Reading Report: 25 January 2026

機動戦士Zガンダム

Back to a normal schedule, which means a full time job with slim margins for input! As you may have been able to glean from my report last Sunday, I was totally out of it on that day, so I got barely any immersion done then.

ファタモルガーナの館外伝

Thanks to a massive late-night push on Saturday night I actually managed to finish this thing. Through the week I got to the end of the first half of the story, and then I got through the interlude fairly quickly, so I figured with a little push I could reach the end of the game by the end of next week. But, the story in the second half was moving fairly quickly so I decided to push... and because of the inherent writing style of VNs (at least the ones I've played), the story insisted on repeating itself constantly and the whole ordeal took 4 hours. Don't get me wrong, the last hour was the best part of the prologue. It cemented some of the interesting relationships found in the main story and gives a compelling enough reason to want to root for Jacopo's redemption.

Overall I found my experience with the prequel to be pretty dreadful. It filled in details about the story I didn't care about, added characters that were (mostly) uninteresting, and just kept repeating itself for clarity. The original game already did that plenty of times, like the repetition of Giselle and Michel's meeting, but that served the purpose of dispelling a huge obfuscation, plus it acts as the "awakening" moment for both characters. But the story's obsession with repeating Morgana's final days just wore me down to the bone.

I genuinely hope the sequel is kind enough to respect my time. I feel like no story has made me feel such strong resentment and emotional satisfaction at the same time.

走れメロス

I wasn't expecting to finish this book until my next report, but I decided on Saturday to just push through and get it done so I can move on. Overall I probably disliked more stories in this book than I liked, but I don't regret reading it. I think Dazai is a real hit-or-miss author for me, and I probably won't seek out much more of his work.

善蔵を思う
At the end of the day I didn't hate this story, though I preferred the beginning and end more than the meat in the middle. It's kind of wild how many of Dazai's stories are about writers or feature people thinking about the role of writers in Japanese society...

桜桃
It was an okay story. I liked the repeated 「涙の谷。」 sentence. I didn't really get the "parents are more important (大事) than children" thing...

トカトントン
I like that this story is written as a letter. It gives the writing a similar tone to 駈込み訴え, though far less frantic. The story is written from the perspective of a military man who returned to his home town and begun working in a post office. During his time in service another officer died, making him keenly aware of his own fragility and mortality. During that time he heard the sound of hammering in the distance, and ever since that day the sound of hammering became closely associated with all kinds of distracting feelings. It prevents him from finding love or even comfort in things like reading or writing.

心の王者
The last story(?) in the book. It's written more like reflection on the time in his life when he was a student, a part of the world but still separated from reality.

機動戦士ガンダム0083 STARDUST MEMORY

Finished up this series rewatch. It really is a great, short series that demonstrates the corruption of the Federation. I really like how all the "good men" are killed or replaced by corrupt officials, they use the current crisis to seize power, and install the Titans seamlessly into their structure. It really is a scary series of events.

機動戦士Zガンダム

After my rewatch of Stardust Memory I realised there's nothing preventing me from just rewatching the good old anime I enjoyed in 2024. So I'm trucking through a rewatch of Z. It's really good. I forgot how good the transforming-type mobile suits all are (Messala, Gaplant, and of course Baund Doc), and I feel like I'm enjoying some of the story beats, like the Rozamia and Four stuff, even more with new listening abilities.

アニメ親子劇場

During a conversation with my fiance about conservative/religious media this came up so we decided to watch the first episode for some fun. It's basically an 80s anime adaptation of various bible stories through the perspective of two children and a robot. It's kind of fun and the first episode, retelling the story of the Garden of Eden, seemed somewhat faithful to the content. Kind of just a funny novelty. Not sure how much more I'll watch at this stage.

ドラゴンクエストVIIエデンの戦士たち Reimagined

I took some time to finish up the demo for this, which only included the end of the first major island plus some busy work to prepare for the second major island. Overall my experience with the game was quite positive, though I think I may end up waiting a while after the game comes out before playing it through fully.

スーパーロボット大戦ＥＸ

I didn't play a whole lot of this, but I played enough that I feel like it warrants a short shout-out. I'm up to something like mission 12 or 13 on Masaki's route. I feel a bit confused about what's happening in the story since I'm resuming it after such a long time, but it seems like the moment-to-moment drama is fairly straight forward. We're teaming up with a rival army to take a bite out of the even bigger enemy.