Japanese Reading Report: 14 September 2025

Island

この素晴らしい世界に祝福を！２　ＯＶＡ

This is the only anime content I watched in the week, and to be honest it wasn't particularly memorable. Certainly not as good as the previous OVA and not as good as season 2 generally.

The crew basically discover the lab of an old perverted guy who was trying to build the ultimate automated partner. And that's about all there is to comment on. After several failed creations he finally perfected his design, and it turns out the inventor was a masochist who wanted a dominatrix robot, dashing Kazuma's dream of adding a submissive robot to the party.

ねずみの初恋

I read this upon recommendation from a friend. It's a manga about a girl, Nezumi, who has been raised as an expert assassin who falls in love with a seemingly regular guy, Ao.

The story starts with some pretty heavy depictions of Nezumi's abuse and upbringing, and it also doesn't shy away from depictions of the brutal ways she kills people. I think the goal is to sort of put you in her head and desensitise the reader about her every day habits before dropping the first twist of the story: Nezumi's handler, Iruka, knew that she was dating Ao and he sees Ao as a threat to the organisation so he tasks Nezumi with killing Ao in front of him. Nezumi can't do it and instead make a deal with Iruka to bring Ao into the organisation by making him into an assassin as well.

Ao is a pretty soft guy. He seems like the kind of person who couldn't harm a fly, so the challenge of raising him to kill within a month is a fairly interesting initial hook. He and Nezumi also have a fairly cute relationship, though there have been additional complications introduced by the end of the first volume. I might continue reading, but probably not right away.

キミと越えて恋になる

I found out that this existed via a YouTube video discussing Shoujo anime that mentioned its upcoming anime adaptation. Instead of waiting for the anime I thought why not just read the manga since the first volume is currently free on CMOA (until Sep 23).

This manga is about a world where beastfolk, anthropomorphic animals, are steadily integrating into human society. A human girl, Asaka, and a half-beastfolk boy, Hidaka, become friends and develop feelings for each other. Hidaka receives a lot of discrimination for his race, so a lot of the story in the first volume involved convincing other human students to give Hidaka a chance. There's an additional quirk; Asaka's "pheromones" appear to make Hidaka insatiable, so the pair are trying to manage that aspect of the relationship as well.

I might wait for the anime to continue the story instead of reading more of the manga if only because I'm getting plenty of reading time through visual novels right now (see Island below...).

ランス01 光をもとめて

I decided to play the game with a new frame of mind to hopefully prolong and get more value out of game sessions. Basically I'm attempting to play the game more as a visual novel with no particular hopes of sexual events. Regardless, I only ended up playing one hour-long session of the game. I made some more progress climbing the ranks of the colosseum, paid the hint robot for advice about ecchi events with girls, and spent a bunch of time running around town trying to make those hints come true (sadly none of them did). I also grinded a little bit. Hopefully I'll be powerful enough to deal with the colosseum's next contender soon.

ISLAND

I was hoping once again to finish this game before the week was over, but the last route is just a little bit too long to make it feasible with my schedule. I think I'm about 90% through the last route of the game (perhaps, hopefully, we'll see). I apologise once again for creating a wall of black text, but I still consider this part of the game somewhat special, so if this is your first time reading my reports and you're curious about Island as a Visual Novel, I suggest you read this report instead.

This week I continued the 冬編. Setsuna gets a job working for Sarah Garland as her personal Knight (basically just an escort for her daily activities). After feeding some outcast children in the ruins of the Island—the environmental dome that seems to house the last of humanity—he is abducted and taken to meet Karen Kurtz in her "lair" where he is convinced to help her reform the Island. Sarah also endeavours to change things for the Island, and the two girls have shared values, but a history of violence means they both have difficulty trusting that the other side is coming to conversation faithfully. There's a bit more trauma and connection between the two characters, but that's basically the source of their mutual repulsion. Lastly, we spend most nights going out of the Island and searching the frostbitten landscape for bits and pieces with Linne hoping to build a device that can "save the Island". One of the objects we find outside is the cassette player Rinne gifted to Setsuna in another time. By pure luck we're able to gather a power source to make it work and play the audio recorded on it, but only Linne's earbud is working and we're forced to rely on her account of what she heard. Once again this moment that was built up for quite a long time ended up fairly flat. Ah well. More interestingly, the machine Linne is building seems to be a time machine, though it isn't totally functional yet. We tested it once and had an experience that felt like returning to the Summertime Island, but it was "cancelled" and we haven't tried again since. The idea of "nearly but not quite" travelling back in time makes me wonder if this time period (or if the Summer time period) is actually a point in time or if it's just a point in digital space or something. There haven't been a lot of elements that indicate a virtual existence, but it's on my mind.

