Luna's Learning Log

Japanese
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やがて君になる is a favorite of mine, but it’s kind of hard to counter those criticisms without spoiling things. I guess all I’ll say is that there’s definitely more to it than Nanami pushing her feelings onto Yuu. Like that’s obviously part of it, particularly earlier in the story, but there’s some reason and depth to it. Can’t really help with not liking the play aspect though. These LGBT manga sure do seem to like school plays. :joy:

As a side note, I don’t think watching the anime would help. I enjoyed it well enough (it’s the reason I tried the manga to begin with), but it’s basically subpar to the manga in every way. Not to mention it only adapts about half the manga.

These days, I’d probably recommend 雨夜の月 | L24 more. I still consider やがて君になる my favorite right now, but that could easily change once 雨夜の月 is a completed series. The reason I like it so much is because it handles disability and trauma really well, while still slowly developing the bond between the two main leads. It is a yuri series, but in a way it’s more about self discovery and working through trauma than the yuri itself.

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The play thing is definitely my least favorite section. Drags on waaaaaay too long
So I hear you on that. (I don’t like play arcs in general bc of this). I definitely skimmed it on my reread.

Nanami is absolutely pushing herself on Yuu the whole time. It’s not at all a healthy relationship, until the epilogue . There’s story reasons, but it still makes me uncomfortable. I felt much more ambivalent about rooting for them the second time around. That said, part of why I enjoy reading it is b/c it’s an unhealthy relationship. (Tho I also like a lot of healthy stuff)

This is also part of why I find the story interesting (but also have mixed feelings about)

Depends who I’m recommending to. I feel like やがきみ is much easier reading (esp for learning purposes) and is also a classic/staple, but 雨夜の月 is much more interesting writing and story. Otoh I felt like I could rec 雨夜の月 to my mom (who doesn’t read manga), and didn’t think やがきみ would be a good idea.

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I don’t necessarily mind this at all, but I feel like there’s dissonance between how I feel about them and how the story/art style/framing wants me to feel about it that I don’t like. It’s like the books are trying to gaslight me into thinking that their relationship is really sweet, actually, which, no.

I think after unpacking my feelings on it a bit more and reading what the two of you have to say about it, I’m gonna shelf it for a bit longer and then maybe knock it the ending out once it’s a pretty trivial read. It’s certainly not hard right now, but I’d probably have more patience if I could read each book in a single sitting.

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Have not been feeling well since yesterday, so it didn’t even occur to me to do jpdb reviews. I only have 106 at this point, so I’ll leave them for tomorrow. I still don’t really know what an ideal amount of “currently learning” words is for me. The count is 280 rn, but a lot of those are semi-familiar or easy to get. I have to hold myself back from just endless adding new words to the queue in general tho.

Otoh I finished 転生王女 anime yesterday - basically went where I thought it would, and has me really curious to read the corresponding LN sections. Also halfway through 私を喰べたい、ひとでなし | L22 . Even here there’s times where my comprehension feels a bit fuzzy (and it’s not always clear who’s speaking), but like 98% of the time I get it. Still had my share of lookups as well, but some of that is cuz of the youkai-related setting. It’s been a nice break from the LNs, reading this and 君と綴る.

I’ll probably be adding it to my monthlies once I’m caught up :slight_smile: It’s also making me wonder whether I should be more amenable to horror in the future. I can’t help but think of Inuyasha half the time when reading it (speaking of unhealthy relationships :joy: )

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転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 4 | L33 - going well. I’m doing 1 chapter per day, in an effort to stay ahead in the jpdb deck. I’m about equal with now tho. But honestly even just looking through the deck is helpful

レトロゲ(1) | L26 - read the first 2 chapters with my friend the other day. That was really fun! Very hard tho - content and grammar, and we had to check the translation a not insignificant amount

紡ぐ乙女と大正の月 1 | L31 - taishou time slip 4koma yuri! So far it’s been easier than I was expecting for L31, and that confuses me :stuck_out_tongue: … good reminder to get back to the names deck. That’s definitely been a bit helpful here. Also reminds me of the 日本歴史 series, which I should continue oneday…

Very slowly working on Fate/Stay Night still. I can handle like 10-15 min at a time, before I get exhausted lol

Watching a 朗読 playthrough of the flowers visual novel, and that’s pretty neat. I’d prefer to actually play it, but it’s a pain to acquire.

