Reading Report: 04 January 2026

ファタモルガーナの館

Welcome to the new year. I've made some minor adjustments to the organisation of my reports this year (partially to benefit me at the slight expense of the user, sorry), so the urls and titles will look a little bit different and any cached urls for 2025 reports might be a bit broken until you visit the pages again.

These cross-year reports are always a little bit awkward, but what can we do? Let's make 2026 full of reading.

For some reason the variety of things I read, watched, and played was very high this week. A lot of single volumes, maybe a bit of "spreading myself too thing" (we'll see how it pans out), and also just a bit of free time that let me indulge in some nostalgic anime (Giant Robo mostly).

ファタモルガーナの館

I finally did it. I finished Fata Morgana (SORT OF). Michel faced all of the people who betrayed him with compassion, saw Morgana off, and then waited for Giselle. And waited, and waited, and waited, and waited... but what's waiting a few centuries after all this time?

８月３１日のロングサマー

Volume 10 was another amazing entry in this series. Following from volume 9, the central plot point is that Takaya and Kana are looking after Takaya's young cousin and sort of playing up being a make-believe father and mother for her. That sort of comes to a head when they're able to help her let out some of her frustration about her parents' high expectations.

The other part of the volume focused on Takaya and Kana getting closer than ever to kissing. It becomes a catalyst for some really heavy feelings that both characters have because of Kana's previous relationship. The writing and visuals give a really strong sense of Takaya's pain that he can never be Kana's "one and only". From her side (though we don't see much yet), Kana sees Takaya's kissing face in a pretty grotesque way and implies that her past experience with romance might be heavier than she's previously expressed.

Apparently the next volume comes out in February. I'll be counting the days.

メガロザリア

Volume 2 has been pretty fun. Rosalia continues to eliminate her opponents and Pamela, the sharp-eyed investigator, figures out that Rosalia is abusing witch powers. When I read this series I am reminded of 無能なナナ. Both series involve deceit, magic (sort of), and contrived murder plots which give just enough spice to keep any chapter interesting. The second half introduces some additional intrigue as not everyone in Rosalia's castle are who they seem. It also introduces and then quickly resolves (sort of) a fairly interesting relationship. The resolution felt a bit rushed, but I suppose it's in service of hastening Rosalia's own drama.

おジャ魔女どれみ

I started watching this as a sort of media trade with a friend (he'll be reading ８月３１日のロングサマー... hopefully). It's a magical girl anime about an over-eager young girl who wants to be a witch. The writing has been pretty fun and the art is quite nice, though it's one of those 50-odd episode anime with half a dozen seasons, so I'm not sure how much I'll watch before I move onto other things.

The 20 episodes I watched were surprisingly pretty good. Doremi herself is a fun character. She's sort of like a less competent Sakura from Card Captor, but the plot leans more into comedy, so it's never really a problem. Doremi's friends give a bit of texture to the experience as well, though so far I don't think the episodes focusing on them have been too interesting.

ファタモルガーナの館外伝

The prequel game that came packaged with the copy of Fata Morgana I bought, this tells the story of Morgana and Jacopo in more detail, I suppose. It's meant to be about half as long as the main game, so I look forward to the more succinct, perhaps more punchy, story.

It starts familiarly, with Morgana being tortured by the evil lord she described in her backstory. This time we get to see her suffering in full-art CG, and we also find that her facial disfigurement is the result of her curse/hatred towards others (if this came up in the main game, I forgot it).

After setting things up, the perspective mostly changes to Jacopo and we see his plot to free the slaves from the evil lord. This plot involves a newly introduced character, Gracian, who I figured would die immediately since he wasn't in the main game, but so far he's stuck around (good for him!).

I'm at the point where Morgana has been conscious for a little while and has had a couple of conversations with Jacopo. A lot of the Morgana time has been spent on flashbacks further contextualising her relationship with her mother.

走れメロス

As part of my yearly goal I would like to read 12 books this year. As such, I don't want to drag my feet. I browsed my bookshelf and saw this and decided I might as well start with a classic. This is actually an anthology book that contains a few stories by Osamu Dazai, so I'll be marking which ones I read in relevant reports. It's also a "green book" version, which just means the publication is meant for younger readers. Because of that it has furigana for (almost?) every kanji, which is sort of a weird experience.

