Japanese Reading Report: 19 October 2025

ファタモルガーナの館

It's the end of an era. As of yesterday I've completed all graded work for my degree. Now I only need to wait for my graduation in December to formalise everything. Being free of scholarly obligations, one might think I'd have so much more time in the coming weeks and months, but well... the world has ways of keeping me busy.

ファタモルガーナの館

I made steady progress with the Fifth Door this week, finishing it and just starting the Sixth Door.

As I suspected from the more grounded story this time around, the Fifth Door gets into some pretty heavy territory that I found quite compelling. Michel withdraws from Giselle, and in an attempt to help Michel, Giselle enters his room. She finds a painting of a woman with white hair (this detail is not really returned to in this door but it has not been lost on me) completely defaced by furious cuts. Michel enters the room, assumes that Giselle is snooping around to cause him harm, and then threatens her with a knife unless she coughs up her secrets. Giselle is totally speechless. She can hardly gasp out a word in response. That's when we observe Giselle's memories and learn a bit more about her life before working for Michel.

Giselle lived with her older sister and mother. In order to help her sister fund her marriage, and in order to provide for her mother, Giselle begun working for Michel's family. Shortly after working there, Michel's father, Antoine, started to take advantage of her compromised position during the nights. Antoine was sexually and physically abusive and even used knives to etch words into Giselle's legs. After Antoine's wife discovered his infidelity she blamed Giselle, and an arrangement was made to send her to work for Michel in exile.

So, yes, Giselle was hiding something from Michel, but it wasn't malicious. She only wanted to protect him from the cruelty of his own family. Her eagerness to involve herself in Michel's life was an attempt to make the best of a bad situation. But it still wasn't time for Michel to know any of that yet. Speechless, Giselle fled the house into the woods, collapsed, and fell unconscious.

The next chapter of this door was short and initially quite hopeful. It began with Giselle waking up in a nearby town. A villager called Amédée found her and took her in. Life in the village promised to be simple, hard work and Giselle decides it's better than the alternatives, plus Amédée was so sweet to her that she felt she had finally found a home. After a series of cute and uplifting scenes, some dark clouds begun to gather. Someone alerted local authorities to the existence of the village and everyone was compelled to toil even harder to make up for years of "tax" never paid. One day, Giselle is dragged into the town center under suspicion of theft. She's been nothing but honest, so she's unable to confess to her uncommitted crimes. To make things even worse, Amédée leads her interrogation, breaking any sense of trust she had developed towards him up to then. Amédée and his crew are downright cruel, torturing her in sickening ways to draw out a confession that can never come. Eventually Giselle remembered something Michel told her when she first showed up: if she was only interested in fortune she could take the belongings of the house and sell them. She passed the information onto the villagers hoping that the promise of money would be enough to save herself. Amédée and a group of men dragged Giselle to the house, beat down the door, and were confronted by a furious Michel.
Michel convinced the villagers that he would inflict a death curse upon anyone who stepped any closer, and instructed them to leave Giselle behind if they wanted to live.

Michel's fury was deflated by Giselle's self-flagellation and hopelessness. They finally spoke for real—Michel promised to just listen and believe Giselle—and Michel came to realise his own failure to trust others. Michel is still reticent to share his own story when pressed. Either way, they make up and start to enjoy a more normal life together for a while. The following life scenes were pretty cute and advance time a fair bit—a little over a year, I think. When spring came around for a second time, Giselle revealed that she started to grow roses in the garden but only one ever bloomed. Michel picked the rose, placed it in Giselle's hair and asked for the honour to paint her. The following scene was full of nervous energy. Giselle had trouble expressing her happiness about being adored and Michel had trouble being honest about why he was doing the adoring. After some shy conversation Giselle blurted out that she liked Michel. The relationship looked like it was about to reach the next stage, but right when they were about to embrace, Giselle had a flashback to when Antoine first pushed himself on her. She recoiled and pushed Michel away. Thankfully it doesn't take too much to try again. Michel was given the opportunity to return Giselle's affection, which he did, and their relationship sort of, finally, started, for real.

After a few pleasant scenes where the couple shared a life together, the story reconnected with the events of the Fourth Door. Men stormed the house aiming to kill Michel and Giselle, the pair ran up the tower as a last line of defence, and Michel somehow managed to engineer a situation where Giselle life was spared at the cost of his own.

We returned to the maid in the present. She informed us that the next story would bridge our understanding of her from the moment of grief when Michel died until now. She opened the Sixth Door (1099-????) which reveals a grieving Giselle gripping at Michel's bloodied robes. A purple butterfly approaches her and speaks, offering her a faustian bargain.

