I loved that manga! The whole series is really short too… I really wish there was more of it.
When I was still on WK, we kept joking that it’s the most useful word because it shows up all the time, yet WK doesn’t teach any of those kanji.
I remember fondly the time a user named Leebo organized a live YouTube session where he read and wrote random kanji. 魑魅魍魎 was my entry. He laughed, said he knew that one was coming and correctly read it out loud.
True facts. Why does this come up so much?? 
I second this, 魑魅魍魎 is everywhere. Last time was a bunch of hololive members trying a new kanji reading game… they were obviously 大丈夫 because they knew that one word.
Alongside that we have 塊魂, a quirky PS2 game that I still love.
鬼 is the best radical, no matter which position.
Naaaaa nanananananana katamari damashiiiiii
That one was on WK when I was still there.
I think people like the look and feel. I certainly would use it as an author.
One of these days I’ll catch a 靨 in wild. Maybe one of the later 薬屋 volumes?
Continued reading 星界の紋章 and 天冥の標.
In the former, I just love the witty wordplay between our characters. The descriptive parts use a lot of words you just never see in manga. The author just flexes on how well he can describe the essence of things and emotions with just a few words.
But chapter 7 was all about hardcore military battle. I just happened to read 船尾 earlier in 天冥, here it was 艦尾. It’s funny how we went from sea → air → space and we still deal with the same vocabulary and mindset!
The classical music soundtrack from the 25 year old anime really works well as background music. 服部 克久 was an excellent composer.
In the latter, the world-building entices me. To imagine that their seedship and its 発電炉 is still (barely) active, and also apart from a few 風車 their only real source of electricity. Now what is this weird sickness…
If you like samurai and semi-historical writing I highly recommend the 宮本武蔵 | L45 series. You’ll find what you’re seeking there and much more!
I just reached that part! Author, don’t you dare kill the Captain…
Edit: well, I finished the chapter.
(posted in the wrong thread, whoops!)
I started going through some old ハルタ manga magazines that I bought a while ago for like 100 yen a piece. And I thought it would be fun to maybe also follow a magazine while it comes out, so I bought a new edition of コミックビーム because many of my fav manga series come from there. (It’s also the same publisher as ハルタ!)
The cover story (ぷくちょらりファミリア) made me cry and it’s the first Manga I read about Covid and it hit different for… reasons. And then I discovered 多聞さんのおかしなともだち by トイ・ヨウ and it was so beautiful that I wanted to read the earlier chapters before I continue with it in コミックビーム, but… they are currently only available in the older コミックビーム editions, so I decided to start reading from the old issue when 多聞さんのおかしなともだち was debuted, so now I am following 2 manga magazines out of sync. 
You can see some of their art for the manga on their blog コミックビーム2024年6月号｜Toi Yoh/トイヨウ (they asked not to reupload any of their art so I won’t share any of it here, but it is really beautiful!).
And actually I finished the whole book. Of course, it ends with a cliffhanger
I enjoyed it a lot! That being said, the pacing makes me wonder how much will happen in only three books
I guess that’s what the other series are for.
I want to just keep reading this series right now, but I have a bunch of other stuff I need to get through first and book clubs
Amazing speed!
I’m so glad you enjoyed it! There’s a part of me that just really wants other people to also find joy in some of the series that have defined me. I first encountered this series ~25 years ago and it’s actually the reason I started studying Japanese in the first place; back then the novels were not translated yet…
While this book is solidly above my level I’m learning a lot from reading this book about how narrative voice works and really enjoying getting so much more detail than the adaptation can ever provide. While they did an OK, even great job (for the time) there is obviously a lot missing from the anime.
Edit: oh, and one more thing: I like how inventive the author is with made-up technobabble words that we can still understand through kanji.
I’m finally back from vacation, but I’m now off schedule; I have like four book clubs I’m behind on, need to finish 本好き2 (was aiming to be done by the end of Feb, but…), and all I want to do is pick up a new book in English. 
