Six volumes of manga, one (finished) novel, seven episodes of anime, and almost six audiobooks (17h) at varying levels of focus.

I finished 青春ブタ野郎はおるすばん妹の夢を見ない today, one week ahead of schedule. Once I got to about the 2/3 point the pages just flew by. I knew I would be a wreck during this last part but even so, I wasn’t prepared for the mess it made out of me. Definitely my favorite book in the series so far. Since I was listening along to this one as well, I counted it towards my audiobooks goal, but it doesn’t count towards the 17 hours I mentioned above.

Due to family vacation last week and just general slacking, I had gotten pretty behind on サマータイムレンダ. I subbed episodes 18, 19, and 20 over the past few days, which gets me caught up again. There were a fair few words this time around which were fun to re-encounter after seven months or so; 往ぬ, 多勢に無勢, and 阿呆陀羅 are some that come to mind. I also watched one episode each of よふかしのうた・ 組長娘と世話係 ・見える子ちゃん・それでも歩は寄せてくる with my sister; not nearly enough to get caught up on our backlog though. Allegedly we’ll have plenty of time tomorrow.

My audiobooks this week started with このすば vol. 3 (上下) and 4 (上下), both of which got pretty good attention out of me. I really like this series and I don’t care who knows it. There were a bunch of great moments throughout both books but the part that made me laugh the hardest was Kazuma getting suddenly depressed when Megumin tells him that her people (famous for having stupid names) would consider his own name to be pretty cool. The writing has this さらり quality to it that’s really well served by narration. Unfortunately I’ve reached the end of what’s been adapted (not only the audiobooks, but also the anime I guess?) so at this point I’m seriously considering picking up at vol. 5 and reading the rest.

I also started up スーパーカブ vol. 3, and I’m about an hour from the end. This series loses me constantly. I basically zone out until something lets me know they’re talking about food and I’m suddenly very interested until they start talking about bikes again. It’s nice to have a long series that’s been largely adapted but I’ll probably shelf it again at the end of this book.

Now for manga. My 漫画家 friend こむぎさん (who I’ve done translation work for in the past) recently landed a publishing deal for her series カワイイ俺のお嫁さん and put out two 単行本 volumes on the same day, so of course I bought and read both. Her writing style is really expressive and obviously there’s the novelty of reading something made by someone you know. This one is about a woman who decides to marry the would-be heir of a big company so she can inherit it instead, which he would be fine with (he just wants to run his little restaurant) except that he’s also a total scoundrel who’s not keen on being tied down. I liked it a lot, looking forward to the next volume.

Next was the 見える子ちゃん anthology, which was…fine. I really don’t have much to say about it, so I won’t.

幼馴染とはラブコメにならない is a new series I saw on twitter and decided to take a chance on. As you can probably tell by the title, it’s kind of a genre-buster but also kind of an earnest romcom. The main guy’s two 幼なじみs are totally hot for him and constantly trying schemes to get him to think of them as girls, and of course he does already, but none of them are honest enough with their feelings to get anything moving. I generally don’t like stories with no progress but it seems like that’s the whole joke here, which is kind of funny — and it seems like there is theoretically some progress that might happen anyway. Anyway, was fun.

ダンダダン seems like it’s on track to be the new hotness so I grabbed vol. 1 and enjoyed it enough to pick up the next two volumes right away. Gives me 怪獣8号 vibes, has really good character designs and comedy, and knows when to tip between cartoon mode and realism mode. Will definitely be reading more soon.

Finally, 可愛いだけじゃない式守さん vol. 3 was free this week and I’ve been planning to give it another try if given the chance. This time around the jokes all seemed to land and (thank goodness) the repetitive “my girlfriend is super cute, but also scary/cool” canned intro didn’t make a single appearance this time. And I mean, she is definitely very cute. Pleased to report this volume was the best so far, though honestly still not good enough to get me to buy the next one. Maybe vol. 4 will be free at some point and push me over the edge.