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What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)
What have you been watching and reading this week? 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!
A couple months ago I had written my thoughts on Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You.
The official season is now underway and is about halfway through. I have been compaing the dub and sub version. After watching 6 episodes I think I prefer the subbed.
The main reason being I just really like the japanese voice acting for the female lead. I wouldnt say the English VA isnt doing a good job, its just a little too on the nose? Tayama sounds exactly what I would have expected a voice actor to go for given the character design. Whereas the Japanese VA has a more unique sounding style, which both makes the character feel more like a real person and I think communicates the characters underlying personality better.
I also found the manga was sold at a local bookstore chain, so Im following along with the manga as the episodes come out.
~ Manga corner ~
Hope some of ya'll are still around after the kerfuffles last week because there are still more manga that needs your eyeballs.
--
Island Rock | Chapter 18
https://mangaplus.shueisha.co.jp/viewer/1030167
MC decided to pursue his music passion by moving out to a remote island with a class size of 3 students. Now they form a band together. Oddly curious how many people on this island are low-key musicians. And also hilarious how the principle and the home-room teacher always talked in an overly sinister manner.
If there's a theme for the story, I think it's that it's okay to dream big. The various islanders are more or less resigned to just settle within this small peaceful world of theirs, and the MC is so embarrassed about his past band experience that he basically self-exiles to come there. But little by little, they learned to enjoy each other's company and slowly becoming more serious in pursuing their passion.
Even the home-room teacher, who always put up a front to the principle about how his effort to help the students are totally just calculated attempts for self-interest. I could imagine the routine was imposed on him by the principle as a way to encourage him to be more ambitious about his career.
--
Bug Ego | Chapter 23
https://mangaplus.shueisha.co.jp/viewer/1029440
If it's a pride for a fantasy setting to feature an in-depth magic system with strong internal consistency, then I'd say the strength of this series is how much its magic system defies logical explanation. All that the characters can rely on are ad-hoc rules ("hacks"), which makes the world feels dangerous and every actions risky because there's no telling what could happen.
Earlier chapters are mostly just them goofing around exploring what they can do. But all that messing around eventually led to them catching the attention of some powerful forces they don't unstand and now struggle to escape.
--
Kakushite Kisetsu wa Ao wo Shiru | Chapter 1
https://cubari.moe/read/gist/cmF3L1lvc29yb2tvL01hbmdhcy9tYWluL0tha3VzaGl0ZSUyMEtpc2V0c3UlMjB3YSUyMEFvJTIwd28lMjBTaGlydS5qc29u/1/1/
A story about a male author who doesn't know how to write female characfer and a female author who doesn't know how to write male character, learning from each other. Let's see if the author can deliver the goods and give us well-written both male and female MCs.
--
Lunar Maria | One-shot
https://mangaplus.shueisha.co.jp/viewer/1030309
A nice little fairy tale.
There live on the moon a bunch of rabbits.
They fish and mallet dangos, out of habit.
But rumored, out at sea,
A mermaid's killing spree,
And a tragic love story behind it.
Just a whole bunch of slice of life romance manga. It's been a shitty week, and it usually perks me up.
Stop! I'm Falling for You is my current favourite, because I really do enjoy an aggressive FMC. I think it's particularly struck a chord because it's not common to have an aggressive FMC with a series not playing into the fan service aspect of it, and also one that is blushing like hell the whole way through. MMC might usually annoy me because he initially reads as the usual Japanese audience self insert, but his actions are much braver than his internal monologue, which makes for a really fun juxtaposition.
Also caught up on Oishii Kouhii no Irekata, which is another one that comforts me. I've never seen a romance manga have a scene where the leads are going to have sex, but one of the parties is obviously still not ready, and the other one loses his erection because of the stress, and the just decide to call it off for now and just snuggle. I'm not gojng to pretend it's high art, but I dunno, it's more mature than what I was expecting.
I also just reread Don't Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro. It's still really special to me. It's the manga that showed me that I actually really like slice of life romance. I don't know if it's better than other things I'm reading right now, but it's always a comfy reread for me.