I’m at 15 hrs for December Listening Challenge, which means I’m ギリギリ on track for my initial 40 hrs goal. That’s been almost all anime + 転生王女 3-4. So the fact that I’ve been doing 1 chapter per day is holding me back on that point. At this point, I have 7 chapters left. Jpdb deck is 4180/5411, Learning 546, and Remaining 685. Anyway, I’m obviously not doing 100 new words per day, so I’ll certainly finish the book before I finish the deck. So idk how hung up I should be on staying ahead.

I wish jpdb had the ability to manually review individual decks, the way Anki does. It would be great to do a Fate related deck, but not at the cost of doing 転生王女 it other LN decks - cuz that’s a really long term project

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マリみて and reading speed

マリみて speed was .28 pgs/min (16.8/hr) this week. I made the font size a bit smaller than usual, and it definitely really helped (I had it large in the first place). I’d like to put it down a size or two, to get it closer to physical LN size, but btwn my monitor’s resolution, and not knowing where my glasses are (普通のもの), I’ll probly leave it as is for now.

My teacher said I was reading very smoothly (まだまだと思うけど) and also praised the fact that I can understand what I’m reading while I’m reading it outloud… which yeah, does take some effort at times, but isn’t that the whole point?! (also I do sometimes just push on, even if I don’t quite understand everything in a sentence). Still though, it’s nice to get the praise, and it is my 2nd fastest reading speed for マリみて so far (fastest was .29/min ie 17.4/hr), so that’s something at least.

I haven’t tried timing myself w/ anything else in a while… but maybe I’ll try it with 田所さん1 | L24?? or 紡ぐ乙女と大正の月 1 | L31 . My reading speed for 田所さん is slower than it might be otherwise, b/c they used that slanted font for narration, and I’m bad at reading that still. So good practice.

Started マリア様がみてる S2 | L27 - comprehension was pretty decent for the eps 1-2. Except for some song things they were doing (I think related to New Years?) where I straight up had no clue what was going on. Definitely trying to look up words on the fly here and there. I thought I’d found subs, but they don’t seem to be any good, unfortunately.

転生王女 4

On one hand I feel like I’ve been doing a bit too much of the jpdb deck the last 2 days. Otoh it’s helpful, and I’ve only just kept pace with where I am in the book. To my surprise there was a lot of keyboard and typewriter related vocab - which is cool, but also since it was all words I just came across today, my comprehension of those passages was less than usual, which was kinda a bummer (I think I also should have done the reading earlier in the day).

Anyway keeping up with this 1 chapter per day peace, I’ll probably get ahead of the deck tonight or Thursday. But I’ll still keep doing it while I’m reading the book anyway. Have to remember not to lose sight of the forest for the trees. I do hope I can do a book where I have much less unknown words at some point though!

I looked at the Fate/Stay Night jpdb deck, and it’s like 20k words. By comparison, even the first 2 薬屋のひとりごと decks are less than 7k words each. That’s kind of mind blowing to think about

I’m up to 17.5 hrs with listening. On track, but I’d like to be further along… Hopefully over the weekend I can catch up. Would definitely really like to make my 60 hr goal this month, and not just the 40 one.

空の軌跡FC Trails in the Sky FC - started up on this again, finally. Mostly understanding in real time, though I couldn’t exactly summarize the overarching plot so well

【FLOWERS 春】百合は芸術配信 - only 35 min in so far. It’s cool, and definitely some challenging vocab. I think the person playing is probly a college student? Can’t say for sure, but it’s kinda affirming that she has to look up a lot of the words or kanji too.

東京BABYLON[愛蔵版] 1 | L24?? is killing me so far, but I think it’s half a mood/reading when tired thing. A lot of it is just “cultural context I’m missing” for various slang and expressions. Hopefully chapter 2 will go better this week.

