Japanese Reading Report: 05 October 2025

ファタモルガーナの館

Yet another busy week, but also one that provided relief as a long-anticipated project component was finished this Friday. As an experiment I've decided to include an English-language book I'm currently reading, so I hope you'll enjoy my reflections about Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire.

ファタモルガーナの館

I was able to reach the end of the Third Door just in time.

1869. Jacopo is a high ranking mobster committing his resources towards a trans-European rail network. We're introduce to the White Haired Girl (WHG)—the mysterious recurring character who seems destined towards eternal suffering—who plays the role of Jacopo's devoted wife. This door works very hard to play with the reader's feelings. WHG's affection and patience towards Jacopo is rewarded with verbal and physical abuse, and I was a bit worried that the story would lack any of the warmth present in the prior doors. Thankfully the story quickly introduces WHG's sole ally, Maria the maid, and also provides a touching backstory showing that WHG's faith in Jacopo is based on some very sweet memories. Maria is the childhood friend of Jacopo and she's able to leverage that relationship to act as a mediator between him and WHG.

In the present, however, the story corkscrews sharply until WHG and Jacopo's relationship is as low as it can get. We then discover the secret element that ties all of this tragedy together and reframes the entire story... Maria has been manipulating the married couple from day one, injecting suspicion and distrust on both ends and orchestrating "kind" acts to backfire exactly as she needs to further strain the relationship. At times the recap of events to show Maria's manipulation was a bit tiring—as if the writer couldn't trust us to fill in the gaps—and Maria is cartoonishly evil for much of the story's second half, but her motivation is explained in the final confrontation and I think it worked out fairly well. Just like the other doors, the story paints a lot of information into the background of the setting and then moves on, later zooming out and giving the reader a full view of the story where we see how all those background details contribute to an "Aha!" moment. In this case Maria's history with Jacopo isn't just to demonstrate their bond, it's also a critical detail informing Maria's revenge plot. She believes that as a woman she was born unable to inherit the life she deserves, and she blames Jacopo's father (and by extension Jacopo) for destroying her family line.

You get a sense that in a different world, if things were shuffled just a bit, maybe the three characters could have had a happy ending, but the prioritisation of money and power over relationships and communication leaves everyone either alone or dead.

まったく最近の探偵ときたら

Reached the end of this series. Overall I liked it well enough, though I wouldn't say that anything was particularly moving or memorable. Some of the humour was well done. I think Mashiro and Maki (Kazamaki) were the best realised characters. Mashiro was great for comedy and I think she really demonstrated how a female character can be the butt of the joke in ways that are specific to her circumstances without it feeling like needless cruelty. Maki was probably my favourite character just because of her relationship with Asunaro. On the surface she fits into a trope of a stone-faced hater, but deep down she's really devoted to him.

宇宙の戦士

A conversation I had this week reignited my curiosity about Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers. For that reason I rewatched the Paul Verhoeven 1997 film adaptation and also decided to watch this 1988 Sunrise anime adaptation. I'm vaguely familiar with the contents of the novel from listening to the audiobook (in bits and pieces, it's hard to argue that I really listened to the whole thing) and I'd heard that the anime somewhat faithful, so I was curious to see what a more straight adaptation would look like.

What I liked: The music is campy and fun (example). I think Rico's relationship with his squadmates is fairly well developed, and I like that the anime preserves the power armour from the novel that the film adapted away. As sappy as it was, I liked that this iteration also realised Rico and Carmencita's relationship, albeit in a fairly surface-level way. I think it was interesting that the civilian world was not utopian. Gangs of criminals and police still struggled with each other, and I think that's realistic.

What I didn't like: There were a number of moments that I really like from the novel that the anime almost adapts faithfully but stops before any of the substantial elements emerge. For example, when the boot camp trainee strikes his trainer, the book has a surprisingly nuanced view on the responsibility of authority figures and dissent. Neither adaption faithfully understands the dual-sided nature of chain of command, which is a real shame. The anime is also just, well... a cartoon. It shaves away any depth or commentary to tell a fun Gundam-esque story (understandable given Sunrise's pedigree) except where Gundam is able to demonstrate the issues of war by having human characters on both sides, this anime has cosmic horrors on one side; an ontologically evil force that there is no negotiating with.

One last thought that came to mind regards the Gundam comparison. I watched a video which compared the Federation of Star Trek and the Terran Federation of Starship Troopers, and I think this anime adaptation blends elements of Heinlein's vision with a Gundam aesthetic. The Federation in Gundam is no utopia, of course, but I think most observers will at least agree that they're the lesser of two evils. Maybe the connection between all three properties is just the mythology of military service. They all suggest to the viewer that committing oneself to a larger cause—to protecting people you may never meet—is one way to find purpose. Just forget about the other implications.

