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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!
The Ghost in the Shell always covered a lot of philosophical topics that made you think about what it really means to be human or alive, or what is a human soul, or "ghost", and episodes 7 and 8 are just laying it on thick, like peanut butter without oil thick. Some really beautiful and symbolic visuals in these episodes, and also Batou being goofy and badass.
So I've gotten into a bit of romance anime. I'm not really in the mood for binging generic action heavy Shonen right now.
Dealing with the Mikadono sister is a breeze
Call of the Night
Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You
This one is definitely my favorite of the bunch. Smoking cigarettes and corporate hell aside, this is pretty wholesome. The way the relationship is building feels natural. The whole "Just tell him already!" aspect is both annoying, but also enjoyable. Which will make the eventual reveal worth it. I also like that the episodes are two shorts put together. It gives the show a good pace.
This is a weird show in that Netflix has different rights than Crunchyroll. Netflix is getting simulcast and dub on Fridays. CR dub is delayed. I appreciate that other platforms are offering some competition to CR though.
False Memory episode 6 is so good! A mental battle against the desire to forget painful memories in order to protect the ones you still treasure. At this point I'm reasonably certain that the whole story takes place in a manifestation of the main character's psyche as he fights to overcome the various regrets throughout his life, with the helps of some outside visitors. Somewhat reminds me of the game To the moon, but less scifi and more abstract impression.
spoiler
I like the inversion of trope. Earlier there're small flashbacks showing Guan Chao coming from a poor household with a drunken dad, implying he was abused as a kid. But it turned out his dad just mostly wallowed in self-loathing and felt sorry for not being able to provide for Guan Chao.
On the other hand, his friend He Mingshuo came from a well-off family but he was the one regularly abused and chose to play it off. Guan Chao either never noticed back when they were kids, or he chose to misremember a more idealistic version of his friend.
The art is expressive and the story is emotional. Each episode keeps getting better than the last, and this one already feels like the climax so I have no idea where they're going next with the final episode.
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Well, back to the usual program,
~ Manga corner ~
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Slow entries
Made in Abyss | Chapter 74
https://mangadex.org/chapter/769f524a-b3a6-43fa-8df4-d9ac13f35b97
New chapter! Author is taking longer and longer. I was starting to worry that he's loosing his grip on the story a bit because the last few chapters felt like contrived excuses for lore dumping (still very interesting lore though) but it looks like we're back to the action this time.
Very curious about the nature of the twin's ability, looks to the major mystery (and source of suffering) for this arc.
Also don't look at the extra chapter because it's just him fetishizing the children again. It's a good thing the anime help sanitize the story because otherwise it's really hard to recommend to anyone.
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High Score Girl DASH | Chapter 69
https://mangadex.org/chapter/8dd483ed-b0d9-40f3-aa68-8d5abb237be3
Anyone here read High Score Girl before? It's a romance between 2 fighting game lovers. All the characters are goofy idiots and the MC is the typical dense protagonist but I like that the author portrayed his denseness in a believable way and I could see how someone could fall in love with him (at some point he started taking actions to improve himself out of love but not realizing it). But what I especially like, however, is the second girl, because she fights hard to win him over. If anyone embodies the fighting spirit the most in this story I'd say it's her. It's hard not to cheer for her victory but alas, sometimes your best effort is still not enough.
In any case, this is the sequel where she now works as a school teacher, seemingly already swore off romance, teaching the next generation the joy of fighting games (in addition to schoolworks of course). The manga kept hinting at something happening when she travelled to USA during college to visit the main couple that maybe finally helped her move on. It looks like we're finally getting that story.
Art is a bit janky but you grow to love it after a while.
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The Promised Neverland | Extra Chapter
https://mangaplus.shueisha.co.jp/viewer/1030332
Surprise epilogue! It's been so long I unfortunately forgotten how the story ended, but this is still quite pleasant as a stand-alone.
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New entries
Amamiya Doesn't Speak | Chapter 1
https://mangadex.org/chapter/eb24e9f6-16e9-4106-b1b0-e7f18695ecd7
MC enrolled into MIT the highschool, but he's (gasp) a humanity guy. Pretty fluffy and nerdy. And bonus point for someone knowing to use the word "inductive".
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Mayori Academy | Chapter 2
https://mangaplus.shueisha.co.jp/viewer/1030324
Moster girl got recruited to be one of the first student of a monster academy, and her other classmate is a literal wild beast haha (probably not really but we'll have to wait till next chapter to find out).
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Psycho Eyes | Chapter 20
https://mangadex.org/chapter/c92a6aea-28b2-4757-b3e8-21450c6008d1/1
Policeworks with superpowers, the cat-and-mouse is pretty good.
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One-shots
Lie
https://mangadex.org/chapter/76b5ae32-5bea-440e-9df2-f62c81a853bc/1
April's fools day and confession, classic blunder.
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The man who named a star after his wife
https://mangaplus.shueisha.co.jp/viewer/1030310
Ex-wife actually, oof. Good thing he eventually moved on (and not destroyed an innocent asteroid in the process).
It's always nice to see a new Made in Abyss chapter, just gotta brace myself a bit for the author's fetish each time but the copious amounts of round fluff make up for it. We've gotten 3 chapters this year now, which feels like a good pace to me since I'm also following Berserk and Hunter x Hunter (though Togashi's been in slightly better health lately and putting out new chapters somewhat regularly, bless him). Since the plan for the anime going forward is apparently just movies, we should have enough story material between now and the end of season 2 for one? Not sure I'm brave enough to see it in person if it does come to US theatres though.
Manga: Seishun Bakusou!
Highschool experience exactly as I remember it, (only half-joking here).
Trainwreck in the works but I. can't. look away. closest thing to it I guess would be Aku no Hana.
I like it because even in a setting as prone to trope-y plotlines and shenanigans they sometimes can come up with crude depictions on how schoolife can be for some people.
Read first 20 chapters or so in one go and even felt compelled to comment somewhere about it, it's no masterpiece but it's been an entertaining wildride so far, which is more that can be said about a lot of manga.
Also, I guess some warnings about bullying, sexual violence, abuse and drugs apply for those who are sensitive and would rather skip those topics in their reading.
I caught up, pretty intense.
spoiler
So Tabe is probably an undiagnosed psychopath right?
On one hand it's hard to see how this could go well for Maruo, thinking he could fix her. On the other hand he tends to react in the opposite way than what Tabe seeks when satisfying her bloodlust, so there's a chance something different could come about.
I fear at some point she'll tell him that she was responsible for getting his brother imprisoned, be it truth or lie, as an attempt to provoke him.
Edit: found out there're more translated outside Mangadex. I was wrong about Tabe after all, there's a good ending waiting.
Does the translation go further than ch35? Because the last page of that one would like to disagree with your edit.
Haha yeah she got turned around eventually, translation go to ch50 iirc.
ok, I got to catch up then.