they also promise to eventually connect her with their own master, a mysterious figure who has yet to appear.

I've just started the daughter's side of this period in the story. I'm getting close to the end so I'm expecting this to be a big blow up in the story, and I expect it will lead to the disaster that was foreshadowed from the first page. Perhaps I'll finish it this week.

彼氏彼女の事情

I don't remember what put this on my radar, but I decided to watch this for a change of pace after finishing Mazinger. I've been totally hooked from episode 1.

The plot centres around Miyazawa Yukino, a popular girl who is extremely focused on maintaining a public image while she shows her true colours internally and at home. She develops a rivalry with the new boy, Arima Souichirou, who is also an overachiever with a second personality under the hood. The episodes are very entertaining, extremely well produced, and surprisingly full of sweet and sentimental moments.
I'm enjoying it a lot. Definitely looking forward to watching the rest.

くりことびより

A cute surprise manga I read on recommendation.

The story is about a husband and wife who decide to adopt because they can't have children themselves, and the first volume includes them meeting their new child, Kuriko, and spending time with her. Each chapter seems to be broken up with a small cooking section where one of the parents (or both) will teach Kuriko how to make a new snack or sweet.

Each chapter also connects Kuriko's experience with some past experience of the parents. We see how the father also felt abandoned and how he doesn't want Kuriko to ever feel that way again. Kuriko's favourite animal is a mammoth and she gets a cute plush mammoth early on which is very cute and gives Kuriko some more character as she interacts with it.