It’s been a blast like always! I love reading a ton of manga and checking them all off during these events, but maybe I should consider switching to focusing on one or two non-manga books in the next event. My stamina for jumping around many different things is quite good, but I am absolutely certain my numbers (especially time-wise) would look a lot different if I just focused on a single novel or something.
Comparison stats from previous readathons
Readathon
# of Books
# of Pages
Time
Fall '24
6
860
10h 8m
Winter '24
5
856
9h 1m
Spring '25
7
977
9h 15s
Very interesting. Kind of cool to see myself reading faster from these three attempts. I can’t see myself beating that 10 hour record from the fall, though, without some very dedicated planning.
Thanks for the welcome. My book wishlist is very aspirational right now, but I think I should be able to start comfortably reading and rating old 花とゆめ manga in the not too distant future. Maybe some new manga too because シャンピニオンの魔女 1 | L24?? is pretty high up on my to-read list.
Also if anyone else reads Chiikawa, let me know. I’d love the opportunity to talk about it. You too can read the manga that has approximately one million tie-in products. I’m pretty sure I even saw Chiikawa toilet paper in Japan.
Question regarding bookwalker: I have a flight coming up in a few weeks. If I buy some manga to read on the plane, is it going to want a net connection or am I good as long as I have the books downloaded ahead of time?
If you have the bookwalker app and the books already downloaded in it (which means opened at least once, because before you open them for the first time they don’t actually download), you should be fine to read offline as much as you like
Having been a very long time manga reader before I made the move to prose, I’d suggest giving some of the easier books a try. There’s not a ton of text in a manga compared to prose, and I think that reading manga exclusively for so long slowed down my Japanese progress. Of course, before Natively I had no idea what I could even read, but that’s not a problem anymore
What series are you looking to read through? I used to love 花とゆめ (I mean, I suppose I still do, technically )
Thank you! I probably won’t have much time to study on the trip so I’ll just have to make up for it by reading on the plane. That’s how it works, right?
I have my first book picked out. A friend recommended it saying it was “very popular among grade school boys”. I’m just finishing up my most current batch of purchased manga, but SOON . Satori Reader is starting to feel a little too easy, so I think it’s time for me to spread my wings and fly into books for grade schoolers.
Top of my list right now is:
学園アリス 1 | L24?? I will never forgive Tokyo Pop for rudely going out of business before finishing translating this, guess I have to learn Japanese
コレットは死ぬことにした 1 | L24 After listening to Colleen’s Manga Recs talk this one up, I must read
夏目友人帳 1 | L26 This is one of my friend’s favorite manga of all time and I’ve never read it
There’s a WK book club for the first volume of 夏目, but unfortunately they didn’t run an offshoot club. The book clubs both here and WK are great, especially when you’re trying to read harder books because sometimes there are vocab lists and you have people to help out with any grammar and whatnot (we have a group reading Nana over on WK right now and have people taking better pictures of the handwritten text for those of us reading digitally ).
It is?? I guess it goes even harder on my wishlist then not that it means anything; maybe I should make a “priority” personal tag?
I watched the anime an eternity ago (as in, 15 years ago?). I’m curious to see how they differ (plus, I don’t really remember much of the end of the anime at this point ).
Interesting, I feel the exact opposite about the things you didn’t like, and am somewhat apprehensive now that I’ve gotten to half that’s deviating from the debate pattern (I’m sure it will be fine, but probably 普通… Hopefully I’m wrong tho). The debate pattern was a bit too formulaic tho, I’ll agree with that. The console repair chapter was interesting - a bunch of words I didn’t know, but could immediately put together from context + computer knowledge
The dragon stuff has gotten quite interesting since then, and the SoL elements are still going strong as well
Sees 「毒キノコのお家に黒魔女ルーナが住んでいました。」in the description. I guess I’ll be reading this it looks like a nice fairy tail-esque read
That’s my problem with it, it’s not a debate, but it should be. It’s extremely unrealistic that it goes character A → character B → the end (I don’t remember their names ). Like, shouldn’t A have a retort? Especially when she is literally shown to have not changed opinion after the exchange. It should be ABABABAB… and it’s weird that previous conversations are never really brought up. It just feels like an info dump… although, I must admit, I am very biased by the fact that I have emotional attachment to some of those topics because they were part of my childhood. My frustration comes mostly from the fact that I want to make a rebuttal to B’s answer, and there’s no way of doing so.
