I ended buying the first volume… where did his clothes go?? He doesn’t have any bag from there on.
Don’t worry about it! Thank you for sharing; I feel bad I insisted 
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You just made me buy the first volume (among other stuff from here).
This thread has been a mistake for my wallet.
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Exciting! Hope you enjoy 
“let me solicit recommendations from the entire forums” - yes, I imagine that would be 
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Don’t use logic on manga! Also, set your expectations appropriately. This is not a transgender or other LGBT story. Just a het romance that happens to feature some crossdressing.
(It’s also available fully for free on pixiv if you don’t care about the occasional bonus chapters)
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Thanks for the warning!
That sounds great. That’s a hefty price tag they put on it.
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Unfortunately this year I don’t have many fav 
The only book I rated 5 stars is
誰が勇者を殺したか 預言の章
not many people like it but personally I enjoy it and can’t wait to read book 3 when it’s comes out 
There are also three series I loved that were 4-star, and I’m gonna keep reading them. They are
only one month until 2025, I really hope I can find a new fav
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I think, in no particular order, these were my favourites this year:
きらきらひかる
おいしいごはんが食べられますように
むらさきのスカートの女
And in manga (but I only read 2 manga 
)
ギョ 1
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I remember you (? I guess) mentioning it in the daily reading thread and thinking that it’s probably about fish, with a title like that. And it is
Yeeeeessss.
I have seen the other two being mentioned before, but since they are mentioned together, I guess I’ll just blindly add them to my wishlist 
The first volume is one of the only physical books I bought this year… and it’s been on my shelf since then (to the point that I even forgot about it). I should probably get to that, huh. Someday.
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Most of the books I’ve read this year have been from the Zenitendo series but I’m enjoying looking at everyone’s recommendations and fattening up my wishlist 
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If you pick it and like it please let me know
I need to talk about it with someone 
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Great idea for a thread @Naphthalene!
Manga
- 椎名くんの鳥獣百科 1 | L26 - I only actually read one volume of this, as opposed to the multiple volumes/full series of the others, but it hit so many of the right notes for me that it’s somehow made it to my number one spot for manga this year. ^o^
- 東京ミュウミュウ オーレ! | L25 - I’m a little surprised I enjoyed this as much as I did, honestly. It’s nothing but cute fluff, but what can I say; can’t say no to cute magical boys.
- 漫画「天官賜福」日本語翻訳版 第1巻 | L32 - Makes it on my list for the artwork alone.
Honorable Mentions
- 光が死んだ夏 | L25 - While this didn’t up being the exact shade of horror I was looking for, I enjoyed it nevertheless! Immediately picking up volumes 2-5 after reading volume 1, and will definitely pick up volume 6 after it drops in a few days.
- 魔法少年なつき×らびっツ | L24 - Speaking of cute magical boys…
Novels
Well, apparently I’ve read a total of four Natively-designated novels this year, and looking back, I don’t think I’d call any of them a favorite. They were all enjoyable, but not much I’m as likely to think fondly back on. Small shout-out to あなたも殺人犯になれる! | L27 for being easy to read and surprisingly entertaining.
Light Novels
Hmm. And looking back at the eight I’ve read thus far, aside from the continually in-progress FLESH & BLOOD | L35, I’m not sure that any particularly stood out to me. 薬屋のひとりごと 2 | L38 in general was great, but I need to work a bit more to get comfortable enough with the language to make it a smoother read.
Children’s Books
Normally this wouldn’t be a category for me, but I ended up listening to more than I usually would due to the listening challenges, and I can pretty easily say that デルトラ・クエスト 1 沈黙の森 | L26 was my favorite. There’s just something about classic fantasy I really enjoy, and it was nice to revisit this book.
Hmm. You know, looking at all that, it’s a bit sad to have so many sections where none of the books I read felt all that impactful. Like, they were fine, but I guess I read less stuff I loved year than I’d realized. That’s just how it goes, of course, but perhaps I need to keep this in mind when planning my 2025 reading. 
