August Manga Reading Challenge, Week 1
*also contains books read the last week of July
Completed books:
- トーマの心臓 | L30 (my copy is split into three 単行本)
- よつばと! 16 | L16
- D.Gray-man 13 | L24
- D.Gray-man 14 | L24
- D.Gray-man 15 | L24
- 幻惑の鼓動 2 | L29
- 彼に依頼してはいけません 1巻 (ZERO-SUMコミックス) | L27 (represented here by the ザ・デスマーチ CD, as I read this volume digitally)
- 幻惑の鼓動 3 | L29
- 獣の王国 6 | L25
- 獣の王国 7 | L25
My original shortlist; this isn’t a hard-and-fast list I’m going to try to abide by, but more a starting point of some of the series I knew needed love sooner. 
indicates I’ve read at least some of the volumes from that series since:
獣の王国 | L25 - Only volumes 6 & 7 remaining. Cute series good for when you need something fluffy to read.
トーマの心臓 | L30 - <.<;
D.Gray-man | L24 - On volume 13
氷の魔物の物語 | L25 - On volume 7
魔入りました!入間くん | L28 - On volume 5. For some reason I keep bouncing off this manga even though I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve read; not sure what the blocker is.
幻惑の鼓動 | L29 - On volume 2, but I only have three volumes at present, so two more to go before I order my next batch.
よつばと! 16 | L17
Reviews/Thoughts:
Note, everything here should have a review on the first volume of the series, except for よつばと because I don’t have any worthwhile thoughts that haven’t already been said for that.
トーマの心臓: Whew, finally done! I knew I probably wouldn’t be super enthusiastic to jump to this after reading easier/more shallow manga not that this wasn’t not shallow in parts, so I decided to knock it out first. I left a review on the book page, but while I generally liked it, I’m pretty sure I would’ve run out of patience for this much sooner in English. Too many emotional 13-year-old boys running around with very little of substance really happening. As a BL classic (and first full-length BL originator book I’ve read) it was a great look into the early beginnings of the genre; as a story itself it didn’t speak to me much. The art was quite nice, and once I got the hang of how the author wrote it wasn’t a difficult read either.
I’ve got the next couple of The History of BL Manga: 1970s Origins 🎓 BL University reads lined up, as they’re physical only, but I haven’t made a definitive decision whether to start the next one this month or not (which would be 変奏曲 | L24??)
よつばと! 16: We all know it. This volume featured gorgeous scenery as usual; that’s what I’m mostly there for these days, haha. よつば and her dad take a hiking trip, and I so desperately wanted to join them for scenery. @.@ There was a pleasant surprise at the end of this volume, too, which was the decided factor bumping it up from 4 to 5 stars for me. (
End of book big spoilers ) I was so surprised to see Osaka from Azumanga Daioh show up! I’m really glad I didn’t have that spoiled for me early; I love AD, and it was so exciting to first wonder who this mysterious teacher would be, and then see it was Osaka. And she hasn’t changed a bit…
D.Gray-man, vols. 13-15 : I continue reading a favorite series that will never not get an automatic 5 star rating from me per book, therefore skewing the series rating in general. You’ll have to read and rate for yourself if you want to stop me, muahahaha. 
Anyway, reaching volume 15 is also a good excuse to finally take D.Gray-man 公式ファンブック 灰色ノ聖櫃 | L30?? off the shelf; it’s the first DGM fanbook, and was published the same day as DGM 15. It’s got one of the author’s earlier oneshots ゾーン included, which is super cool; glancing at it, it appears to be some sort of proto-DGM!
幻惑の鼓動, vols. 2-3 : I’ve finally caught up to the couple of volumes I bought some time back; I read this series in English and liked it enough to want to read it in the original, and contrary to my usual methods only bought a couple of the books, with the intention of eventually reading them, buying a few more, rinse, repeat. See, I know myself, and knew that if I bought the entire series they would sit there for a good long while. 
Anyway, these were a ton of fun (this series might end up like DGM with a majority of 5 star ratings, we’ll see), and went ahead and put in an order for volumes 4-8. It’s nice being able to go back and catch some stuff I missed the first time, both in terms of foreshadowing and just generally understanding what the heck was going on. There were a few panels even now where I just had no idea what the author was trying to convey…
彼に依頼してはいけません 1 : I saw @taiyousea reading this way back and the snazzy cover caught my attention, which was all the motivation I needed to buy it mostly sight unseen and give it a try. I liked it: light mystery solving by two boys who are this close to maybe accidentally kissing. I’d like to read more in the future, I think; I almost added a book or two to my 幻惑の鼓動 order, but didn’t. I can’t actually remember why now… 
獣の王国, vols. 6-7 : Success! A series I’ve been reading on for a while now (I finished volume 1 way back in October of 2020) finally checked off! What did I think of it after all is said and done? I definitely liked the first half more than the second: give me cute 獣耳 boys any day, but biggest issues for me were that the author introduced way too many friends too quickly (should’ve capped them and focused more of SOL stuff with the smaller number) and the plot that they introduced early on was obviously nonsensical and they had to commit to wrapping it up in some way (I wasn’t unhappy with how they wrapped it up; it was just as nonsensical as how it started, but it wasn’t paced well in the ~2 chapters the author had to work with).
I would still recommend at least the first half to anyone looking for fluffy found family 癒し系 vibes, but how much the later bits will carry you will probably depend on what you’re looking for and what kind of mood you’re in, imo. Not bad, but didn’t bring much interesting to the table, at least for me. Finishing this actually makes me want to go revisit MOON・TRICK | L25 and make actual progress on it and compare the two; it’s a somewhat similar setup, insofar as you have animals + CBDCT, and should be completed now. (I can’t believe the author has hit 82 volumes with their other series… Which I also want to try again.)
Thank you for reading this far! 
I probably won’t get as much read this week (as I cheated a bit and included the last week of July in this update), but I’m looking forward to what’s next! Haven’t decided on anything yet, it’s all based on vibes, but I hope you join me again for another loooong post next week~ It’d be neat if anyone was inspired to try any of these as well!