I certainly can relate to that! Thanks for the recommendation too. That series was on its way to remain forever in my wishlist, untouched.
True! I’m wondering how anyone could manage to adapt the info dumps or even just the part where we get to know what a character is thinking. I guess they just didn’t
I liked that too. Even with words that actually exist, there was a bunch of kanji I have never seen before like 閘 in 閘門. The only thing is that it felt weird when the author used hiragana for a common word I usually see in kanji (like, opening a random page かたく, ちがう, おなじ…)
On the SF side, I liked the idea of traveling through a lower dimension space. At first I thought it was just a wormhole with extra steps, but it actually allows a lot more, like meeting other spaceships 
This is the bane of my existence as “WK lvl 60 but not much else” type of student. I’ve started mining hiragana words with some extra zeal to counteract my overreliance on kanji.
Finished きみの色 | L24?? 1-2.
Idk what was up at Kadokawa, but the production of these is a mess, and I won’t be reading vol 3, since I’m buying the Blu-ray this month. Printed version doesn’t have the color panels (except when it does), vol 1 of Kindle version is missing the final chapter. At least you can read vol 1 properly here きみの色｜カドコミ (コミックウォーカー) . Production issues aside, it’s a decent adaptation, but obviously doesn’t live up to the movie - which I can’t wait to rewatch!!
Finished リボンの騎士 -少女クラブ版- | L26??
It’s absolutely ridiculous (for better and worse), and I mostly liked it, but wasn’t thrilled with the last 1/4 & the ending (especially in the Kindle version, it ended in heaven, with a line about how men should be brave, and women should be caring, and now all is right again, which blegh. The physical version just ended with the marriage ceremony. That aside, it was interesting reading one of the earliest shoujo mangas. I really liked Sapphire herself, and can see how she had some influence on the genre (in both the otokoyaku and girl prince archetypes), though interestingly the art style really did not. Also that was surprisingly long!! I eventually gave in to the digital version (which lacks color, but includes more kanji) - so maybe one day I’ll reread the color version. Anyway, I wish Sapphire could have retained both 心 - since that was clearly her ideal form, and not been relegated to being a prize for the prince. Was interesting to read something so influenced by Walt Disney (tho also Takarazuka Revue)
Finished カヌレ スール百合アンソロジー | L21 - beautiful Class S, yuri anthology. The only thing it was missing was a nice love triangle/NTR story. It’s fine tho, cuz I’m in the middle of one of those (乙女の港 | L34) anyway. As an aside, マリみて has a few storylines that utilize (and in some cases, subvert) those tropes
Made good progress on 白い部屋のふたり 山岸凉子作品集3 | L24?? - probably 60% through the titular story, and the reading level is easy. Curious to see the remaining stories.
Also continuing 神さま学校の落ちこぼれ 1 | L25
Started/starting:
It’s been a while since I last picked this series up, and I’m looking forward to breezing through it
Possible upcoming reads:
By the author of 花物語 | L39 - I scanned the first chapter, and the kanji & reading level look normal - which if so, I’m really looking forward to, once I wrap up 乙女の港. I really wanna read 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?? - but I’m not up for torturing myself with the pre-modernized kana/kanji rn
Reverse isekai, half fantasy - they’re mortal enemies in the fantasy portion apparently
I hear it subverts Class S, and provides commentary on lesbian relationships in the real world, and it seems like a nice silly read
Finished 薬屋のひとりごと 1 | L38. Solidly enjoyable. Despite the general difficulty (which was mostly just words, not in long complex descriptions or anything), it was just really easy to keep going back to.
Started ムシウタ 01.夢みる蛍 | L30??, which I am enjoying. Another one of those early-00s, science-fiction-ish, aliens-ruin-everything type stories by the looks of things. Very easy read so far.