ダンダダン

Season 2 finished. This series was really good. I think the adaptation of Jiji and Jashi's story was well done, and the editing for fight scenes, particularly between Jashi and others, was fantastic. Okarun and Momo's relationship was really cute, and I especially loved the way their hands were used to express their connection. As expected, the short training arc featuring the orchestral ghosts was pretty dull (it was a mini arc that almost had me drop the manga) but the addition of music, and the use of colour was well done. Kinta was adapted into the anime really well. I loved his Gundam backpack, the way he proudly sings anime theme songs (and then lowers his voice to a muffled hum when his commute to school intersects with his peers), and his enthusiasm for science fiction. While Okarun is the sci-fi representative in the main team, I often feel like the story favours the supernatural. To that point, it was kind of disappointing that Kinta's efforts are sort of downplayed during the final fight when Momo and Aira are given the final blow. Even just giving Kinta some agency in that last hit would have been cathartic.

As a Bamora superfan I am eager to see the next adaptation when it comes out.

俺物語！！

With Dandadan my backlog was cleared out, and I was finally able to start a new series. So here's 俺物語！！

I don't know if it's something in me or something subtly beautiful about the storytelling, but every other episode has moved me to gentle tears. The first three episodes are a great miniature arc where Takeo, the gentle giant believing that no girl could legitimately see him as a partner, attempts to pair the heroine, Yamato, and his best friend, Suna. Naturally it turns out that Yamato's affection is actually directed towards Takeo, and Suna reveals that his warmth towards Yamato was mostly because she was the first girl to see Takeo as a person just like he does.
I was a bit worried that the series wouldn't have much to say after the relationship between Takeo and Yamato started. They are very sweet towards each other and rarely have any disagreements, but the drama mostly comes from the ways the world interacts with Takeo or in ways Takeo misunderstands Yamato's needs.

I think Takeo is sort of the perfect guy. First of all he's kind of handsome in his own way. On top of that, despite being a bit blunt or unobservant, he's extremely open to learning new things and he literally runs at full speed to correct mistakes once he becomes aware of them. Despite the story being written from his perspective I can definitely see it as a sort of female fantasy of a man who values his girlfriend more than anything else.
I hope Yamato can develop a bit more of a personality, though.

Pale Fire

Okay, so here goes the experimental English reading report section.

Pale Fire is my third Nabokov novel. I've read Lolita (in English and Japanese) and The Enchanter, two novels that feature protagonists who obsess over idealised young girls. I honestly had no idea what to expect with Pale Fire. The table of contents confused me, suggesting that the titular Pale Fire would be less than 40 pages long, but that confusion was quickly extinguished while reading the foreword. Just like Lolita, the entire book from cover to cover is fiction, and the foreword and commentary (the bulk of the book's contents) are written by a fictional character, Charles Kinbote, who shared a personal relationship (real or imagined...) with the fictional author of the in-universe Pale Fire, John Shade. Pale Fire is a poem written by Shade in the weeks leading up to his death, and the book is framed as the preservation and publication of that poem with a(n un)healthy amount of interpretation on Kinbote's part. I appreciate Kinbote's notes at times, and I also recognise that the bulk of narrative exists in his commentary, but the book also does a great job of making me want to shake some humility into him. Shade's poem is really beautiful. I want to say, "It's clear that Shade was a man dealing with regrets, baring his soul and trying to reconcile his (lack of) faith and his impending death." But I'm also cognisant of the fact that my interpretation is both poisoned by Kinbote's commentary and no more profound ( probably less so) than his. As someone who loves to interpret media and say, "I think it's about this." I feel completely called out.

As for the secondary narrative written through Kinbote's narrative, so far I'm not really seeing how it's relevant to the poem. I suspect that Charles Xavier, the king of Zembla, is Charles Kinbote, but I also suspect that I'm intended to make that prediction so that a more interesting revelation will come to light. Xavier's story is a fairly interesting tale of homoeroticism, royal and Zemblan culture, and an attempt to flee to America.
Another secondary narrative is Kinbote's commentary about his relationship with Shade. He seems to be totally unaware of the ways that the Shades (husband John and wife Sybil) don't return his enthusiasm for their friendship. These parts have that beautiful Nabokov, Lolita, style where a man oversteps his bounds without reflecting on his actions.

Lastly I just want to stress that the Pale Fire poem is extremely good. It's layered and harrowing. It's written in such a way that you feel confined to Shade's house, forced to watch the world change through window panes. Time is a strong force within the poems, and the sun and seasons contribute to the landscape that Shade sees. I loved the line about the baseball bat cast by the setting sun on a door knob. I loved the illusion of two worlds overlapping in the reflective surface of windows. It's honestly so beautiful that it actually annoys me when commentary to a line will quote a single word and then spin off into a 5- or 6-page continuation of Xavier's plot.