What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)

Journal with Witch - It's about a novelist in her mid-thirties, Makio Koudai. A neurodivergent, introverted woman who balances her need for solace with a warm support network of close friends, Makio is not the most traditional, and was never really understood by her mother and older sister. Avoiding the friction that characterized much of her late childhood, Makio has spent the majority of her adult life comfortably estranged from her family.

When Makio's sister dies in a car accident, her 15 year old niece Asa is left stunned and orphaned. Not wanting to see the girl passed around from one extended relative to the next, she decides to take Asa in. Now, Makio must adjust not only to living with someone else, but someone young, extroverted, impressionable, and in the midst of a somewhat relatable, muted grief.

There's no violence in this show, no shouting drama. It's a quiet, contemplative, heartwarming piece about how the pain and confusion of self-discovery is often juxtaposed with the joy and beauty of the small, everyday things in life. There's no moral lesson, per se, just a collection of character studies that play out like a diary written in a foreign land (ikoku nikki).

The melancholy of the end credits, especially seeing young Asa about to pull the veil back on the mother she struggled to understand only to look up and see the doves ascending to heaven, is the perfect example of the soft, nuanced approach to tragedy this series takes.

It's up to episode 9 so far, but seems like it's going to be a sleeper-hit of the year. It's definitely shaping up to be one of my most favorite series.

Sakura Quest - A college graduate, Yoshino Koharu, dreams of making it big in the city. Striking out on interview after interview, however, she accepts the first offer she finally gets from her recruiter, mistaking it for a short gig.

Now, Yoshino has a one year contract to serve as a rural town's idol mascot - their "queen" - to market and promote the area's dying tourist industry. It's... not going well. But she has a big heart and is making friends with locals who want to save their town, identity, and way of life, in the process giving Yoshino something to believe in.

This one's a slice-of-life comedy with a modest budget but great backgrounds. The story style is "problem of the week", so expect some setbacks as each episode balances between being self-contained while driving the overall character progression forward. Again, there's no real drama, just conversations and light comedy. I'm only a few episodes in, but so far it seems promising!

I've continued my Fate series watch through.

Fate/Stay Night: Heaven's Feel
This one got really dark. It follows Sakura which I found interesting because she basically disappeared in UBW. It's very tragic. It was very surprising because the scope of her trauma goes beyond what was hinted at in UBW. The main opponents felt a lot more scary too. I also like that the movies basically skip the part of the story that doesn't change. I didn't need to see that again. As this is produced by the same studio as UBW, the quality was present. Also they didn't explain the Third magic or Heaven's feel very well. I didn't know what that was without looking it up after the fact.

Fate/Stay Night (2006)
So I believe I found two different version of this. I initially saw what I believed to be the original version. The art and animation looked like an anime produced in the 90's. Same with the English dubbing. Once I realized I was watching the same start as UBW, I found a different source. The art looked more bold in terms of lines and colors, but the style still felt a bit out of date.
In terms of the story, I didn't dislike it as much as I thought. I do see where they mixed the other routes from UBW and HF into this, but that didn't bother me. This did feel more like a classic YA, Shonen type story. It did a better job of explaining certain aspects of the lore than the other two. Overall I thought it was okay. Worth watching just to get the first route of the story since I'm not going to read the visual novel.

Fate: Zero
I liked this a lot. Mostly because most of the character's were adults which lead to a more mature story. I'm a bit tired of a lot of "YA" tropes. Watching Fate/Stay Night first was a great idea though. Seeing how this war unfolded and lead to the main series was really interesting. There was a lot more time to get to know the other masters and servants. It made me more invested in all their stories. It also explains aspects of the war that the main series didn't very well. Seeing this story and how it ended made the first route of F/SN more impactful. I understand now why Sabers story is the first ending. (Still like UBW better though)

Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files {Rail Zeppelin} Grace note

I didn't expect much from this, but I ended up kinda loving it. The whole detective/mystery of the week thing is right up my alley. It was really cool following Waver and see how he changed after the war. The side characters were all very interesting as well. The story felt a bit short, but complete in terms of Waver's journey in this anime. I understand that they left out a lot from the visual novel. I may actually get into the Manga adaption to see what I missed.

