I am now done with 異世界美少女受肉おじさんと 10 | L26 and the author solved that problem! We are getting some proper introspection and more mileage out of the elements introduced in the story. Also, the 告白 scene felt great.
It’s still a bit hard to give 5* to those volumes since I don’t really like the drawing style, but I’ll do it for this one Edit: to volume 9. Don’t think about it.
Edit 2: volume 11 was back to what I don’t like. It established a lot of things and solved everything in like 5 panels. When 橘 asks “wait, then what was that all about?” we just get a shrug from the other characters.
Edit 3: wait, the author list changed as well. I wonder if that explains the change in tone.
I recently started reading 本好き. Initially, I was just going to watch some of the anime for now, and maybe start the first book later in the year. I’m now on season 3 of the anime and my husband has somehow become invested in the series too.
In January I read the first volume of キノの旅 and last year the first volume of Kiki’s Delivery Service. If I can managed to finish 本好き and コンビニ人間 this year I’ll have completed the Japanese Learners Square of Success™.
Because if you haven’t read all of those, are you even really learning japanese?
And I am now done with 異世界美少女受肉おじさんと(14) (×裏少年サンデース) | L26, the last volume published so far, and that one felt amazing. I read half of it before bed, which was a mistake, because I couldn’t stop thinking about it and just gave in at 2am and finished it.
This volume in particular contained a lot of elements I just never see in seinen manga (or just manga in general).
There was (heavy spoilers)
Equal opportunities fan service. Sure, it is still biased towards showing women, but the precepts of the Goddess of Love and Beauty say that everyone should show their beauty, and the author has been delivering on that throughout the series.
Speaking of beauty, there is a discussion about alternative expressions of beauty through a group of women who are into fitness and bodybuilding. I loved that it was treated seriously, not as a joke. The leader of that group gets a well fleshed out love storyline with [really heavy spoiler] 橘() [normal level spoiler]and even wins the beauty pageant organized in the name of the Goddess (again, not as a joke, not only does her dress fits her really well, her performance is really great too).
Speaking of [heavy spoiler again; not specific to this volume, though] 橘(), and by extension 神宮寺(), there is a great discussion about gender, [heavy spoilers contd.] with 橘 figuring out that 橘() is how she wants to be. She might have lived her whole life as a guy if not isekai’d, but she can’t unlearn the way she felt as a woman. Meanwhile, 神宮寺 never changed his feelings about his own gender (and indeed his behavior was consistent with that), which resolves a gripe I had before (橘 seeming too comfortable with a female body; it was foreshadowing, not a plot hole).
That discussion ends with 橘’s renewed confession and the series secondary title (catchphrase?) drop (この漫画はおっさんと元おっさんのラブコメです). I cried.
No but seriously, between that and other stuff in the volume, I went through a whole box of tissues. I am still crying as I type this.
There’s a lot more, actually, but I think that’s enough spoilers for now. I know people click on those, but I just had to get it out of my system.
Overall, I feel like I often say “it was too little too late”, but in this specific instance, I feel like it’s more “it was late”. I don’t think the topic at hand will resonate with everyone and, despite being justified, there’s still a lot of fan service, so it’s hard to just recommend willy-nilly, but I’m glad I read this series. Next volume comes out next month, too!
Edit: looks like I have to thank @Athakaspen for that. Speaking of which:
The anime only covers the first 4-ish volumes. There’s a lot more to this series.
Wow, I’m glad you liked it so much! At the time I found it (iirc) i was in the middle of a reading challenge and switched to the anime so I could focus on other books. It felt like it had a lot of potential but I honestly never expected it to go as deep as it sounds like here, I need to get back to this asap!
Perhaps even more so than the battle scenes, I really enjoy the everyday interactions of characters in the 武蔵 series. My favorite character is 沢庵坊 (I like the 漬物 too), and it seems every time he shows up the conversation/narration gets even better. As someone who use to play an instrument, and dabbled with writing 俳句 a couple of years ago, the following excerpt really struck a chord for me:
So I started reading 近畿地方のある場所について | L34 on Sunday and got totally sucked into it and ended up binging the whole thing in two days. I picked it up after falling for all the hype around it on social media last year, but I have to say - it was worth the hype! Seriously 最＆高, go read it now! It was the first Japanese horror book that actually made me feel creeped out and even scared during parts of it, which is definitely praise since they all tend to be fairly lukewarm in terms of eliciting any kind of emotional reaction (my fellow Japanese horror readers know). I would describe it as a long series of interconnected horror short stories. It was by no means a perfect masterpiece of fiction, but it was pure entertainment!
I also started 光のとこにいてね | L31 and am only on page 30 or so, but so far so good. I didn’t read the blurb before starting (oh god why do I keep doing that, one of my goals for this year was to stop getting books I didn’t read the summary for…but I like the author, so trust ), but it appears to be about the relationship between two women, and like it may go down a yuri path? I’m not sure if it makes sense to call a book like this yuri, but you all know what I mean. It is quite chunky at around 500 pages and spans a time period of 25 years, so I am expecting something quite epic!
it’s so true I’ve read a decent amount of Japanese horror and I think the closest I’ve gotten to actually feeling creeped out was one about dolls, but it also had such horrible characters and dialogue I just can’t possibly recommend it to anyone
I had some time to kill this afternoon, so I went to a cafe and read the first chapter-ish of ニッターズハイ!1 | L20 in which Jock Boy accidentally insults Pretty Boy by implying that handicrafts ARE FOR GIRLS. Oh no boys, don’t fight. Don’t fight so much that you can’t stop thinking about each other.
I kind of love Rui (Pretty Boy) already because he’s prickly and pretty and it’s already hinting he has some kind of tragedy in his past. Like a moth to the flame, I love those prickly ones.
Also the boys are very pretty in this one and I can’t wait until they actually join the handicrafts club so we get to know more about the other members.
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), but it appears to be about the relationship between two women, and like it may go down a yuri path? I’m not sure if it makes sense to call a book like this yuri, but you all know what I mean. It is quite chunky at around 500 pages and spans a time period of 25 years, so I am expecting something quite epic!
I’ve read a decent amount of Japanese horror and I think the closest I’ve gotten to actually feeling creeped out was one about dolls, but it also had such horrible characters and dialogue I just can’t possibly recommend it to anyone 
horrifying
horribly written