While spending time with Sarah we learn a bit about her relationship with a previous Setsuna in this timeline. He was part of a small group who left the Island in search of Avalon, a theoretical land of plenty across the sea. The expedition group returned with "burn wounds", and the gate out of the Island was sealed with the church claiming that the outside world only offers visitors slow and painful death.
After spending several days with all three girls Setsuna finally feels like he can persuade Sarah and Karen to settle their differences. Sarah is willing to go along with it at first, but Linne interrupts the conversation, and a series of unfortunate events lead to Sarah believing that we've taken advantage of her trust. We run off with Linne where Setsuna then also has to confront the fact that he was working so hard to help Sarah and Karen because deep down he didn't believe that Linne's solution for saving the Island would actually work. Despite being hurt by this, Linne isn't completely discouraged, saying that she won't let go of us no matter how much we try to run. We take her to a rendezvous point to meet Karen where she informs us that she is giving up her plan to reform the Island and will just try to live out the rest of her days as well as she can. Linne instead convinces Karen to stay at her secret base near the outskirts of the Island. Karen even gets to see the outside for the first time, commenting on how warm the sunlight is (despite the frigid environment). She asks if we've ever seen what's over the horizon and we have to admit that none of us know what's over there because the trip would just be too hazardous. It's sort of an intriguing question, but I wonder if we'll actually answer it at this point.

Setsuna packs from things to bring to Karen at the hiding place, but on his way out he hears that the "culprit" the community is about to execute is Sarah! Setsuna rushes over to save her but is captured in the process. It turns out the death of Sarah's father was pinned on her and the community has labelled her a witch. Now both Sarah and Setsuna are being burned at the stake. Sarah points out that everyone at the execution is elderly and explains that it was mostly old people who pushed to end the production of personal IDs (the system that lets new people work, earn money, eat, and enjoy other privileges). It seems that the older generation is just doing anything they can to maintain power in an increasingly resource-starved world.
Setsuna convinces the crowd that Sarah really is a witch, and she'll curse anyone involved in her killing. It doesn't save the day, but his words do scare the crowd off which gives the pair the ability to break free from their bindings. Unfortunately it's not enough. Sarah has taken too much damage from her abuse and accepts that she's going to die. Setsuna seems to lose consciousness and wakes up with Linne. From there the story sort of slows down, saying that resources are now even more scarce and Linne and Setsuna become wanted criminals. One day after returning from scavenging outside, Karen develops a fever. The fever quickly progresses and the story manages to tie up a few loose ends in a satisfying way. It turns out Karen has been afflicted with 煤紋病, an illness that causes burn-like blackening and severe paine and death in victims which has been in the background of Island's plot since the very beginning. It turns out the expedition that left for Avalon 5 years ago didn't get "burned", it's just that every resident of the Island has 煤紋病 and isn't affected by it in the artificial environment. It wasn't said explicitly but I imagine either Linne doesn't have the illness or she has avoided the negative outcomes because she exclusively went scavenging at night.
We rush out of hiding to find a hospital that can help, going as far as putting Linne's ID on Karen to raise her status, but it's not enough and there's nothing that can help. Karen dies in our arms.

Linne and Setsuna get caught grieving in the open. They get separated and Setsuna is sentenced to death via exile. At the gate to the outside world, Linne's foster father, Nehan, shows up and makes the seemingly unforced error of being exiled alongside us. Setsuna is hopeful that they can find the side entrance he, Linne, and Karen have used in the past to re-enter the Island, but there's a strong blizzard and Nehan is old and dealing with an existing leg wound. At this point there was no surprise; Setsuna has a conversation with Nehan that brings some peace for both of them, and then Nehan dies. Setsuna is also at the end of his rope and collapses. In Setsuna's mind we recap some of the theories that were raised during this route—Schrödinger's Cat, the Akashic Records, Tachyons, and the Prisoner's Dilemma. Setsuna calls them 机上の空論—Armchair Theories—and wonders what good any of them are in practice. It seems like he's finally given up...
Finally we wake up in Linne's hideout. It turns out she survived the earlier apprehension because Karen had her ID and Linne was mistaken for an unimportant child. Now Linne claims to have made good progress with her machine, and she seems to be in good spirits despite everything. I have no idea what will happen next, but I wonder how much further the story can develop within the last 10% on this route... unless there's another route.

トラベル★ジャンクション

Another week where I was able to join part of a disjointed session of this game. I was able to see a sex scene with Chieko and a sex scene with Sumire.

I suppose as a mild correction to the assessment from last week, the sexual dynamic is not quite as "free love" as the first sexual encounter suggested. Instead I would say the game presents a variety of sexual fantasies, perhaps with the hope of resonating strongly with at least one, if not multiple, based on the player's tastes.
Chieko's sex scene starts with a kind of pratfall, exposing her body beneath a kimono. It includes a lot of rhetoric where the player character accuses her of leading him on, and it's mostly a one-sided encounter. It's worth noting, maybe, that this scene seems to be completely optional—you can choose to help her up and the player character's behaviour reflects whether you are "cruel" or kind. I think the sex scene could have been explored more deeply. It ends fairly quickly without much satisfaction and the game immediately jumps to the next scene with no indication about how Chieko felt afterwards. I haven't seen her in the game since, but I would be curious to know how it changes the player character and Chieko's dynamic.

Sumire's sex scene was a bit more amusing. After coming home from the Chieko event, Sumire is waiting for the player in his room. She sort of acts as though she's drugged or drunk as she comes onto the player, but you quickly realise that she's delirious with a fever. Just like with Chieko, the player is given the option whether or not to take advantage of Sumire's situation. Unlike Chieko, this scene is a bit more involved with several scenes and positions, and also unlike Chieko this choice leads to a bad ending where Sumire dies from her illness and haunts the player for his selfish decision. It was an amusing and somewhat unexpected result.