Six volumes of manga this week and not a lot else. I was hoping to get a good push in before the test tomorrow but it was not to be.

I finished up 圧勝 (vol. 12-13). Overall this series didn’t really live up to the first volume but it kept me interested throughout and I think the ending was pretty good. The characters that made it to the end had some good growth, and while I do feel like it underused others towards the end, maybe it was going for a “not everything needs to fit together” kind of realism ending. In any case, glad to have finished it. Another win for the “read lots of first volumes” school.

On the same note, 世界で一番おっぱいが好き! vol. 1 was free and since I’ve enjoyed other stuff by the same author (ジャヒー様, 最近雇ったメイドが怪しい) I decided to give it a try. It was…pretty boring. No doubt some of it has to do with first-volume syndrome (lots of repeated jokes and framing) but the premise itself didn’t seem like it could really turn into anything.

アオのハコ vol. 8 came out this week. This volume was amazing. The new girl, 菖蒲, is a riot, absolutely zero 建前 or chill and her reactions to things are always great. She joins the team as a manager to go after a guy and quits on the spot when she finds out he’s actually from a different school. It seems like things are about to get complicated — not because she’s a potential rival but because she completely does not grasp the situation and isn’t going to let that stop her from trying get in the driver’s seat.

天狗祓の三兄弟 vol. 1 has been free for a while as part of the cmoa manga awards or something and I decided to finally check it out. It was okay. It feels like it’s been heavily inspired by both 鬼滅の刃 and 呪術廻戦 but not as strong as either. The titular “three brothers” do have a nice dynamic and there were some good action panels here and there but I wasn’t blown away.

Finally, ダンダダン vol. 3. I was laughing my head off the whole time, except when I was weeping over a really poignant bit of silent storytelling in the middle. This series is so good. The new girl is really fun and I like how it seems to be approaching team growth.

I did watch a bit of anime but only two episodes (wanted to spend today reading rather than trying to finish off every one of my current season shows). Spy family was funny but nothing to write home about really, but I had heard that the latest episode of Mob Psycho was “even crazier than the one before”, which seemed like it couldn’t possibly be true but yeah, we ended up pretty shook.

I guess I did actually finish one audiobook this week: ナルニア国物語　馬と少年 (7:34, high focus). My favorite bit this time around was the way they translated the extremely grandiose way the calormen nobles talk to each other (in the original english they say things like “oh my father and oh the delight of my eyes”, which now that I think of it is almost like a novel form of english keigo. I couldn’t begin to remember any of the specific phrases they used in the japanese translation, though しかり and ござりまする both made an impression.