Reading Report: 28 June 2026

タワーダンジョン

サブマリン

I finally finished this book. Overall I enjoyed the story a lot more than I expected. While it didn't have any conclusion on Tanaoka's case, it uses it as a stage to explore interesting questions about intent in crime, prevention vs punishment of crime, the "good" or "bad" that results from accidents, and more. My favourite character at the end of the story was Wakabayashi, the guy who was responsible for Tanaoka's friend's death and the attempted victim of Tanaoka's revenge plot.

There was a moment near the end after Mutou (the MC) finds out that the accidental victim of Tanaoka's car violence was possibly planning to perform a stabbing, and that by killing that man he may have prevented further harm. I like how Mutou rejects this reasoning, explaining that most people who threaten such crimes don't commit them anyway, and we can't give post-hoc justifications for why tragedies are "a good thing" after all, especially regarding free will and human lives. Later when talking to Tanaoka, he has the opportunity to convey the information about the victim, but when he stops himself he says he only felt he had to say something to make himself feel better, not Tanaoka.

During a conversation with Jinnai (Mutou's colleague), they discuss talking to Wakabayashi more about the incidents surrounding him. Mutou is reluctant to bring up bad memories with him at first, but Jinnai says that kind of thoughtfulness ought only be applied to victims, that the perpetrator of a crime can move past the incident, but it's their responsibility to hold it in their mind. I can see how that kind of reasoning could lead to some pretty bad behaviours from people who see themselves as vigilantes of justice, but I think in this story that reasoning works. Wakabayashi isn't the kind of guy to forget about Eitarou (his victim) anyway.

無職転生Ⅱ

I finished this season of Mushoku Tensei. I didn't realise it, but I guess that's all there is for now.

The last season of the show involved Rudy losing lives and limbs around him, getting another wife, and helping his sister overcome a depressive episode. Overall I enjoyed it fairly well. I liked Roxy's involvement in the story and I liked that, once again, her interest in Rudy is self-motivated and imperfect. I think Sylphy being so open to her husband having two wives is a bit funny but who am I to judge their relationship if everyone is happy with the arrangement.

タワーダンジョン

I started reading this on a whim partially because I saw a random post about it on bluesky (regarding the English release) and the art intrigued me, and partially because watching Mushoku Tensei gave me a bit of an interest in Japanese dungeon crawling in media.

I honestly have to say I've been hooked on this series since I finished the first volume. The world pulls a lot of vocabulary from traditional fantasy, so it doesn't spend a lot of time explaining new ideas. Basically, a bad guy does a bad thing and causes an ominous, massive tower to appear in the middle of a kingdom. The tower is full of mysteries, monsters, and traps, and the main party (parties as of volume 4) we follow is made up of likeable characters. I'm especially fond of Yuva and Lilisen, but some characters from the second party are quite charming as well. There's a bit of high-level political manoeuvring and talk of a power shift in the kingdom that I don't really feel invested in unless it affects the main cast, but when it has impacted the story within the dungeon it feels quite engaging.

妖狐×僕SS

Having finished Mushoku Tensei (until it resumes airing in July), I decided to watch something new. This anime was recommended as a bit of fun. It's basically set in a world where youkai disguise themselves as humans. Riricho is a sad girl who, having experienced rejection countless times throughout her life, no longer wants to form friendships with new people. Sou, a tall, handsome man with heterochromia, forces his way into Riricho's life as her servant. Then Riricho meets a bunch of other youkai/secret service people and so far it's basically been partially a gag anime and partially plot beats that advance Riricho's aversion to having friends.

Various Japanese RPGs

A bit of an odd inclusion but I didn't want to ignore them entirely. As part of my dungeon-crawling interest, before reading Tower Dungeon, I started playing a bit of Wizardry. First it was Wizardry 6 but then I remembered I had 囚われし魂の迷宮 on my PS Vita so I started playing a bit of that. During the Steam Summer Sale I saw that Dungeon Encounters was on sale and decided to get that as well.

The Japanese Wizardry games are interesting to me, and I'd really like to finish one eventually. They're not quite as granular as the western Wizardry games, but they feel less approachable than games like Etrian Odyssey which I've played to death. I always think about the fact that as a youth I basically thought 3D Dungeons were a bad format for dungeon crawling, and now I think they're basically the best way to experience an immersive, truly scary, dungeon. The half-dead run back to town just feels so much more real in winding hallways. 囚われし魂の迷宮 is fairly light on story, though in my time with it I've handled a few requests, including slaying kobolds and collecting potions for the innkeeper.

Dungeon Encounters is the complete opposite experience of any other dungeon crawling game. Anyone who has seen the promotional material for the game will know exactly how it expresses itself. Every "Event" (including shops, healing points, staircases, and more) are simply represented with an Event ID number, and every encounter is represented with an Encounter ID (the same number in either case represents a semi-fixed event or encounter). This gives the game a very orderly feeling, but at the same time it feels very chaotic. As you approach enemy encounter A0 (the game uses hexadecimal to count IDs), you basically have no information about what to expect until you've seen it. Likewise, you basically don't know until you're on the tile whether event 84 is a huge boon or just a riddle that won't matter for 6 floors. The 100-floor dungeon would probably get very exhausting if it wasn't this way, though. I think I'm more willing to forgive some of the quirkier actions, like digging to a floor below (provided there's floor below me) or jumping over a gap (which might be represented as either a towering wall or a river in a game tied to visuals like Etrian Odyssey) simply because of how disconnected the actions are from a representation of reality. Unfortunately there's also basically no story other than some brief character bios, so I don't really know what I'm doing except going deep for fun.