Now that January’s over, I can look back and see that it was a super productive month for me in terms of reading:
Novels
I finally finished up 異世界でおまけの兄さん自立を目指す | L30; it was an isekai, haha. I did enjoy it enough to pick up the second book, though I likely won’t be starting it soon.
I managed to finish fourFlesh&Blood books, volumes 7-10, which is a pretty incredible pace for me. These last four were excellent, which helped as well. I still need to post a little review for volume 10; there’s some content warning stuff in there. I kind of want to write a little review for each of them as I go, but they end up being me talking about the book’s contents instead of language stuff, since there’s only so much you can say about a relatively consistent, long-running series…
Manga
Finished up another volume of Yotsuba, よつばと! 9 | L18. I need to sit down and work my way through the rest of the books; I’ve got them all sitting on my shelf, looking at me.
異世界から帰還したら恋愛フラグが立ちました | L25, which was just okay for me. It was more generic romance than generic fantasy romance, and I was hoping for more of the latter going off the cover. Oneshots also have a hard time distinguishing themselves given the short amount of pages, so I wrote a review as soon as I finished so I wouldn’t forget about it.
And finally, the first two volumes of 魔入りました!入間くん 1 | L27, which I really enjoyed! This looks like it’s going to be a pretty fun series, so I’m looking forward to reading more of it this year! I picked up a bunch of the following books on Kindle since there was a sale, so I’m all set.
I don’t anticipate February being quite as amazing (for me) in terms of books read. Most of January was me trying to catch up with a fellow Flesh&Blood reader, and I’ve got 七回死んだ男 | L30?? and D.Gray-man reverse 2 四十九番目の名前 | L30 currently on my reading list now as well. The latter I’m hoping to take a weekend at some point and zoom through to finally check it off.
I see a common point between all those books. And I approve of it.
Oh! I read the first three volumes when they were free on Booklive two years ago (you made me realize that I forgot to mark those as read, too, so thanks for that). I did enjoy it a quite a lot too, but I switched to the anime instead because I am cheap and I could watch it for free. Maybe I should get back to the manga sometimes.
I started reading 満月をさがして and my eyes hurt so much. Bunko sized manga should not exist! Language wise it’s actually slightly harder than expected, so I actually do need the furigana from time to time, but it’s so tiny that I have to strain my eyes to make out the furigana. I’m sure part of the problem is also that I don’t have my lights bright enough, so I’ll have to adjust that later and see if it makes a difference. I already ordered the second volume since I needed to buy a bunch of stuff before things went out of stock and included it in my order, but I’m starting to wonder if I’d be better off reading the blurry digital version.
I started reading 異世界の名探偵 1 首なし姫殺人事件 | L32 and, upon meeting some of the characters (especially レオ) my rotted brain went into full BL mode… before being immediately disappointed by the reveal that one of them is a woman.
On the other hand, due to joining the royal school, I assumed it would be “one of those” series that take place during school life and I just wished the author would time-skip over that… and then it happened!.
So, there’s no mystery plot so far and the setting is only one epsilon away from typical 異世界 stuff, but not bad. I still have secret hopes that キリオ will turn out to be a trans man and that it is a BL story actually, but I’m not really holding my breath.
Since Pandora caught up with me after almost 3 years and hitting me hard (though not dangerously) my reading has slowed down to… nothing… well, I forced my self to read this week’s section of 七回死んだ男 | L34 for the bookclub, so I don’t fall behind… but that was rough… I also listened a bit to 思い出が消えないうちに | L28 when I needed a break from sleeping. I also started ゴールデン・デイズ (series) | L22 which seems just about what my brain can handle
I do that all the time… honestly, the way some friendships are portrayed in japanese manga/tv/books is just so not-Japanese that what else are we to think? we are innocent. it’s the writer’s fault!
Edit: now getting a ton of info about how there’s only one way to get into a certain place where a certain character is going to be alone. Sounds like bad stuff are about to happen
Since my last update, I finally finished 夜は短し歩けよ乙女 | L42, which was fun but started to drag towards the end. I also read 鋼の錬金術師 3 | L31, which was great as expected, and 転生したら剣でした 1 | L25, which was not bad. That’s really all I can say about it, since nothing about the story stood out to me.