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Spent tonight’s lesson translating reviews for 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 2 | L32 and 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 1 | L32. Hit a couple of words I constantly have trouble remembering, and there’s a few new phrases I’m scratching my head on a bit. But went well overall… while I still had some “oh I forgot that really obvious way of saying this” moments, I also had some “I got this right (or really close) on the first try” moments, and less “that’s good but, let’s totally rephrase it” moments :slight_smile:

Caught up on ギャルメイドと悪役令嬢 ～おじょーさまのハッピーエンドしか勝たん！～ - 鍵穴(著者)｜一迅プラス and only had like 3-4 lookups (plus 2-3 skipped words) in 4-5 chapters are, and grammar felt more straightforward than a few months ago :slight_smile: Its nice to just read something an easier fantasy series, but also it’s funny what does/doesn’t take concentration. Like 田所さん1 | L24?? is probably similar level, yet bc of the slanted font, it takes me effort for me to read it

I finally found the JP term for CGDCT: 空気系 as opposed to just using 日常 and being at a loss for a better descriptor. Confusingly 日常系 seems to be a synonym :woman_shrugging:

Fell down the rabbit hole earlier, reading various things related to yuri history, Class-S, etc

Readings I enjoyed or wanna follow up on

日本語

英語

One thing that’s nice, is I was reading a decent amount of those in Japanese, and didn’t feel overwhelmed doing so. Nice to know, I can look up stuff like this in JP instead of English. Seems like a generally more useful way to get an understanding of things (though there’s some great English stuff too)

Was also thinking I wanna add some sort of tag for Class-S and/or proto-yuri tag to the site - to mark both the historical stuff, and the modern stuff that incorporates elements of it, but have to think of a proper definition

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I know 日常系 but had never heard of 空気系 before. I skimmed the Wikipedia article and I find it interesting that it says it’s the same as cgdct since I would consider them different (or maybe I’d consider cgdct a subset of 日常系). But it looks like they also consider “slice of life” different, so maybe my interpretation is wrong or maybe the western view is simply different from Japanese view.

Many of the examples in the article are indeed cgdct series from Kirara. It also lists Aria as an example though, which personally I’d describe as 癒し系 more than anything else.

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This person responding here says they’re mostly the same, but that for some ppl 空気糸 = cgdct and 日常系 = general: 空気系アニメと日常系アニメの違いを教えてください - 自分的には空気系と... - Yahoo!知恵袋

Idk anything about ARIA, but it seems at least this person responding here agrees with you: ARIAは萌え系ジャンルですか？ - だいぶ前に深夜でやってい... - Yahoo!知恵袋

(I didn’t search Yahoo specifically - it came up when I googled in general)

Also my computer iIME doesn’t seem to think 空気糸 exists, but my phone got it right away :stuck_out_tongue:

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Started playing SAO Last Recollection, and it’s going pretty well so far

Read 3 volumes of 田所さん | L24?? and while I wasn’t strictly timing myself, I finished vol 3 in less than an hr. So not bad for reading speed.

Have been putting off 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 4 | L32 a bit the last few days, cuz I’ve been kinda tired out (and also fell down the yuri history rabbit hole)

Fell down the rabbit hole reading more history of yuri stuff. The ones I liked or that had some useful info:

slight rant

In general I’m noticing that there’s a lot of gaps. Like “Class-S happened, 花物語, now let’s jump to the 70s”, “shoujo magazines / 少女小説 were a thing, now let’s jump to the 90s”, “マリみて, Sailor Moon, and Utena happened, now let’s jump to the 2000s”, "shoujo sect and some other stuff, now let’s jump to 2010s/2020s and be detailed)… It’s much harder to find stuff that talks about what might have influenced.

One or two of the articles did actually get into 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 2k a lot more, and talk about stuff like “these works clearly inherited from マリみて and also influenced yuri that followed after then”… But what influenced マリみて (the answer acc to something I read the other day is probably くりいむレモン which is from 『エスカレーション ~今夜はハードコア~』- which I don’t recommend looking up, unless you want some really messed up porn)

So anyway that gets a bit frustrating… that there’s so many gaps. Eventually I’ll have to reread the English links that were good, and do some digging again starting from there. But in the meantime I’m gonna try to find interviews and stuff with various authors - starting with マリみて and 青い花.

