Japanese Reading Report: 02 November 2025

ファタモルガーナの館

ファタモルガーナの館

I finished the Morgana backstory which helped give some context about who exactly the key characters of the first three doors were. With that, Michel was able to reach the top of the tower but Morgana won't hand over Giselle so easily... she says now Michel's gotta come clean about his true backstory. So now I'm in the Seventh Door, exploring Michel's childhood. I imagine I'm about half way through it since there was a little interlude where we returned to the present, and also the story within the door had a good ending point with Michel being sent to live at the house. I expect now I'll learn about Michel's relationship with Morgana and maybe some unexpected extra bits.

There have been some really powerful emotional parts during Michel's backstory. In particular, his relationship with his brothers feels very well written.

となりの怪物くん

I finished this series. I don't really have much to say about it. I sort of liked the story of one of the side characters more than the main couple, but it was still just a bit meh overall. Great visuals and some funny gags, but I think it was trying too hard at something that I just didn't connect with.

少女革命ウテナ

Started watching this on a whim. The vibes of this show are fantastic. Audio, visuals, it's a really gorgeous show. It's also quite funny. I especially like the "pathetic" characters, like Nanami and Saionji, and I especially loved episodes where their comedy routines were set aside to explore their depth a little bit more. In fact, both characters' relationship with Touga, the "leader" of the 生徒会, really elevate their stories. I suppose it has a bit of a Berserk's Griffith thing going on, where a candle burns brighter in a dark room.

I honestly didn't care much about Utena and Himemiya's relationship for most of what I watched, but the last few episodes where Touga's scheme came to fruition and he won Himemiya off Utena did a really good job of selling the pair. This one might be a 9 or 10.

「選択肢」の選択史

This is a non-fiction book by 下倉バイオ (Shimokura Vio), a scenario writer for Visual Novels (VNs) and other media in Japan. Shimokura goes over a handful of games they worked on to demonstrate different approaches to making VNs.

So far I've read a chapter about a game called 月光のカルネヴァーレ and nearly finished the chapter on on a game called スマガ (Star Mine Girl). Vio uses the challenges of each game to demonstrate different VN principles. In one case he explains how there's a tension in VN writing between making the outcomes satisfy character closure and narrative closure. In 月光のカルネヴァーレ they resolved this by creating two equally valid endings to each main route — one good and one "bitter" — so that they weren't forced to "choose" just one, and to theoretically satisfy every player.
スマガ is a time-loop story, and that opens a lot of creative space for VNs, since their gameplay sort of takes place within player-experienced time loops. By making the character also experience a time loop the writer can bring player and character into sync a little bit, but giving the character "memories" of future events can create new problems that they solved with some writing tricks and good timing.