For a more interesting update, I just finished Mr.マロウブルー【第1巻】 | L27??, which is a fascinating mix of 入れ代わり, BL, and… possibly murder!? Its themes are dark, but it also feels hopeful, and characters have shown some growth in the first volume already. I want to continue with the next 2 volumes, but the physical books are so pretty I don’t want to switch to digital… so I guess I’ll stay in suspense for the time being.
蒼井 (あおい) is a very shy, self-conscious guy who dropped out of high school after a traumatic experience, and has been living alone in an apartment for 6 years doing his best not to burden anyone. He happens to run into someone from high school who was involved in that trauma, and that guy basically tells 蒼井 it was all his own fault, which pushes him to try to commit suicide when he gets back to his apartment. However, just as he does, he switches places with a girl in high school who just fell down the stairs trying to 入れ替わる with a guy from her class. Now he has to deal with the ramifications of switching places with someone else, becoming a girl, being in a high school again, and what could have possibly happened to the original owner of his new body. Thankfully, the guy he just fell down the stairs into believes 蒼井 when he tells him what happened, and they work together to find out what’s going on.
I’ll leave the girl’s side of the story, and why she was trying to switch places with someone at all, for you to find out in the actual book. We don’t get so see much from her perspective in this volume, but it’s clear they’ll overlap more soon.
They really are! The whole design of the binding is great though. The inside cover is bright pink on the front and blue on the back, with purple on the spine in between. There’s even a semi-transparent page in the front that blurs the illustration behind as you turn the page. I’m a sucker for good layout design, and this ticks all the right boxes
but that’s actually the more important part of the story, imo. It’s really kinda the whole story. I dropped the manga after vol 2. I really enjoy body or gender-switches, but this is not some highschool rom-com, this is a creepy psycho-something…
I guess that makes sense, it’s clearly going to take over soon but didn’t really have time to go anywhere in this volume. If anyone wants to know more on that half I guess I can say that she’s being bullied by her classmates, one in particular, and gets the idea of switching bodies with someone to murder her without being found out. Now that it actually happened, she seems to be putting that plan into action. So, yeah, definitely a dark story, and I guess it leans more into that side going forward. I hope the relationship between the two main characters of this first volume at least continues to develop…
I’ve been reading モーメント 永遠の一瞬 (series) | L23, since the first four volumes are currently free. Read three and change so far, and I suspect that at this rate I’m going to be buying the whole series as I’m enjoying it a lot. The art is nice - it does some fun things with sound effects and does a good job of conveying the movement of figure skating, which is really hard to do - and at least in those three volumes it’s been fairly realistic and healthy in how it portrays the sport, so I hope that continues.
I have been struggling through 雷 いかづち の娘シェクティ〈1〉天雷 あまがみ の剣 つるぎ | L30?? - not because it’s difficult but because the author decided that a great way to end the story would be a long, long infodump about the setting’s creation story/cosmology and I really, really don’t care. I bought this mostly based on the cover and got the retro-fantasy vibe I was after, but retro-fantasy can be incredibly tedious…
I finished 異世界の名探偵 1 首なし姫殺人事件 | L32 yesterday.
I felt like I took forever to read it (as I kept putting it down to try to overthink everything for an hour every time something new was introduced) but apparently I just took 3 days.
I figured out most of the mystery, which is better than I do usually. I didn’t figure out some specific details (but I didn’t care about them either, like how was the body kept on the ceiling. I dunno, magic. (Actually, I was right about that too, now that I think about it)).
I did not figure out the criminal, though, since that was the one character I refused to be the culprit . Okay, one the two, to be honest. I also didn’t want キリオ to be involved, and that’s why I hated the epilogue.
I finally got the first 12 volumes of 7SEEDS from the library (after one year of wait), so I’ll be reading that next, as well as 穏やか貴族の休暇のすすめ。 | L31?? which looked fun when it popped up in my feed.
Most of January was me trying to catch up with a fellow Flesh&Blood reader, and I’ve got 七回死んだ男 | L30?? and D.Gray-man reverse 2 四十九番目の名前 | L30 currently on my reading list now as well. The latter I’m hoping to take a weekend at some point and zoom through to finally check it off.
I see a common point between all those books. And I approve of it.
and hitting me hard (though not dangerously) my reading has slowed down to… nothing… well, I forced my self to read this week’s section of 
. Okay, one the two, to be honest. I also didn’t want キリオ to be involved, and that’s why I hated the epilogue.