i’m reading 少女革命ウテナ 1 | L23. i started it back in august, but didn’t get very far. i’m most of the way through the fourth volume now, and really really enjoying it.
i first watched the anime many years ago, and it’s been a favourite of mine ever since. with a few rewatches, i know the characters and plot quite well. going into the manga, i knew to expect some differences. and there are plenty, sometimes small details, sometimes quite large differences. but the characters remain true to themselves.
and the characters are really the core of Utena. they are layered and complex, and few (if any) are unequivocally good or evil (expect for the main villain, he is a manipulative, gaslighting, abusive bastard. almost as bad as kyubei (from Madoka Magika)). it’s a delight to see Utena and Anshii grow and develop.
talking about abusive bastards, there is violence in here. often very cold, calculated, manipulative violence. the physical violence is restrained, never gratuitous. but with much fewer comedic elements than the anime, and the ability to pause whenever it feels right, i find that the manga hits harder.
fully recommended, and i’m really looking forward to discovering how it ends in the manga!
I have one volume left (which I’ll get around to when my book club assignments aren’t piling up ) and hard agree to everything in this post, but especially this. He’s evil in a really realistic way, despite how fantastical everything else is.
I’m overall enjoying the manga, but Juri’s arc and Miki’s arc where my favorites from the anime, and the manga just didn’t live up to those for me.
in particular i’d have liked to see more of Juri, yeah. their arcs got sacrificed to length, i guess?
thinking about it, this is why i compared him to Kyubei. because in Madoka Magica also, if you wash away all the fantastical elements, you have a very clear portrayal of what this kind of abuse looks like.
とんがり帽子 is beautiful as always, but also frustrating as is often the case. The story doesn’t progress fast enough and introduces too many convoluted elements. A simpler (and more focused) story that moved more quickly would be more to my liking. (And honestly, I’d prefer if it was a bit darker.) The only reason I keep reading it is because of the art and because I read it with a reading buddy.
For New Game, I was surprised that I enjoyed volume 5. I don’t find the series to be very funny compared to my favorite Manga Time Kirara series, but I enjoy the story and characters. However volume 5 is a spinoff/prequel volume showing Aoba in her senior year of high school, meaning it doesn’t move the main story forward at all. But I still enjoyed it just as much as the first four volumes.
I also bought 28 (I kid you not) volumes of Manga Time Kirara manga because there was a crazy 55 yen sale. So those 28 volumes cost what 2 volumes would normally cost. The thing is, this sale was just for first volumes in a series, so I now have 28 new series to check out. I’m sure I’ll be back to post a poll in "What should I read next?" Megathread soon enough, because I’m going to have trouble deciding what to read!
Just finished it. There were some unfortunate production decisions towards the end (they used this echo effect for some of the dialogue in the flashbacks that made it a bit hard to understand), but overall the audiobook was really great. I loved the book when I read it the first time and the audiobook added even more emotion. Highly recommend.
I finished the audiobook of 本好きの下剋上~司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません~第二部「神殿の巫女見習い1」 | L31 yesterday (the weakest volume so far, imo), then binged an English audiobook and then tried to find something that wasn’t 本好き as I don’t want to burn myself out on 1 series. I eventually settled on そして、バトンは渡された | L29 (I don’t like this cover ) as it’s ranked fairly low in difficulty and I have also watched the movie before (and really liked it).
Physically, I am still making my way through https://learnnatively.com/book/33e4a42953/ but It’s a fairly straight-forward, quick read. Very chill.
) and hard agree to everything in this post, but especially this. He’s evil in a really realistic way, despite how fantastical everything else is.
I’m sure I’ll be back to post a poll in 
) as it’s ranked fairly low in difficulty and I have also watched the movie before (and really liked it).
