ooo that’s a great idea! I might have to make one myself for some of these series though, not sure how much real world organizing hierarchy will apply to the space military 
But that would probably be better than trying to shove all the terms into anki if just getting that vague idea of power relations is all I’m after
yeah i was thinking about how i have no real idea about military ranks at all and can still consume military-related stuff okay as long as you basically know who is who’s superior etc
yeah, as long as I can see the word and go “yep that’s one of them military ranks” that’s really enough for most things Especially in japanese where social order gets directly represented in the language it’s pretty easy to go “ah, he is higher rank than him because that guy is calling him 閣下”
Omg the mystery of who is who in cop novels is solved 
When I was watching FMA:B I looked up all of the ranks and their order since they kept on coming up. Then I looked up their translations and realized that I had no idea what the relative orders or the ranks were in English anyway, so I mostly just gave up on caring. 
I should probably warn that in general a lot of the study stuff I’m gonna talk about in this log are not going to be very general spoiler friendly, so if you want to read or watch anything I’m working on without getting spoiled for some things, beware
For genuinely big plot reveal type stuff I’ll try put it in a drop down box, but not gonna do that for talking about general content. In a book club (or for stuff I’m reading with clubs), I’d spoiler tag a lot of this stuff, but not here for my own projects on my own time
Watched another episode of 86 today and it did feel a little better to follow some of the military communication parts, but then got hit with the fake in universe propaganda history lesson followed by a real in-universe history lesson followed by a refresher on our world history lesson
I assume the name here is not an accident, given there’s an mp guy sitting in the lecture hall making sure no one gets up to any unapproved education who gives lena the “oh man you are so dead” glare when she starts talking about unapproved things
I don’t know. They may have taken inspiration from it, but honestly it’s just a compound word… it feels pretty easy to just get to that by chance.
Edit: just googling, it turns out it is part of the middle school curriculum, so they definitely knew the word itself (but again, I don’t think they necessarily thought too hard about its origin)
I mean, someone could throw some random words together for a political package in a story and call them a “new deal” pretty easily without meaning to, but those words would still have a real meaning to most readers
But given the political situation in the show so far, it feels pretty clear that this is the vibe they’re going for. Very thought police-y everything is fine, the war is going great, we have 0 casualties on the front lines thanks to all our “unmanned” drones!
It’s been very direct about this not being the utopic land of freedom and equality that most of its citizens think it is (and that our main character is upset about it)
Oh yes, in that sense, sure.
The main character is obviously wrong. Everything is fine for citizens nudge nudge wink wink.
(How far are you in the story, by the way?)
I watched both cours of the anime when they came out, so I also kinda know where it’s heading A friend told me that is the end of the 3rd light novel if I wanted to jump in from there and read them, but never got around to reading them in english and just figured “eh, eventually these will be good for japanese”
For this watch in japanese I’ve managed a whopping 2 episodes 
Googling around, it seems to cover the first three volumes indeed. I read the first 2 and got a bit bored with the story. I own the 3rd volume that I plan to read some day™ but I’m not super motivated about it. I already kinda forgot how things end at the end of volume 2
(If people talk about it around here, I may get back to it at some point)
That was kinda my impression of the show as well, which is why I didn’t immediately jump in to reading more I liked the first part a lot, and then the 2nd cour (vol 2 and 3) had a little too much edge for me. I’ve been assured that it picks back up at some point, but not sure when that is
I felt pretty the same with the books (well vol 1 and 2 respectively) haha.
Not sure if I feel more or less like reading volume 3 knowing that
You may want to put this warning into the OP then, bc as time goes by, it will get lost in the sea of replies. (I’m not particularly sensitive about general spoilers myself, but I know others can be)
Good call! Added a lil disclaimer to the top of the main post!
When watching 86, I was also confused with all the military ranks so I remember searching online for 軍隊の階級 and coming across this nice site: 自衛隊と日本帝国軍の階級表一覧 | 日本と世界のカルチャー coredake (which I found more digestible than the Japanese Wikipedia page).
Thankfully, within the same “band”, it is easy to tell the hierarchical order since it mostly goes 少◯ < 中◯ < 大◯ but knowing that ◯佐 is higher-ranked than any ◯尉 is not straightforward without looking it up first.
that’s almost exactly the kind of information I was looking for, great find! 
I got a whole bunch of recommendations earlier when I was talking to some people about good yuri with a domestic element to it, figured i’d put them here to remember to check them out
^ Supposed to be light and fluff, but actual relationship things happen beyond just yearning and beyond just “get to a confession and end the series”
^ Supposed to be much heavier, especially reading that review on natively
I had not heard of that one before! Looks great. Another one to add to my list 
I like the first two volumes of after hours a lot - i should revisit it in jpn. Same for how do we relationship.
はなにあらし 1 | L19 is also good .
And green Yuri, of course
My new big pack of CR2032s came in today, which means it’s time to fix some more old japanese tech things! (and, actually, the first tech tinkering in the tech tinkering part of the log )
The N64 version of どうぶつの森 relies on an internal battery to keep track of real time passing, since the console doesn’t have an actual internal clock. Thankfully it’s not like a lot of older games where the save file itself was tied to the battery, but animal crossing isn’t really the kind of game you want to relive march 4th of the year 2000 over and over again groundhog day style
Easy fix, I’ve done a lot of these at this point for SFC games, and N64 actually uses CR2032s with this same tab alignment so there’s no trimming required like there is with GB/C/A games
Might as well clean up and inspect the board while I had it open, pretty pristine condition. rubbed down the contacts and checked the capacitors, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Waow my soldering is getting cleaner! I attribute this all to getting some desolder wick and a solder with a lower melting point
Aaaand moment of truth, does the game remember me changing the date after powering off the console, then completely removing and reinserting the game?
Success!
(Now I just need to deal with the ramifications of traveling 23 years into the future…)
I see a lot of 草むしり in my future…