Yeah, sadly that’s a pretty good summary of both the first and the second volume. “Sadly” because it has such a strong hook. If only its two parts were better integrated…
I don’t see the relevance of her not having changed her opinion afterwards, unless you mean “she should have brought it up again next chapter”. I agree a little variation would have gone a long way, but also…
That’s what I took it for in the first place, and the “debates” were just a frame for that to happen within. (As an aside the repeated catchphrase reminded me of Chika from 声優ラジオのウラオモテ | L28 - so that added to my enjoyment a bit)
It hit a good middle ground for me of “I know/remember just enough of this to relate” and “I don’t know just enough of this that the trivia is really interesting”
Anyway I think your critiques are right - they just don’t bother me to the same extent. As an aside, there is another series 陰キャギャルでもイキがりたい! | L30 that does the “deep dive debate about various things that may be nostalgic”, but executes it much better. So maybe you’d enjoy it?
If I remember properly, it wasn’t that different until the last three episodes when Luka goes evil at the circus since I think they needed to wrap stuff up, but the manga continues on for MANY more volumes.
You might find out sooner than anticipated. I meant to read つゆちる (a VN) this afternoon, but my computer was being butts so I ended up reading manga on my phone instead.
I’m finding my current read to be well under my reading level, so I think I’m ready to move onto the purples. I have a couple more chapters left to read, but I’ll gather my thoughts and probably put together a (short) review tomorrow.
I’m about a quarter of the way done 魔法少女育成計画 QUEENS | L36. This puts me on pace to read it in about a month, which is on par with most previous volumes (except that one volume I loved, which despite being more pages than usual only took me 2.5 weeks).
So far content-wise, it’s fine. It’s honestly still in the build-up phase despite being a quarter of the way done. The most annoying thing is that I just want to look at the list of characters for the next book, but that risks spoiling who survives this volume. It’s just always so fun seeing what new designs and powers the author has come up with.
Besides that, not much to report. I do have some manga in progress, but I’ll post about them after I’ve finished more than just the first chapter so I have something useful to say.
I’ve also started reading the Buffy comics. I just finished rewatching the series and I’d only previously read the season 8 comics, so now I’m finally going to read all of them. I’m a bit embarrassed to say that I went a full 20 pages before I realized that I was reading the panels right to left rather than left to right. And then I didn’t realize until the following day that I had the page turn set right to left as well (from reading manga previously in the app), which probably compounded my confusion on the panel reading direction.
Cute, but not enough going on other than the romance stuff for me to continue with the series.
And, for the curious, my first book is 星のカービィ あぶないグルメ屋敷! ?の巻 | L21 My friend recommended it as it is the only thing their friend’s son will read, but I wasn’t sold on it until I read this review spaghettiman's review of 星のカービィ あぶないグルメ屋敷! ?の巻 | Natively. Actually, I would like to read a book where Kirby and King Dedede have to work together.
eefara’s Results 
My stamina for jumping around many different things is quite good, but I am absolutely certain my numbers (especially time-wise) would look a lot different if I just focused on a single novel or something.
My book wishlist is very aspirational right now, but I think I should be able to start comfortably reading and rating old 花とゆめ manga in the not too distant future. Maybe some new manga too because 
You too can read the manga that has approximately one million tie-in products. I’m pretty sure I even saw Chiikawa toilet paper in Japan. 
)
I probably won’t have much time to study on the trip so I’ll just have to make up for it by reading on the plane. That’s how it works, right?
. Satori Reader is starting to feel a little too easy, so I think it’s time for me to spread my wings and fly into books for grade schoolers.
).
