This week I accidentally averaged one volume of manga per day, plus a bit of anime here and there. For anime I think it was just a few more episodes of 赤髪の白雪姫 (I watch it on my laptop when I’m cooking or if I have a big batch of dishes to watch). It took an entire season but things have started to get interesting finally.
It hardly bears mentioning but I read 呪術廻戦 vol. 0.5 (the bonus manga that came with the midnight screening of the movie). Just eight pages and I didn’t count it towards my yearly manga goal but I wanted to log it somewhere at least. Next I read かいじゅう色の島 vol. 1, which I actually thought was a oneshot at first. I grabbed it on a whim based on a very pretty animated trailer. It was fine, probably won’t read any more. Also got back to reading トニカクカワイイ with vol. 7 since my sister has been hounding me to catch up to her.
Most of my manga this week was Summertime Rendering because holy crap, I don’t think I’ve ever been this obsessed with a series before. I read volumes 2-7 in what feels like no time at all. Some nights I would literally tell myself “okay I’m just going to read a chapter or two as I fall asleep” and then find myself at the end of the book. The storytelling is amazing; really good foreshadowing, complex characters, pulse-pounding momentum. There have been quite a few points where I either picked up on some small detail and then saw it pay off an entire volume later, or went back to grab a screenshot and noticed a detail I had missed before.
All that aside, I’ve also been having a ton of fun with the dialect. Every character is native to 和歌山 and only two of them have actually been off the island where the story takes place, so nearly every piece of dialogue and exposition is all in 和歌山弁. There’s a lot of shared DNA with 大阪弁 but there’s also some brand new stuff. Fortunately (and surprisingly) I’ve never reached a point where I was actually stuck. Just by reading it I’ve been captivated by the rhythm and wordfeel and I’m really excited for the anime adaptaion so I can hear it all voiced. It’s seriously so good and I’m probably going to binge the remaining six volumes this coming week as well.