The reading nook

Continuing my anime/manga era:

I got to the end of the season of Isekai Office Worker. It was a lot of fun! I should track down the manga/light novels some day. I love that the power fantasy is such an office worker power fantasy, but also I really enjoyed the fantasy politics and the romantic arc. I also love that the main character looked tired for the entire anime 🤣

I also finished Journal with Witch, a beautiful contemporary slice of life anime about living with grief. I'll have to track down the manga for this one some day, too! It has so much good things to say about gender, and people's relationships to the concept of romance, and parenting, and adult life choices, and loss. I really liked this speech about toxic male social rituals. Also, Makio is a great portrait of the life of a writer!

I got a subscription to the Jump app and immediately read 66 chapters of Dogsred, a shonen manga about a former figure skater who blows up his figure skating career after his mum dies, and then after he and his sister go to live with his granddad decides to join the ice hockey team after an altercation with an ice hockey player, even though he knows nothing about ice hockey. It's weirdly compelling. I wouldn't say that I understand ice hockey any better after reading so many chapters 🤣 but I like Rou's sparkly eyed enthusiasm for learning about ice hockey, and the dumb boy rivalries and complicated team dynamics, and the gritty undersides to its depiction of ice hockey towns in Hokkaido.

Apparently it's by the same guy who did Golden Kamuy, but as I never got far into either the anime or the live action for that I don't know if that's a positive or not...

The first two episodes of Go For It, Nakamura-kun!! came out and are delightful! There's a much meme-d image associated with the manga so I was curious, and the anime is cute and funny and absolutely exquisite to look at. The colours! The backgrounds! The characters are animated in a charmingly cute and retro style that strongly reminds me of Rumiko Takahashi's work. Nakamura fighting for his life to make the most awkward conversation with his crush and talking to his pet octopus about it is adorable.

I'm slowly watching Mushishi at a rate of an episode every one or two days. I didn't get along with the manga or the OVA for some reason, but I was determined to try this series because it sounded like my sort of thing, and luckily I'm enjoying the anime proper. I know people have compared this to Natsume Yuujinchou, but that's more about recovering from the sadness of the world, and this feels more like moving through the darkness of the world. Not that it's all dark -- the mushi wine episode certainly wasn't -- but it definitely feels like it's grounded much more in the adult horrors of the world.

I'm also about halfway through the Nationals OVAs of Prince of Tennis. I've finished the Hyotei matches! They're a lot of fun. I'm kind of sad the OVAS are so short and don't get a chance to expand the matches the way the original anime did; OTOH, the original anime added a lot of nonsense. There's some pseudo mystical basically super powered tennis in these matches, but it still feels like the last hurrah of the real tennis. The series jumps the shark directly after.

I feel like Hyotei vs Seigaku in the Nationals is the point where the character stuff and emotional arcs is at its finest after all that build up, before it gets buried by complete nonsense. Some of the tennis moves are silly, but not so silly they weigh down how fun it is to watch Hyotei and Seigaku play, and I'm invested in both teams and care about their characters. Hiyoshi & Gakuto vs InuKai is so much fun, and Silver Pair vs Golden Pair is a bit silly but also lives or dies based on how invested I am in those character relationships (in this case: very. They're charming kids and their doubles friendships are sweet).