This week I read 古見さん vol. 2, watched さよならの朝に約束の花をかざろう (Maquia), started 月がきれい and listened to a LOT of HKBK.

I held off on starting 古見さん for the first few days this week as I’m expecting a new volume of ５等分の花嫁 to come out soon and I wanted to use a 20% off coupon to get them both at the same time. For the first few days I basically listened to HKBK nonstop, bringing me up to episode 8. As before, I’m not sure exactly how much it’s helping me because my comprehension is still pretty low — at this point the grammar I’m hearing is all familiar but when I stop to think about the words as they come by it’s a little disheartening just how much vocabulary I’m lacking. At the very least I’m picking up new vocab in each episode and maybe getting so much audio immersion will help out without me realizing it.

古見さん vol. 2 was easier for me than vol. 1, and I’m not entirely sure what to attribute that to. There were a few parts where a certain new character goes on a long rant (using lots of JK lingo) and it always felt daunting to see a massive wall of text, but I was generally able to keep up. Due to the delay at the beginning of the week I only had four days to read this volume, but it was a pretty manageable pace.

I ordered a BluRay drive so I could rip some of my disks that don’t have the option to disable subtitles, which meant that this week I could finally start rewatching 月がきれい — or so I thought. I accidentally chose the English voice track for every episode but the first, so that’s where I stopped this time around. Just based on ep. 1, I don’t think I’m going to have a problem following along.

Finally, Maquia is another rewatch and came with its own set of hardships; the JP track has hardsubs so I had to rip both EN and JP separately, then switch the audio tracks and remux. It’s been a while since I saw this movie and fortunately I’d forgotten a decent amount of it. My comprehension this time around was pretty good, with the exception of a few characters who I could hardly understand at all. There was a special moment at the end which feels like the end of one particular journey; before I even saw the movie, I was completely in love with ウィアートル, the song that plays in the credits. I hardly understood any of the words, but I never looked up the lyrics; I wanted to grow into understanding it. This time when the credits rolled, I understood everything without even really trying. That kind of tangible progress is so rare and it was really encouraging.