This week I read 鬼滅の刃 vol. 3, about half of ゆるキャン vol. 1 and most of Flying Witch vol. 8, watched a few more episodes of とらドラ, and played 5 hours of Persona 5: Royal.

I watched the anime adaptation of ゆるキャン a long time ago, so I don’t really remember much about the moment-to-moment dialogue and such. I actually picked up the manga on a whim due to a friend of mine suddenly starting to watch the anime as well, so I’ll be roughly following along with him. Despite having no furigana I think it might be a great recommendation for new readers; it was pretty easy reading and I learned some fun new camping vocab.

I got stuck for a little bit in Flying Witch thanks to the introduction of a new character who’s a samurai ghost from Edo-period Japan. He has a way of speaking that can be pretty difficult to follow so it took some getting used to. I did learn some samurai vocabulary of questionable usefulness, like 拙者, a pronoun I’d never heard before. I’ll probably finish this book tonight as I’m going to sleep, but I wanted to get my review in with plenty of time to spare. Vol. 8 is the latest 単行本 so I’ll probably be waiting until next October for another book to come out.[00:06]It’ll be nice to be caught up to another series.

I’d hoped to finish とらドラ this week but I did get a little bit swept away by P5R. I think I watched three more episodes? I’m very close to the end of the series, with only maybe two or three episodes until the end. Same story as ever; I’m following along pretty well, even though some of the monologues go completely over my head (especially from みのり, who speaks very quickly and in a dozen different styles).

Finally, 5 hours of P5R has put me just past the point where Ryuji awakens his Persona. Compared to how it felt to start PQ2 almost a year ago, it’s surreal how easy it seems to follow along. The plan is to follow my “skip what you can’t read” methodology, but so far I haven’t really had to employ that very often — the majority of what I’ve found is totally straightforward. So far the main pain points in deciphering the kanji compound-heavy speech of some of the public officials (like Sae and her director), and Shadow-Kamoshida’s very pompous way of talking. For the most part though, I’m having a great time.