Reading Report: 10 May 2026

Mezzo Forte

This week was fairly light partially because I've been busy trying to finish RRRRRR for the month and partially because I have some family plans over the weekend that limit how much I can get done. So it's a bit shorter than usual, but everything is moving forward slowly.

オオルリ流星群

This week I started on the second chapter of the book which is from Chika's perspective. Learning more about Chika has given the story a bit of depth. She shares ways that she bonded with Keisuke, the dead boy from the group's highschool life. So far I feel like the story is sort of a mix of Keisuke memories and then Keiko/Suiko observatory stuff. I still haven't had a big fire in my belly to read this, but it's moving.

Various 梅津泰臣 works

MEZZO -メゾ-

I continued my Umetsu Yasuomi watching with the TV adaptation of Mezzo. Unlike the other Umetsu OVAs this has no adult content (just some nice outfits) and it's a lot more episodic. It still follows the original cast from Mezzo Forte, and the trio is still really fun. The combat scenes are great, and the episodes are fairly satisfying, though it doesn't quite have the fire of previous Umetsu stuff I've watched.

Various 海明寺裕 works

白昼夢

One of Kaimeiji's manga that isn't available on MangaZ. I had to source it elsewhere. Also it turns out it was the last manga he made with the help of his wife after he was hospitalised...

This is another anthology manga, though I believe it might be his best. It has a few multi-part chapters featuring horse(girl) rearing which is pretty fun, and all of the standalone chapters have interesting executions. Still as with all of his works, I wish any or all of those chapters could exist as lengthy 150-page manga.

Jorge Luis Borges Stories

The Library of Babel

This is one of Borges' most iconic stories, I think. It's about an (theoretically) infinite library that contains hexagons and hexagons of randomly generated books. The story is written from the perspective of one of the library's inhabitants (I believe everyone is born in and dies in the library so it's essentially the only place someone can inhabit) and it has a fairly detached tone. The story mostly involves faith and meaning in the chaos of the library. It explains several groups of thought within the library, though I found it lacked the personal touch I liked from Funes (from last week).

Death and the Compass

This was probably my least favourite story so far. It's quite similar to The Garden of the Forking Paths in that it's a life or death story with a few characters. It was sort of theologically themed but mostly it was just a short murder mystery that turns out to be a revenge plot against the detective.

The Book of Sand

A really short story about a man who purchases the titular Book of Sand from a travelling bible salesman. The premise was very interesting: the Book of Sand is seemingly infinite. No matter how hard you try, you cannot open its first or last pages, and no matter what page you open the page number and contents appear to be basically random. The narrator becomes obsessed with the contents of the book but then decides he needs to give it up, so he hides it in a library and tries to take his mind off it. And that's it.

ダンダダン

Volume 19 finally has the cast escaping the cursed box. It also features some characters I had basically forgotten existed (similar to volume 18...). A new(?) challenger, an "Occult Collector", helps the protagonists defeat the current threat, and then he steals the creature's powers and disappears into the shadows. Also when Momo finally gets out of the box she's very small which is so cute.