september's coming soon

Pity the foolish maiden who went on a two-week journey to the land of a vital manga market with the small suitcase, only to discover that oh crap, I love Tokyo Tarareba Girls. Six volumes are out in German this far, and to be fair, I'm promised 50% off of some textbooks relevant for work so I might just be shipping a box home anyway.

I've only read the first of those six volumes, but I like it a lot and I've no doubt I'll get the rest. It's not mindblowing at this point, but it's cute and it's funny and it's touching onto a topic that I'd love to say I was self-assured enough to not be dwelling on on occasion even though I'm both comfortable and confident in my asexuality. And to be fair, I don't think it's so much the non-confidence in the fact that the only time in my life I've wanted a romantic relationship was when I was the unpopular girl who still spent more time fantasizing about being BFFs with one of the popular girls. Rather, it's that extremely pervasive mindset that a woman is a "girl" until she's married and mothered. It's a mindset that is being criticised here (the afterword goes into great detail about that), but it's still one that hits closer to home than I'd like. I might write more about that whenever I've read the full manga, but suffice it to say that there was an uncomfortable level of recognition here for ladies who are single at thirty-three (or four, as the case might be).

I also picked up one of the "special collections" of Detective Conan, this one with the focus on the "life and death situations". It's got the one the bomb in the tower where there's apparently some real Takagi/Sato development, so I clearly need it. It's also got bits with some of the other characters I never got around to by following the publishing order, so I guess that's exciting. Best of all, the first case had a real shippy moment between Conan and Ai and I am easy. But mostly I just love that dumb detective comic a lot okay, and I wish the English-speaking internet would open its eyes to it already.

I recently realised how badly I miss the way we used icons at LJ. I mean, there's nothing stopping us from doing it here, but my fandom activites happen mostly on tumblr and I don't feel like changing the fabulous Tohma Seguchi icon I've had there since... 2012, good god.

So here's what little I can do for Best Boy, communicating a very important sentiment.

THEY AREN'T CONNECTED TO THE MAIN BOYS.

(I mean, at least not before the final episode, and if there's going to be some connection in the final episode, it had better be a good one to excuse the fact that it hasn't been brought up before then.)

( not putting this on tumblr because people would see it )

(and with that off my chest, I'm off to watch the final episode)

I've been talking a lot of Ikuhara on tumblr the past couple of weeks, because Sarazanmai finally got to me.

I mean, the plot is definitely suffering from its brevity and whatever fandom exists is definitely not there for the reasons that I am there, but being an Ikuhara anime means that there are definitely enough things to talk about, and for once I'm not getting into something five years after the rest of the world.

The long and the short of it is that this is a good anime and I want an Enta icon somewhere.

It's definitely more likeable and accessible than I recall Yurikuma Arashi being, but it sure isn't a new Utena or Penguindrum. Like, the only reason I know the names of the Otter Cops is because they keep cropping up in the tag (fandom clearly knows which are the most important characters and it's not the cutesy middle school protags), and I'm not terribly involved in the juvenile drama of the cutesy middle school protags.

Apparently episode eight is going to be even worse of a betrayal than seven was, so... that's interesting, I guess, given that the drama this far in has been pretty been-there-done-that.

Run With the Wind, on the other hand, was pretty dull for the first half, to the point where I get that people pretty much weren't watching it. But it was up on more than one of the "best of" lists over at ANN, and with the first episode of the second season, I'm suddenly seeing a turn towards the direction where a friend of mine would describe it as "arguably way more gay than YoI".

I mean, there's definitely no "hug that might or might not be a kiss IDK you decide" or grown men using engagement rings as good luck charms, but there was a moment. A pretty dwelling one. So let's see how that one pans out. The drama was luckily kicked up a notch too, so here's to hoping that it gets a lot more exciting from here on on.

Bride's Story is the manga where I buy a volume every other year or so and re-read what I have five times, still not feeling the need to buy more. I read all of Emma over a weekend, probably because it... has a plot, I guess?

Having picked up volumes 3, 5, and 6 of Bride's Story, I'm still there. I read all three in one evening and re-read parts of it the next day, sat down and re-read the first volume when I came home, because that's what that comic does to me, even if it's only with the end of volume 6 that the story might be going somewhere (even if the afterword says it's back to Mr. Smith and his guide who instantly became my favourite character among a cast that's all of them are my favourite characters).