Fate/Strange Fake
I'm only a few episodes in, but really enjoying this so far. Given what I just watched, I was really excited to see Lord El-Melloi II and his apprentices again. I love that he has this aged expertise to offer on these events. I've met all the masters and servants and really liking them all. The mystery going on BTS is also very intriguing. I'm curious to see how this unfolds.

Still working through Lone Wolf and Cub, still great.

Also, started Our Precious Conversations, which I got through a fanatical bundle (you can find my post about it in ~books if you're interested). It's been a super cute (and predictably dialogue heavy) slow-burn romance. I'm on Vol 2, and there's only 7 total, so looking forward to seeing the story play out.

More Shiboyugi. And I'm starting to really see how they're cutting corners. There's a lot more of those stylized distant shots, including in a tickling scene where it felt really weird since they were so out of focus. Lots of close-ups, to the point some shots feel like they have no transitions. There was a close-up of a girl's eye before fluff appeared and she fell, no leadup to show anything else or even really show a change in expression. One scene had a girl point a gun at someone, then the very next shot had her suddenly aiming it at her own head.

The lineless art style is still one of the prettier workarounds I've seen for budget purposes. But I feel like this episode depended on it a lot more than previous ones. One of the weirdest shots was a scene with a detailed close-up of one character, but used the lineless style for another character whispering in her ear. It was weird to see the outline of her lips without them moving directly against a clearly defined character.

That aside, I still really enjoy the oddly serene atmosphere. This episode turned up the dissonance factor a lot. Lots of very pretty-looking scenes centering around a particularly psychotic girl who revels in murder, while acting the picture of serenity herself. Her voice-over was so cheerful sounding... The anime did a good job at clearly showing this woman is very much a monster.

Been a rough week (for me and for the world at large too) which has left me in no mood to watch anime, but I was glad to see trailers for:

• Rilakkuma - Short anime about the well known bear will be done by Production IG of all studios. Looks very chill.

• Yuru Camp S4 - Possibly the best executed 4 girl slice of life show in history. Despite now also possibly being the longest running one, this trailer looks great (notwithstanding the change in production studio).

• Suikoden - It's actually Suikoden II on the inside. Probably won't actually watch this since I know the game, but I'm glad Konami is throwing its hat into making anime. It's apparently directly produced by Konami Animation.

I finally finished the last season of Attack on Titan. Hard to find alone time to watch it since it's so goddamn disturbing, so it took me a while to get through it!

chainsaw lord chainsaw chainsaw

I blew through the first volume-ish, watched s1, read through reze + the 1980s image comics-esque international santa claus arc lol, now i'm debating on reading through the school volume or savoring it & trying to drag it out like i always do things i love this much, gosh. Spy X Family was a game changer, i thought anime shows were all like pokemon & dragonball & I found out I was wrong, but chainsaw man is on another level entirely. The last thing I thought this Fujimoto guy was gonna throw at me was a story about the abuse of the impoverished by their employers (not that it's not timely lol but dang).

Lately I've been reading manga at night because I find that reading is the best way to make my brain slow down - especially because my husband is often playing video games in bed late at night these days in spite of my protests. Reading Chiikawa and Clevatess is pretty good for this because the former is relaxing and the latter is interesting enough to keep me reading but also formulaic enough that I get sleepy reading it.

But then I started reading Goodnight Punpun.

My god, this manga.

I started reading it because I'd heard great things about it but haven't really found anyone giving a reason why it's worth reading. And frankly, I can't put why it's so incredible into words either. The decision to draw the main character and his family into cartoon figures in a otherwise extremely realistic world was a brilliant choice because it really makes you sink into their perspective. There are many times I've been reading this and it just felt like the manga was pointing a finger directly at me and telling me about my life - especially where I am in it right now, roughly in the middle of it.