走れメロス
Naturally the first story in the book is the titular "Run, Melos". This story is ～24 pages long. I only learned at the end that it's an adaptation of a German work called Die Bürgschaft (The Pledge) by Friedrich Schiller. It probably shouldn't surprise me since I liked this story and the only other story by Dazai I've particularly liked was also a (loose) adaptation (more on that when I get to it in this book). The story is basically about a young man who is forced to push himself to the edge of his own spirit to save his best friend. Melos is good natured but doesn't take his situation seriously, which becomes his undoing. While I found it hard to sympathise with him - because the strife he goes through that forces him to "Run!" is sort of self-inflicted - I really enjoyed the ending scene when he and his friend apologise to each other for each of their tiny specks of doubt. It really cemented their friendship as something solid, despite it being such a short story.

畜犬談
I'm only 5 pages into this story and I had to cut off my reading at sort of an awkward place, which feels like a perfect time to mention one of the things I feel so conflicted about Dazai's writing. His long run-on paragraphs are full of energy and great in the moment, but they're like a highway with no exit ramps. For casual reading I feel like the only way to really enjoy the work is either set aside enough time to read through an entire story or get lucky enough to find an exit before you get exhausted, or just accept that sometimes you'll be closing the book in the middle of an extended thought. Anyway, this story is about a guy who seems to hate and fear dogs so far, but I wonder if that will change as it goes.

ゲッターロボ

I bought the entire physical reprint of this manga series some time last year and then I didn't really read them! So I want to fix that and actually get through the entire saga of Getter Robo. I (mostly) love the anime so I have no excuse.

Since I've had a bookmark in this since last time I read it, I resumed around the halfway point. The chapter introduced Musashi, the would-be pilot of Getter 3. The chapter focused on a Saurian plot to raise the temperature of Hokkaido (and eventually Japan and the world) so high that no human can live there. There was also a plot to "devolve" humans, which eventually lead to Dr Saotome and Hayato performing a biopsy of a devolved person. I mostly found it noteworthy because Hayato's position, "We can't concern ourselves with human rights when the entire species hangs in the balance." Is a very complicated position. It sort of comes to the forefront later when Ryou refuses to destroy a Saurian lab because it would mean ending the lives of countless suffering "human guinea pigs". He and Hayato disagree on a pretty fundamental aspect of best practices, and I think that's a strength in the writing.

The final chapter of the volume was sort of a cliffhanger for the second volume (which is also the last of the original Getter Robo arc in this version of print). The Saurians develop an advanced jellyfish mechasaurus which can absorb energy to grow. Anything that goes into it dissolves and becomes more energy, so neither energy nor physical attacks work. The volume ends with Getter Robo diving into it and blasting it with all the energy they have, hoping to overload it and blow it to bits.

ジャイアントロボ THE ANIMATION 地球が静止する日

The spirit of Super Robots entered me this week, I guess. I decided to rewatch this series which I adored when I first watched it in 2024.

This OVA is just extremely high quality. The animations are gorgeous, the music is perfect (especially Giant Robo's theme song), and the cast, despite being quite large, is balanced just enough that you get to see the protagonist, Daisuke, develop with their involvement.

ドラゴンクエストＩＶ導かれし者たち

In addition to other kicks, I just felt like playing Dragon Quest lately. DQIV is pretty approachable for the type of casual play I can commit to because of the chapterly design. The language is also so much more approachable than any game I've played recently... it really goes to show how different a text can be depending on the genre and intended audience.

I played up to the end of Chapter 1, saving the kidnapped children as Ryan (Ragnar in English) with my trusty companion, Hoimin. The whole thing took about 2 hours and it was just a fun time. I especially took advantage of the party chat to try to squeeze as much dialogue out of Hoimin as I could. I thought it was cute that he comments on how Ryan blushes when the townspeople thank him for his duties. It adds a bit of playful texture to both Ryan and Hoimin.