I’m probably gonna give Sailor Moon manga another try in the nearish(?) future, and eventually Utena, since they’re historically important for yuri. Will be nice to finally be familiar. Not sure if I should try Utena anime or manga first

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Finished 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 4 | L32 well ahead of the deck. Comprehension was good, except for attention issues. It probably would have been better to give it another day, but I was grumpy and wanted to move on.

Dropped that deck, and picked up マリア様がみてる 2 黄薔薇革命 | L29 - which is a much rougher starting point for me.

jpdb meta

Right now I’m at 76.7% words and 92.1% coverage - so lots of work to do. I’ve been trying to figure out how not to get overwhelmed by opening too many new cards at once. Since I’m reading alongside (instead of pre-studying), the conclusion I’ve come to is “try to get to 95% coverage, and then just decide how much time I want to do reviews daily, regardless of remaining reviews”. Which is to say, I’m probably going to have too many reviews tomorrow :sweat_smile: I don’t really see a better way to do it though, since I’ll probably finish the book within the week anyway.

Update: I’m up to 77% known, 92.3% coverage, learning 305, 769 new words. So now I’ll definitely be drowning in reviews :joy: . I’m doing more than I normally would, cuz I didn’t get enough sleep last night, so reading takes more effort than normal.

While I’m not 100% sure, I think I’m fairly far ahead of where I am in the book at this point. So at least I won’t have to worry about that!

More importantly: I’m checking the translation this time around, and やっぱり it’s a humbling experience. It’s nice to have the reality check on comprehension and also be able to figure out what I’m not getting. I think this will prove very beneficial. Interestingly I actually find マリみて harder to comprehend than 転生王女 (despite the vocab being mostly easier), due to the ornate writing style. 転生王女 only really gets ornate when a character needs to be very formal. Otherwise the inner-monologues are pretty straightforward.

Otoh I’m doing well on lookups, 2-5 per pg (17 lines on tablet). Would be like 5-7 probably if it weren’t for the jpdb deck

町道いい the Tobira Study Group - Interest Check came up. So maybe I’ll actually get myself to do some Tobira study this time around.

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The first 20 or so episodes follow the manga decently close and then it goes way off the deep end. I watched the anime first, but I’d probably recommend reading the manga first. It’s only 5 volumes and they’re not a difficult read.

Not me eying my copies on the shelf for a re-read :sweat_smile:

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Oh wow, that’s surprisingly short!! Guess I’ll do that then, whenever I get around to it

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マリみて jpdb deck: Vocab 3706/4684 (79.1%), Coverage 92.9, Learning 533, Remaining 445

This deck is way easier than 転生王女 4, so I’ve been able to mark most of the words as Good or Easy - meaning more New words, less reviews (for now).

I’m reading マリみて 2 very intensively. Checking translation after every paragraph (or hard sentences), and rereading anything I got wrong until I get it, highlighting grammar stuff I got wrong, and highlighting lookups (different colors). Thinking I might use the 4th color for "I knew this, but just wanted to double check). Lookups end up being 2-8 per pg rn.

My reading speed is crawling, but there’s a moderate amount of comprehension things I didn’t quite get right, and I’m learning why I’m the process. So it’s tiring, but a lot of fun. Highlighting lookups is mostly a waste of time (is not like I’m gonna go reread those pgs), except that it gives me loose stats.

The other thing that really slows me down is checking the JP-JP dictionary first, and then checking the JP-EN dictionary (Akebi on my phone), if I don’t get it. I might try putting on the JP-EN dictionary instead for a bit, just to reduce friction. I frequently have to check both, but I’m definitely having an easier time with JP-JP than I used to. Same deal with jpdb (tho that I will leave JP-JP).

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Got reading speed for マリア様がみてる 1 | L29 up to .35 pgs/min (21/hr). I think the fact that I’ve been reading マリみて 2 all day helped; also reducing the text size, and having been talking along to more things lately. Also in terms of comprehension, I generally go for “good enough” in lessons, cuz I wanna actually get through the book, and already know the story well enough from the anime. So if there’s small stuff I don’t get, I skip it.