That was also in the version I read. (By the way, I noticed that you added a different edition on Natively and we graded them almost at the same level, so at least there’s some consistency there)
And that was the thing I hated about the series that I mentioned before. And the general fact that, whenever the main character became a woman, she suddenly stopped being able to fight. Like, what the heck, muscle memory doesn’t work like that.
100% that. I liked him, but it’s just a frustrating ending.
Yeah, though I always feel uncertain of my grading, and hope it will get some more grades eventually. I am a little curious to read the two volume edition to see how they compare… But not anytime soon
The thing that bugged me about this was like early on in the story, it wasn’t the case. Like earlier on the difference between her “male” and “female” versions seemed to be about how she was clothed (performing a particular gender role that was imposed bc of her position as price, if you will) - rather than some inherent internal difference. It seemed very “she’s both”, and then later became “it’s one or the other”.
I could sort of swallow it (bitterly) after she lost the male 心, but even then - as you said, muscle memory doesn’t work that way. (Not that anything else in this story is realistic anyway)
Honestly I really wonder how girls & women in the 50s and later generations reacted to it. But so many other things to look into first.
They were on equal terms for so much of the story, which is I think so much of my issue with it (I also liked him). In the last 1/4 she suddenly becomes totally dependent on him, and like… The author could have reached the marriage ending without doing that. 残念
I’m about a quarter of the way through 教団X | L30?? and have been enjoying it quite a bit, but I’ll say it’s pretty firmly around the L35 mark. Between some non-sequitur dialogue, discussion of Buddhism, and philosophical essays mixed with scientific theory there’s a lot for learners to potentially stumble on.
I’m not sure how much of the premise I can reveal without spoiling anything as it’s been a fairly slow burn, but I’ll say that it’s broadly about a man who goes in search of a woman, and comes to find she’s associated with a cult.
There’s been a few (unsettling rather than sexy) sex scenes thus far, and plot advancing chapters are sandwiched between ‘奇妙な話’ from a man who may-or-may-not be a cult leader
It’s a pretty beefy book with my copy being a little under 600 pages, so I suppose it will take me awhile to finish but I look forward to chipping away at it.
Now to resume reading and find out what 原子力学 has to do with 自由意志 I can kind of already guess, especially based on what has been said thus far, but gosh what a fun sentence to type.
I read the first half of ルックバック | L21 two weeks ago. I had originally intended to read the whole manga in a day or two, but I didn’t end up finishing it until now.
My reaction is… “huh?”. Like, what did I just read? I feel like 20 pages was ripped out the manga, because I just don’t understand what I read. I guess after 京本 died, 藤野 kind of imagined an alternate reality where things played out differently. But when a 4-koma strip is passed under her door is that real or did she imagine it? Then she’s narrating or whatever about how she doesn’t enjoy the process of drawing manga and when asked why she does it it shows scenes with her and 京本, presumably to show that working together is what she enjoyed. But then she reads the last page of her own manga while crying and gets up to go back to work, which I don’t quite understand.
Like, what? I feel like there’s some profound message or moral here that I’m not seeing.
If someone explains the ending in a way that satisfies me I think the manga earns 4/5 stars. If not, then my complete confusion may require me to drop it to a 3/5.
Not sure if watching the movie would help. I’d guess it’s pretty one to one, but maybe the animation and color would help clear things up.
I read about one third of the second volume 星界の紋章〈2〉ささやかな戦い | L40, just to get through the cliffhanger part. I’m getting a bit disappointed in ジント (the male MC), although, to be fair, he is showing age appropriate freaking out in reaction to those levels of stress.
With respect to difficulty, the series is now level 40 after I graded it, which seems reasonable. Going back to the original discussion, it is indeed harder than 薬屋のひとりごと 1 | L38, as well as harder than 86―エイティシックス― | L38.
Otherwise, I started reading 海がきこえる | L27 for my “get a book from someone else’s bingo card” entry. Once again getting my reading from @bungakushoujo 
