I usually give all romance shows a try, so that’s a handful. There is even one with workplace adults この会社に好きな人がいます | L25. I keep having watching less anime as a goal, though.
How do you go about deciding what to watch?
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I like romance in general, but not enough to just try any new romance… Which reminds me, I never did get around to 黄昏アウトフォーカス S1 | L24 and still have never seen 桜蘭高校ホスト部 S1 | L26 (I know it’s not a romance, but my friend mentioned it the other day when he started わたゆり, and it’s on my “should have seen as a kid” list)
ADHD.
For seasonals I just look at the list on MAL, and see what sounds interesting.
Otherwise any mix of:
- hearing about stuff on here (forums or feed)
- it’s related to/adapting something I know
- The novel is too hard, let me watch the anime instead
- friend recs (7th Loop for example) or discussion
- historical interest (ex any older yuri show I haven’t seen)
- stuff I’ve watched with EN subs, and am interested to rewatch
- Looked interesting but I never got around to watching
Given that I’m not really reading anything besides マリみて rn, I feel guilty that I’m not reading & reviewing other yuri series… So I should probably try to prioritize yuri stuff I haven’t watched yet, including 少女革命ウテナ S1 | L31
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Read some more of レトロゲ(1) | L27 with my friend - interesting and fun experience puzzling through things. Definitely had to check the translation a lot, but I think it went better than last time, and there were some words I’ve grabbed from マリみて that showed up.
Watched a few episodes of the non-existent 真月譚 月姫 | L29 and 鋼の錬金術師 | L30 w/ EN subs together as well. Between the two of them, I could understand more of what I was hearing in FMA than 月姫. Not counting them on my listening challenge tho, much as I’d like to.
Otoh I did listen to some more of ソードアート・オンライン1 アインクラッド | L33 on my walk. My comprehension is definitely in & out on that one (but also it was cold and my thoughts kept drifting). I’ll have to try to put more time aside for audiobook listening this month.
Started マリア様がみてる 7 いとしき歳月 前編 | L29 - and have barely even looked at the jpdb deck yet. I’m only 5 pgs in, and so far my comprehension is really variable (やっぱり I really was just in an easy section w/ book 1 the last few weeks). Unlike the previous few volumes, I’m reading this much more closely, and doing my best to make sure I really process the sentences, and checking them afterwards. Cuz I’d really like to conquer whatever my comprehension issues are here (and in general for the series). I’m sure working on the jpdb deck will help somewhat, but ultimately I don’t think my real barrier here is vocab… I think sometimes I just need to slow down and read more deliberately, when I’m not in easier sections. Edit: tho I am running into a lot of unfamiliar phrases, and an even more laboured speech style then usual, some the beginning of this volume is narrated from Minako’s perspective, and she’s somehow even more stylistically stiff(?) than other characters
Of course I still haven’t cracked open Tobira either 
… As much as I don’t want to start a new thing, I’ve got to imagine that would help - and I did plan to do it. So we’ll see…
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I mean, I can’t really follow audio books for long in English or my native language, either. It’s better with podcasts, which have a more natural tone and often multiple speakers. When I listen to longer series, the incomprehension builds up and a few books in I don’t really know whats going on anymore.
I find I can’t easily and reliable pay attention to an audio book while taking a walk or doing chores. The one thing I can do and pay attention is model building (plastic models in my case, though I imagine something like Lego, knitting or coloring books would work the same).
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ymmv, but I find increasing the speed paradoxically helps with my comprehension. In English. Not so much with Japanese 
When I’m listening at 1x I find I have enough time for my mind to wander a bit, but with a faster speed I have to give it more attention.
I also have ADHD though, so it might me some weird aspect of my brain that makes this true. But just a thought if you wanted to get into English/native language audiobooks.
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I agree with higher speed = higher comprehension, in languages I understand fluently.
Though I also seem to share a lot of adhd symptoms so I’m not ruling out that this might not be true for most peoples brains.
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Same. I’ve never tried audiobooks in English, but I routinely put EN YouTube vids on 1.5-2x. Otherwise I get waaaaaay too bored, waaaaaay too fast. I’ve sped up JP audiobooks before, if it was something easier like ひげを剃る。そして女子高生を拾う。 | L26 or 神様たちのお伊勢参り | L26 where the speech is moderately paced, and the vocab is comprehensible. L30s fantasy LNs have neither of those problems
Walking (esp on a cold night, to and from a friend’s) is the sort of thing that lends itself to distraction though.
Very cool. Reminds me of HGに恋するふたり 1 | L22 - which I found fairly fun, despite not being into Gundam or model building myself
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I have not read that. Though I heard of it. At first I thought “cool, Gundam romance“ (I like the idea that there is a Gundam version of everything). Then I was put off by the age gap. Then disappointed that it isn’t romance at all. I do like non-romance slice of life, but then those involve children and/or a large cast, neighbors etc, like Yotsuba and aren’t hobby based.
Speaking of Gundam. Did you know that the writer of Gundam Witch from Mercury apparently also wrote the novelization of Utena? (In fact, the synopsis for Gundam Witch sounds almost like an Utena ripoff. Though I don’t want to overstate the similarities.)