暁のヨナ

Covered a fair bit of the story this week. Yona and Haku escape to various encampments, towns, and cities. First is Haku's own tribe. Haku's younger brother, Tae-Yeon, is very cute and Yona fawns over him in a way that reminded me a lot of how Tohru treats Momiji from Fruit's Basket. It made me wonder about the history of this sort of relationship in fiction: a (usually) non-sexual relationship between a female protagonist and a prepubescent surrogate younger brother. Perhaps it comes without the implications of a boy her age (sexual baggage) or a blood relationship (familial expectations). Anyway, just something I'll be observing in the future.

They're pursued closely by Suon's men who want to capture Yona alive. Haku fights fiercely to protect Yona, suffering severe injuries in the process. More fleeing, and they meet Yun and Ik-Su; there's a cute backstory for them before they take Yun along for the adventure.

Yona needs to collect a bunch of dragon boys for some important reason, and that starts by meeting the White Dragon, Kija. Kija has one big hand... which is an extremely funny "ability" to me. Like, it seems to work out great for him, but it's also just a big, strong hand.
I really like the dynamic between Kija and Haku. Both are infatuated by Yona so they have a cute rivalry where they try to one-up each other.

The next dragon is the Blue Dragon Shin-Ah. His backstory is extremely sad but also quite cute. Shin-Ah's power comes from his eyes, which is actually a liability because he's basically incapable of using it without risk to friends. He grew up "blind", wearing a mask with no eye holes, to prevent misuse. In terms of his personality, Shin-Ah kind of fits the shy, soft, strong boy archetype.

There was a small diversion where we saw what Suon was up to, but honestly I don't care that much. Instead the latest arc in Yona's story has been the group's arrival to a port town. They've vaguely met the Green Dragon, a guy who can glide in the air. He's a real lady's man, but he hasn't met Yona properly yet. I hope their chemistry is fun.

キミと越えて恋になる

The first episode of this aired. It's kind of funny how I just heard about it randomly and it suddenly became the one anime of the season I was anticipating.

Well, I thought it was a pretty good first episode. It wasn't very different to the manga, but I thought they did a good job of translating both the cute and handsome parts of Hidaka, so I guess that's a success. The anime medium also gave me a better sense of what the Beast village was like. In the manga the still images gave me the impression that it was just like any other part of Japan, but it has a bit of a western fantasy aesthetic.

The episode ended at the exact moment that I decided I liked the manga—the scene where Asaka and Hidaka get locked in the gym storehouse together. It's very intense, though I think Hidaka's tongue is a bit more confronting when animated.

Pale Fire

I finished Pale Fire. I thought the ending of Kinbote's commentary was quite fun, but the end of the poem didn't really do too much for me. I don't have too much to add except that the ending quite engaging. As an apology here is another nugget of wisdom I liked.

He lived too much in his library, too little among boys and youths. Writers should see the world, pluck its figs and peaches, and not keep constantly meditating in a tower of yellow ivory[...] (p. 224)

Ultimately I really liked the book. I think Charles Kinbote is a really fun character, and I like how well Nabokov wrote characters who withhold information strategically for their own benefit. There's just so much pleasure in every sentence, and that couldn't be more evident than when I read any other English prose. Speaking of which...

To Kill a Mockingbird

I started reading this book. My father actually wanted me to read this and I found a nice second-hand copy that I've held onto for a little while, so I figured it was as good a time as any.

I'll start by saying that I really like this; my only caveat is that I don't feel my brain burn passionately as much reading this as it does while reading Nabokov. With that caveat, let's discuss it on its own merits.

I've never read a book set in the American South, and I think the most enjoyable part of book for me is learning about the lives of people at that specific place and time. Scout and Jem are great point of view characters because they are still learning about the world around them, and as we see Jem reach puberty we also see how he separates himself from the "child world", leaving Scout behind. The amount of casual and aggressive racism is also very prominent, of course. I certainly don't think I'm perfect, but the ways people are racist feels absurd to the point that I genuinely wonder how anyone could hold such thoughts in their hearts. Maybe the real tragedy is that anyone can given the right circumstances. The book doesn't even suppose that things will get better soon, though it seems quietly hopeful that, given enough time, things will eventually improve.

Apart from the racial elements of the book, the stories within the Maycomb neighbourhood are quite nice. Ms Rachel is a recurring character that I always like to see, and Mrs Dubose is a grouch whose death revealed the ways people in the town conceal their suffering.