It's interesting how volumes 3 and 5 are easily read as standalone comics that require no knowledge of what came before them. But volume 6 was still the absolute best because of the possibly unintentional irony by its framing. It starts with a story about Karluk being upset because oh my god mum I'm almost thirteen I'm not a little kid okay please recognise my manliness. It ends with Amir saving his life in an act of badassery beyond anything she'd displayed this far. And then hauling him off over her shoulder, because he's only bgown *this* much after all.

The reason I find this comic so endlessly fascinating (beyond being really really good) is something that requires more insight onto the topic of marriage than I can cought up at the moment. But part of what makes it really, really good are moments like that.

I read the manga and I didn't see the appeal.

( What the header says, then )

Some of you will remember assholegate from a year ago, to the date.

The asshole's substitute-of-two-weeks was the minister of fisheries, who later stepped down after bringing his job phone with him on a non-political business trip to Iran with the woman for whom he left his wife and who is also twenty years younger than him and taught him that the Iranian regime isn't evil, just misunderstood. I'm not joking, and he's worth noting because even with his two-week stint, that's saying something about what kind of character can make careers in that crowd.

The asshole's official replacement was one of the less colourful big boys in the party, who was sane enough for no-one to really have heard about him.

At least until our public life turned into a crime novel sorely lacking in realism.

There's this One FMA Fic I've had on backburner for probably a decade at least by now, and it was set on February 14th because reasons and every year I'm all yosh, this is the year I write it and well.

One half of it is Elricest, and even if it didn't happen this year either, I feel some distinct purpose in my tumblr queue's timing of my Mawaru Penguindrum spree from a few weeks back.

I'm sure I picked up They Both Die at the End because the concept intrigued me, and I'm sure I lost a lot of interest in it after I never got around to reading past the first twenty pages and then the edition I read of Simon and the Homo Sapiens Agenda included the author of this one gushing about its IMO rather modest qualities in the appendixes.

Plot summary: Picture New York, except in a world where Harry Potter is named "Scorpius Hawthorne" and Draco Malfoy is latino and there exists an agency that knows when your life ends. And when it's your turn, they'll call you up a minute after midnight and tell you that this'll be the day that you die. This is the story about eighteen year old Mateo and Rufus, who find each other on the day they get the call.

Not to spoil stuff, but there's really not a lot to spoil about this. Mateo and Rufus have one day left to live and haven't exactly got their bucket lists in order, and so stroll around the city and try to figure out how to make their last day one that matters. There are many ways to do that, I'm sure, but our heroes limit themselves to the mainly trivial, while making juvenile observations about seizing the day and living while you're alive and so on and so forth. It's cute, but it hardly makes for engaging reading. Like Simon's only interesting point was finding out Blue's identity, the only thing that kept me reading this one was to see how they both die in the end, or if the book was going to pull some unexpected stunt and have them survive after all.

Their universe is pretty shallow, their life lessons learned are pretty cheesy, their day is pretty dull (I mean, not really. Not actually. But pretty dull to read about). It's not bad, but it's really not utilizing the concept for what it could've been. It is, in fact, so blasé about it that it comes across as mildly unrealistic. Humanity has gained the knowledge of predicting death down to the date, yet its only impact on society is a couple of silly capitalist enterprises and unfortunate social media trends? Sounds fake, but okay. The universe feels... unfulfilled, really. The idea's not bad, but the novel uses it to tell the tritest of stories.

I belong in a place where a The Brothers Lionheart is a childhood cornerstone that in the future will probably have to share its space with The Snow-Sister (which is being translating into like fourty languages and is bound to be out in English sooner or later). Both of those are children's books, and both of them deal with the topic of death - and in the case of Lionheart, of waiting for one's own death - with far more heart and insight than They Both Die at the End. I'm not bringing it up to make some kind of point about language or literary culture, but target group and expected content, honestly. Maybe Astrid Lindgren is an unfair comparison to be making for anyone, but I had expectations. They Both Die at the End didn't live up to them.

(also, let me stress that everyone should read The Brothers Lionheart, because it's brilliant. Like, "if you liked Fullmetal Alchemist, you might also enjoy...", and maybe I'll write about that comparison someday. Do yourself a favour and read The Brothers Lionheart rather than They Both Die at the End.)