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That was sorta my experience reading it (tho I’m not really into Gundam at this point… tho haven’t tried recently), but I found the content and interactions quite enjoyable. And even when I finally concluded that it’s not romance, it still kinda hit some of those same spots emotionally. (In retrospect, I should have figured from the covers anyway)
I didn’t know about Mercury Witch & Utena novelization - that’s pretty cool! Utena is on my list to try soon… Maybe over the weekend
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The only Gundam I really got into was Gundam Wing (and mostly I watched it because the music is awesome). But I like big robots go pew pew, and that’s immediately going on my wishlist now
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Otoh my only recent “big robots go pew pew” was Evangelion… Which I hated But to be fair the robots weren’t what I hated about it. So I won’t hold it against them.
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Anime:
- Strawberry Panic | L26 ep 5 - comprehension was ok
- 少女革命ウテナ S1 | L31 1-2 - can understand normal conversation, but much of the student council and fantasy plot stuff is going over my head. I should figure out what the offset for the subs is
- おにいさまへ… S1 | L30?? 1 - comprehension was pretty good so far. Feels easier than マリみて
Listened to next section of ソードアート・オンライン1 アインクラッド | L33 while cleaning. Was able to focus more, and comprehension was where I’d expect
Did a bunch of マリみて 7 jpdb deck - which covered stuff I’d had trouble with yesterday, and a bunch of new stuff - a lot of which is really, totally new. So I feel a bit more secure going into it now. Current stats: 83.5% Known, 94.5% Coverage, Learning 540, Remaining 278
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As someone who generally really dislikes mecha anime (though like you, the mecha part of Evangelion isn’t the part I hated), I recommend https://learnnatively.com/season/fdb999a73c/. It was quite difficult with Japanese subs at times (military words and such), but I enjoyed it a lot.
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The synopsis here doesn’t really sound appealing (the MAL one is slightly better, tho kinda spoiler-y). What did you like about it?
Tbh if I (eventually) try anything in that vein, it will probly be Mercury Witch, cuz of the yuri stuff
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It has been a few years, so I don’t remember it in detail. I’d say the emotional weight and characters were probably the best part. But fair enough on the Mercury Witch preference haha.
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マリみてと読解力
32% through マリみて 7. やっぱり a lot of my comprehension issue to this point have just been careless reading. There are some head scratcher sentences here and there (half of them bc the characters are just saying/thinking something weird), but a lot of my errors are really just that I overlooked a particle, misread a kanji, assumed a meaning/intent, etc. Anyway all that is to say that I feel like I’m doing better so far. Edit: as if to mock me, the very next section had characters being quirky and hard to understand again 
I’m also forcing myself not to track time. I have a good idea of how fast I’m reading in general, and I think tracking contributes to me getting careless.
I do have to have patience, since the stuff I’m excited for will only just start to show up in vol 9 (I think), but I feel a little less in a rush than I did for the first 6 books.
文法、文ブローとか扉
On a grammar note, I did briefly consider trying Bunpro again, but it’s still something that feels overwhelming… Can’t really decide whether something like that or Tobira would be better. Or how to split them up. It’s tempting to say “I can just learn by checking translations the way I’m doing”, and I think it’s true to an extent, but it sounds like “I can just pick up vocab through immersion, without SRS”, and I think probably has similar limits.
Honestly Tobira is probably the way to go. I just have to convince myself to just do it from the beginning, and not try to skip, or optimize, even if some of it is a bit redundant or boring. Maybe I should set some sort of “x pgs per day” goal. I don’t think that’s a particularly sensible way to structure this, but it would be useful for building the habit, I suppose.
Edit: I decided to print out most of Ch 1 for now, and keep it on the kotatsu by my laptop, and see if that gets me to work on it. I think I’ll say 1 pg a day minimum (and if I do more, great)
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For reference: here’s what I was reading until I started マリみて - and would probably like to pick up again once I finish:
- 東京BABYLON[愛蔵版] 1 | L27 - book club
- きみの色 1 | L24?? - absolutely want to pick up!!
- 紡ぐ乙女と大正の月 1 | L30 - very fun
- 東方酔蝶華 ~ロータスイーター達の酔醒 1 | L28?? - seemed fun
- らんま1/2〔新装版〕 21 | L24
- 星降る王国のニナ 1 | L25 - iffy (manga is fine tho)
- 思ってたのと違うあの子の話【電子特典付き】 (中経☆ス) | L24??
- 少女たちの痕にくちづけを 1 | L24?? - been meaning to read forever, may make an ok Class S & Related rec
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The series is overboarding with details, that also was a problem in my eyes. It‘d have been more impactful if it had concentrated more on some lines of the story as they did in the second half.
The strength of it is that they take the story serious, like: there die people, so we get a police investigation, we get media interest, later we get political intervention, some reports that leak out, the secret service gets involved, even the yakuza (what the heck), scientific investigations with double interests, like on the surface to help the kids, but also to maybe use the technique that moves the robots for their own interests.
And on top of this all the personal stories of the kids. Like how they cope with the knowledge that they are about to die, maybe in the next hour, next week, next month…
The robots are done in 3D, probably by Ufotable as they are involved in the show. The opening theme is great. All in all I really liked it, but the show had its deficiencies.
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That sounds either amazing or terrible 笑. If nothing else, it sounds like it has some solid depth to it (for better or worse)
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Oh yeah, Uninstall is fantastic. One of the rare times I listened to an anime theme before watching the show!
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