Reading Report: 14 June 2026
This week was mostly spent reading since I wanted to catch up with my ダンダダン backlog and also finish チェンソーマン now that the series is over. I was also occupied with some translation work (to be announced later), and on Friday and Saturday (today) I'm at a wedding so that has also put a small pause on my input.
サブマリン
I managed to read ahead of my expected pace this week with a few good days where I read quite a bit. I feel like I have a much better grasp of what's going on in the story this week. Basically Mutou is investigating the circumstances around Tanaoka's carjacking and the death of a jogger struck by his car. As part of his investigation, Mutou found out that Tanaoka had lost people to similar incidents twice in his life. The first was his parents being killed and the second was his friend Eitarou. The second incident also involved a third boy, Mamoru, who Mutou has spoken to about the whole thing. Meanwhile there's a side story where Mutou is "working" with a guy called Shun who basically gave him a tip about a future crime that was going to happen. With that tip and the help of his co-worker, Jinnai, Mutou is able to prevent some dude from stabbing children on their way to school.
ダンダダン
I'm finally caught up to the volume releases of this manga. There were a few moments that dragged on for me, like the airplane conflict, but overall I liked the three volumes I read. It's sad to see Momo's shrunk arc ending, but I think it was pretty good and I liked seeing the stakes escalate. The Jiji vs the Smoke Man fight was really great.
無職転生
I find the numbering of the Mushoku Tensei anime to be weird and frustrating, but I've decided to separate out report SKUs based on how the anime separates the story by roman numerals. So I finished Mushoku Tensei I, I guess. The second half of this part wasn't as interesting as the first half for me, but it still had some good moments. The beastkin village was really fun and I really liked how Elis and Roxy grew throughout this part. I was glad to see how strongly the past life impacted Rudy's depression moment at the end of the part as well. I'm including the Elis OVA episode as part of this series since Crunchyroll did, and it was just okay. It had one cool combat sequence in the woods, but ultimately felt a bit pointless. Maybe if that princely magician shows up in the main story it will retroactively become meaningful.
無職転生Ⅱ
I only watched the 0th episode of this. This is the episode where we see what happened to Sylphiette after the disruption event early-ish in the first part. It turns out she was teleported high into the sky and then fell right into the court of a princess. She's given the dumbest looking glasses to hide her eye colour from humans who might fear her. There was sort of a yuri bait moment from the princess at one point, and it's clear that all is not well in the castle.
チェンソーマン
Once again I'm cursed with that thing where I have nothing to say about a series I just finished. Chainsaw Man has been going on for my entire Japanese learning journey, and reading part one was a really special moment for me. Part two was a real let down and the ending was no exception. I feel like Fujimoto was trying to appeal to some non-existent fan by giving something of a happy ending to Denji, but it just didn't work for me. The final major fight was okay.
とんがり帽子のアトリエ
I've resumed this series since all my other manga is exhausted. Witch Hat has such beautiful art, but I find the writing to drag a bit too much, partially due to how much they want to explain the world and magic. The main conflict in volume two with the river and Agate's anxiety was cool, and I liked how she and Koko worked around the requirement that a witch doesn't show her writing tools to non-magicians.