As expected, the arrival of Elden Ring put a cramp on my reading time. My soft goal for this week was to get caught up on トニカクカワイイ, which I ultimately didn’t succeed at; I read volumes 13-17 and will finish 18 tonight as I fall asleep for a total of six volumes this week, but I had completely forgotten that vol. 19 came out just recently so I didn’t include it in my plans at all. Oh well.

So the story has finally picked up and all the mysteries that they’ve been dropping hints about have been brought to the forefront. It’s actually pretty funny how much of a tonal shift there was around vol. 17 (there’s even an おまけ that features an author insert getting berated by his sister for including such a serious arc in his “sickeningly sweet romantic comedy”) but all things considered I think it was done well. The storytelling in this part was quite gripping and the twist on 竹取物語 was neat. There are still some threads that need pulling together so I’m hoping that’ll come soon.

I finally started watching re:zero season 2 and I’m only three episodes in but it’s pretty wild so far. All I knew about this season ahead of time was that there was a character named Echidna, which I thought was a pretty stupid name, but when she actually showed up I realized it was in reference to the the Grecian monster (エキドナ) and not the animal (針もぐら). A clear-cut case where the original language version is superior.