Features Cats - inspired by @cat 's suggestion of 猫ホームズ
I read 三毛猫ホームズの登山列車 | L30 over Christmas.
This was pretty standard fun - a variety of Japanese tourists to the Alps get caught up in a series of murders. And a bonus was that it felt a bit festive due to plenty of snowy mountain scenes.
This was as a whole really interesting and really mixed memoir/essays on Japanese language, from 李 琴峰, a Taiwanese author who learnt Japanese as a second language, to a level where she writes award winning prose!
I did wonder while reading it, who the target audience of the book is.
It’s a real mix of snippets of Taiwanese history, life in Taiwan/Japan, analysis on Japanese grammar points, Chinese poets, linguistic differences between Chinese, Japanese, and English, and probably more things.
Congrats!!
So many people got a blackout this year (I say this like I know how it went last year, I don’t), I fell like y’all deserve a prize or something. Here’s the bingo cup:
Well, I did a post-bingo victory-lap and crammed another manga to fill one more last-minute square… kind of wish I had those hours of my life back, though
I5 - Science fiction: 1: BIRDCAGE 108 (無料版) | L24??. Plus 3 bonus stars for being the first to rate, grade, & review on Natively!
Post-World War 4, Japan has been barred by international bodies from operating aircraft. To get around this restriction, labs have created hybrid humans who can fly with anti-gravity devices. Hayato Hakoda is one such hybrid, whose first day at the 108 research lab has him sent on a mission to rescue a professor who is being hunted by the mysterious katana-wielding hybrid Ranmaru. From what I gather, this was originally a webcomic that was re-published as an ebook, and it shows.
I didn’t realize it was a self-published comic or full-colour until I started reading it, and boy I will never take standard text sizes and black-and-white speech bubbles for granted again. It was annoying to read from a format standpoint alone, and the contents didn’t really improve my opinion of it at all. It felt like the author just wanted an excuse to draw action poses of people flying and fighting; I couldn’t tell you why they’re flying or why they’re fighting, and never got interested enough to want to find out.
Well, considering how little I feel like reading prose right now AND how little time there’s left, I decided to just have a proper look at the books I have read this year to find one that features colors I really like. And luckily enough, there was a couple. I picked 本好きの下剋上 ハンネローレの貴族院五年生2 | L31 because I’d be glad to just have some 本好き on my board.
I own it but the first pages start with the engagement thing and not from childhood how the anime went, so I wasn’t sure if it’ll be the same cozy slice-of-engineering with possible faraway romance vibe the anime had. How did it go?
After checking out this manga in English, I was conflicted about the age difference. How does the story feel in the novel?
The manga (and from your comment the anime) only reorder things, the content is the same. I feel like the manga order makes a little bit more sense narratively, but the LN (starting as you said) felt more impactful. (That being said, I am biased since I started with the LN). The drama part is quickly dealt with and then we go to the cozy engineering-and-cooking thing.
I really didn’t think about the age difference, since you can’t really feel it (she doesn’t act like she is ~40 since she basically lived in a void for like 20 years). I am way more conflicted about the fact that he is her nephew (even if they aren’t technically sharing blood). But other than that, the story felt painfully slow
I’m going to declare that my card for the year! Congrats everyone, it’s been really fun following along with your reading, and hope to see you next year.
total squares: 22, bingos: 7
overview
January:
Category: Read a book and its adaptation
I read シャドーハウス Vol 1 (Shadows House) and watched the first 2 anime episodes that perfectly cover Volume 1. It was great - definitely recommend!
昴とスーさん 1巻 | L22Category: unusual genre for me. I’ve never read a slice of life manga, and this also has other elements I don’t want to spoil that I’ve not approached yet. I left the first review if anyone is interested, I definitely recommend.
My last slot filled is the “Revenge” one, with the series
I had to do some really intensive reading to finish the 4 volumes of this series before the end of the year. Difficultly was a lot higher than I original expected - there’s large amounts of religious-related terms I was not familiar with, not to mention half of the characters spoke in very fancy polite language full of uncommon kanji (and no furigana), while other half used extremely slang-y language that was hard to parse.
The genre for the series, in the author’s words, is Ero-kakkoi, a lot of action battles mixed with some spicy scenes.
Sadly, overall the battles felt way too shounen-ish for my liking, with the normal stuff of power-ups happening out of nowhere and random coincidences saving the heroines in the last minute and so on. It also didn’t help that the main character felt a lot like the typical hot-headed Shounen protagonist.
While there’s are Yuri relationships in the series, their development is kinda … wacky and rough, with little of what could be called “romance”.
Another disappointing element was that despite the series having finished publishing, the last volume doesn’t really give a satisfying ending, leaving most of the main conflicts unsolved.
By design, a lot of these were books I would have read anyway, but this last one I definitely pushed myself to finish with a determination (and a time frame) that I wouldn’t have had without the bingo board, and I’m so happy I did. I really loved it, and I’m even thinking about getting more from the same series. (Oh, actually, that reminds me that I already have this one: 古事記-日本の神さまの物語 10歳までに読みたい日本名作 | L23 !)
This is such a great note to end on! I’m excited to see what happens with next year’s bingo.
Not a black out even with some generous assumptions (ふたつ is a number!) I never did get around to Fractale, Marimite, Isshuukan Friends or mono which I thought would fill some squares.
Well, this last book was a struggle to finish in time, but I did it! 정원의 계시록 | L27 for Scifi
I had to push myself to read it before the year end, and some days my brain was mush, to the point where I had to translate every other sentence to try and make sense of the grammar… But overall, a good first forray into Korean scifi.
Final tally: 2 bingos!! The goal was one, and I didn’t think my card would have any novels, yet here we are.
I ended up with 5 bingos, and only 4 books shy of blackout! I’m a little bummed that I couldn’t quite get there. I probably could have cheated a little bit with older protagonist (I read a lot of books with supernatural creatures) or disabled character, but it felt pretty against the spirit of the prompts. Either way, I’m really happy how far I was able to get in my no manga challenge board.
Well, a bunch are handwritten, which made them hard to read, so I’m not sure about that
Otherwise we have the same version (but I got mine from Booklive instead of Bookwalker). It makes me wonder how much the provider can change the content…
Keep hearing about it - 
, i.e. I will probably watch some movies. See you in 2026.
for being the first to rate, grade, & review on Natively!
)
Final bingo stats:
I never did get around to Fractale, Marimite, Isshuukan Friends or mono which I thought would fill some squares.