In any case, that’s much higher than previous lessons (.29/min, 17.4/hr was previous), so yay for accomplishing something.

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No guarantees, but as far as I know the anime for Utena was conceived first - and then the manga came into production before the anime was finalized. So the mangaka used the script for the anime in the beginning, but deviated eventually as the script wasn’t done yet.
So while the manga came out first, the anime isn’t really an adaptation of the manga in the traditional sense. They were in production at the same time.

… I’m only half way through the anime and haven’t read the manga yet, so I don’t know more than that though :face_with_peeking_eye:
(Just in case that was a “manga is the original, so read that first” rec - if the manga is just better then I should get on that too)

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Oh interesting, I didn’t know that… the manga definitely feels like a finished work on its own. The anime is great, but the ending gets weird in the way the anime that go past the story of their manga does, so I always had assumed that was the case. Interesting that it was actually the other way around!

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Wikipedia says the same! I’ll start with the anime in that case, when I get to it. I’m starting
ストロベリー・パニック S1 | L26 first tho. Edit: I tried that, it’s too much of a tone change rn (it’s glaringly 男性向け and マリみて is glaringly 女性向け for one thing, but the tone is also very hyper, and not quite what I’m in the mood for rn). So more マリみて!

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I finished all of マリア様がみてる | L27 anime - that was incredible! Definitely a lot of “listen, check EN subs, relisten”. A lot of the time I could recognize things sufficiently on the 2nd listen-through. Sleep deprivation + binge watching didn’t exactly help… but like I just couldn’t let go of it. Definitely had some vocab I learned from reviews pop up. Now I’m watching ストロベリー・パニック S1 | L26 and it’s painful so far (the 4th episode is decent b/c it doesn’t feature the main couple/Shizuma)

マリア様がみてる 2 黄薔薇革命 | L29 light novel - 54% through. I had to pause yesterday b/c I was too sleep-deprived, but hopefully I can finish tonight or tomorrow at latest. So I should be able to get started on LN 3 over the weekend.

Finished translating reviews for 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 | L32 and 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 3 | L32 in my lesson. While I have something of my own voice, my writing skills (and conversation) are underdeveloped to a point that a lot of it really reflects how my teacher would put stuff more (the balance varies, depending on the review). It’s a great learning experience though, and making me want to work on my writing and grammar more. So time to finally crack open Tobira, and track progress in the study group. Incidentally, someone just gifted me a journal + pen, so I guess I’ll use that to practice my writing. I can only imagine (or hope) this will help my comprehension too

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Finished マリア様がみてる 2 黄薔薇革命 | L29 .
I started relying on shallow reading for a lot of the last 20-25% of the book, bc it was largely describing a 剣道 match, which I already knew the result of, and also just didn’t really care about. Overall, reading the rest of the bill so closely was a really beneficial experience!

Started マリア様がみてる 3 いばらの森 | L29 (53/266) and it feels a lot smoother. I’m taking a different approach with jpdb this time around. This time, I unlocked a bit over 800 words (I had a little of free time lol). It’s been great, cuz for a lot of these words, just doing the initial SRS round is helpful with for me to get them while reading.

I’m also being a bit less strict, and checking translation much less. But also I really don’t seem to be running into many grammar issues so far. Probably a mix of getting used to the style more + a full night’s sleep; maybe I’m just in an easier section.

Decided to order the physicals (novels, manga, and DVDs for S1-2). Also ordered 花物語 上 | L39 (both books), 屋根裏の二処女 吉屋信子乙女小説コレクション (吉屋信子乙女小説コレクション 2) | L30?? (literally a first printing, from 1947 if I understood correctly), and 乙女の港 (実業之日本社文庫 - 少女の友コレクション) | L30?? . Which will be by far the oldest books I have. Probably I only should have ordered 屋根裏の二処女 (it’s not available digitally), but what can I say, I got excited :sweat_smile:

Most of those are proxy items, and 花物語〈下〉 | L30?? is apparently on a longer backorder. So unless I ask them to split it, none of this will ship till January. I wonder how many マリみて novels I’ll be able to finish digitally by the time they get here.

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