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What have you been watching / reading this month? (Anime/Manga)
What have you been watching and reading this month? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.
If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!
[Off topic] IMO would make sense, for now, to make the anime/manga topic monthly instead @Deimos
I've been watching on-and-off the shoujo anime Kimi ni Todoke (From Me to You) which focuses on this shy and misunderstood girl, who learns to socialize and gain confidence thanks to her new friends who are also social outcasts, and a boy she has a crush on. The boy is her opposite, he's popular and sunny, contrasting with her gloom. The setup is that her name is Sawako and everyone calls her Sadako, aka the girl from the horror movie The Ring.
It's kind of hard for me to fully appreciate the girl's perspective, as the original story was written by a female for a female audience. It's still enjoyable because the art is so pretty and there are a lot of funny and sweet moments. (May be too sweet for some viewers.)
I randomly started Aoi Bungaku last week after having it on my PTW list for years. I think somewhere along the line I believed it was a horror series, but I'm pleasantly surprised that it isn't at all. It's an anthology that adapts classic stories from early to mid-20th century Japanese literature... I've seen it described as "Japanese Masterpiece Theater: Anime Edition." It's largely dramatic and psychological so far, exploring a type of dread and unease that these war-era writers all seem to have grappled with.
I'm 3 stories/8 episodes in right now.
The first - No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai - was good, centered around a man who survives a double-suicide pact. Apparently, it was semi-autobiographical.
The second - In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom, by Ango Sakaguchi - was okay. I kinda saw it coming, and found the backstory to the story's conception more interesting than this retelling.
The third - a somewhat loose adaptation of Kokoro, by Natsume Souseki - was great. It reminded me of a famous Kurosawa film, which I won't name to avoid spoilers for anyone interested. Very well executed over the two episodes, making them more than the sum of their parts.
There are 3 more stories in the remaining 4 episodes, and I'm looking forward to it. I also really like the live-action introduction given the somewhat ominous pseudo-librarian at the beginning of each episode. I had no familiarity with the source novels/authors they've adapted so far, so it's good to get a bit of context going in, and some of it has piqued my interest to dig a little deeper. I think I'm also realizing that I prefer anime that is adapted from novels (or at least from novelists) rather than manga or light novels, even for seinen titles, simply because the depth of the source material seems to give studios more to work with and result in a richer end product.