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Haha yes it is indeed. From recollection, the author Junji Ito said watching Jaws inspired him to make a horror manga around fish . So I’d say imagine Jaws but from a more crazy horror world.
I’ve built up far too much of a backlog of books to order any more this year, but I am hoping to read this next year!
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Oh, I have to wish list it immediately.
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Looking at what I read this year there aren’t really any that super stand out as favourites. So here’s some “best in a subcategory” books:
Best book I would never have read if it hadn’t been recommended on the forum: 小さいおうち | L40 – my reading tends towards genre fiction, so I would never have found this without these forums, but I really enjoyed it.
Best book club book: 悪魔が来りて笛を吹く | L38 – a decent Kindaichi mystery that we read at a good pace and with plenty of active club discussion.
Best Akagawa Jirou book: 黒い森の記憶 | L30 – because it was an interesting divergence from what I think of as “classic Akagawa”, and it kept up the suspense and mystery pretty well.
Best spooky book: 異神千夜 | L34 – I don’t like horror, but I do like a good spooky Japanese youkai influenced ghost story. Close runner up: きつねのはなし | L32
Best next installment in a series I’ve been reading for years: ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖IV ~扉子たちと継がれる道~ | L30?? – I’ve not liked the second Tobirako-focused series as much as the original series, but this was a good one, with a story that spanned the whole book and dealing with an author I was familiar with.
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Now that the year is over, I could update my favorites somewhat (although it was very minor)
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I didn’t read as much as usual this year, so I think I’m going to be lazy and not do a bunch of fancy headers and stuff like everyone else did.
In addition to not reading as much, a lot of the stuff I read just ended up being new volumes of things I’ve already read before (for instance I really liked the new volume of 安達としまむら, but given that I also really liked almost all of the previous 13 volumes, that’s probably to be expected).
I guess I personally had a fun time reading 私の初恋は恥ずかしすぎて誰にも言えない, but it’s also… kind of a mix of a bunch of weird stuff and thus not really something I’d be able to recommend without at least a few qualifiers. Now that I think about it, I also read one more volume of Sword Art Online, a bit more 本好きの下剋上, and I also read a bit of 週に一度クラスメイトを買う話, so there’s those too.
That said, manga-wise I read all the current volumes of ブルーピリオド and that was really nice. I also read 星屑テレパス and enjoyed what I read of it too (though I’m not fully caught up yet).
I read some yugioh manga too and that was also fun, even if again also not really something that would make sense to read for people who don’t already like the franchise.
I think my main takeaway from writing this post is that I really should read more next year
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For a second I was like “new 4-koma reader spotted!” because I didn’t recognize you with that profile picture. 
Since you don’t seem to mark book status on Natively itself, I don’t know how far into the series you are. But I read volumes 3 and 4 this year after taking a break and really enjoyed them. I suspect you will continue to enjoy the series as well. Volume 5 is coming out in February, which I’m excited about.
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I didn’t have a profile picture here and figured I’d try using something different, but I guess that’s a possible side effect 
At the moment I’m a little bit into volume 3 of 星屑テレパス. I have some mild wrist pain issues that tend to make it more annoying to binge manga I have as ebooks, so because of that I pretty often end up intending to take a short break from reading something and then just… not get back to it nearly as quickly as intended, and I think that’s what happened in this case too. That said, if a new volume is coming out soonish I guess it might be a good time to continue reading the series (at least after finishing some other stuff I’ve also already started)
(And yeah, I don’t feel like I get a very good feeling of comparative difficulty for most Japanese things I read so I tend to be lazy and just only add books to bookmeter for Japanese)
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Same. It’s amazing looking back on everything. Can’t believe these took place all within a year for me!
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Oh cool, someone else reading SAO they finally came out with excellent audiobooks, so I’ve been reading them (on and off) along with those - to idk how far in they are yet
It’s still helpful/cool to see that sometime weeks read something, and how many stars they gave it, even if you skip grading tho, fwiw
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