Nine volumes of manga this week. First: 初めて恋人ができました vol. 1, by the same author as きみが、すき which I liked quite a lot a while ago. Read this one pretty fast since there’s not too much text. Very cute.

Next was のんのんびより vol. 1, which I had thought was set in 和歌山 but it’s actually in 埼玉. Oh well. I enjoyed the anime when I watched it a long time ago but the manga doesn’t quite hit the same.

I had picked up 火傷少女 vol. 1 for free a while ago and randomly decided to read it. Ended up buying vol. 2-4 almost immediately afterwards and reading through them all back-to-back. It’s a pretty messed up story and the main girl is genuinely unhinged. The ending left some things unclear and I’m not totally sure how I feel about it overall, but it hooked me enough to get me to read two volumes per day for two days this week, which is always welcome.

恋獄の都市 was another random vol. 1 I picked up. Kind of intriguing, not sure what exactly is going on yet. There’s some kind of simulation going on where everyone is under supernatural observation, and the only way to wake up to the truth is by confessing your love to this one girl in particular? Kind of light horror so far, maybe more like a mystery with horror elements (and a fair bit of fanservice). It’s a pretty short series so I might read some more of it later.

Finally, その着せ替え人形は恋をする vol. 10. It’s been so long since the last volume that I’d almost forgotten how fun the moment-to-moment is, but if there’s no big Event in the next volume I’ll be mad. Once again being bitten by the fact that I can spend an hour reading something that took six months to come out.

I kept gently ahead of pace on 京都寺町三条のホームズ vol. 5 (reading along), finishing up two chapters; one about the kyoto sherlockian society and one about using 百人一首 verses to send secret messages.

My finished audiobooks were わたしの幸せな結婚 (6:32, high focus), 本好き 2 (10:40, med-high focus) and 3 (13:58, med-high focus), and 宮本武蔵 1 (5:25, low focus) and 2 (7:46, low focus). Listening to familiar material continues to be the winning move. There was a lot about the first three that I don’t remember from when I read them in the past, but never in a way that I got lost. The same is definitely not true of 宮本武蔵, though to be fair I only read the english translation and it was years ago, so really the most I can hope for is that I more or less remember some characters or events. My comprehension is pretty bad much of the time but there have been some crazy things that jumped out at me; the biggest one has to be a letter written in 候文 style (I just about had a fit when I heard 申し候). For some reason listening to this book triggered me to make the connection between とて and the だって・たって form, and it turns out this is the actual etymology. Pretty cool.

For anime, watched ep. 11-12 of それでも歩は寄せてくる, 組長娘と世話係, and よふかしのうた, finishing off the former two. The ending to 組長娘と世話係 was weird. It didn’t really resolve anything and there was no payoff for the villain they’ve been teasing the whole time. I guess they want you to read the manga (which I guess must be mostly covered already, since they had that one filler episode in the middle?). The new character in よふかしのうた is kickass and really makes me want to catch up with the manga. Also watched/subtitled サマータイムレンダ ep. 23, which was probably the hardest one (to translate) so far. A long conversation about 敬語, a military radio broadcast that took a fair amount of research into actual history to track down, and an anime-original folksong that I gave up on transcribing, let alone translating. I’ll be revisiting it later to give it another pass.