Week 1 updates.
Watching
Finished 私に天使が舞い降りた！ S1 | L18.
cw: pedophilia, grooming
thoughts
I don’t think the show entirely deserves the reputation that it’s gotten. There were a few uncomfortable moments, and an episode where the show overtly stated that a college student was flustered because going to an event alone was like a date with an elementary schooler. But at the end of the day, outside of one scene in the second episode and one scene in the 10th I didn’t feel uncomfortable watching the show. There was nothing overtly sexual about the attraction, and you could have swapped in a cat for the girl and the show would have remained unchanged. All of that said, I think you could fairly say that it normalizes grooming.
From a entertainment perspective I don’t think I would have watched it if it wasn’t towards my language goals, but it was decent enough. From a language learning perspective it was somewhere between i+0 and i+1 for me, so worth sticking it out.
And because I have the ADHD, I started:
thoughts
Four episodes in and this is approaching a so bad it’s good kind of train wreck for me. It’s like an after school special, but anime. There’s also a bit of 90s nostalgia in the art style, but that mostly just makes me wish I was watching a better show.
thoughts
I’m legit shocked that there’s a live action show that’s this low of a level. It’s a bit harder to understand since live action actors tend to not speak as clearly as voice actors, but it’s not difficult.
It suffers like all jdrama does for me where there’s not even zero, there’s negative chemistry between the actors, but the story isn’t bad. I’d maybe consider checking out the manga at some point after I’m done.
thoughts
Going off of episode 1 alone, this seemed to be a lot harder than the other shows at this level, although it may just be because it has game/isseikai vocab that I’m less familiar with.
I’m becoming more and more convinced that I just don’t like the issekai genre, although most of what I’ve heard about this series is that it’s easy, not that it’s particularly good. 
Reading
My main book has been 小説 天気の子 | L30 that I’m reading along with EBW’s informal book club. There are a lot of lookups for me, but I’m enjoying it. Some of the imagery in it is quite lovely. It also makes me very much want to go back to Japan asap.
Also, bc, ADHD, I read a bit more of 黒魔女さんが通る!! チョコ、デビューするの巻 | L24 on a whim this week and finished the chapter I was in the middle of. I had found it to be one of the more difficult Aoitori Bunko books to read last year and this week I was just breezing through it. I still don’t know that I care enough to finish it, but it did feel good that I can tell a difference in my ability from only a few months ago.
Othering
I’ve been talking to a few people I’ve met on HelloTalk recently. One who is actually local (but ew people irl). Spontaneous conversation is still rough for me, but I’m mostly able to express what I want to say without looking up words over text, so that’s also been encouraging.
