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Finished Spy Classroom Vol.8

Spoilers for the series...

Pretty good finale to the second arc of the series. The "Ouka" character always stood out to me before this volume so I always wondered if it was referencing something I wasn't aware about but turns out he's gonna be an important character it seems. At some point while reading the book and knowing what this series is like the idea that code name Insight wasn't even actually real did cross my mind but the truth was somehow more surprising than that.

I like how we don't get to see Monika's confession. I feel like Lily would reject her which is fine cause the real good Monika ship is her with Thea.

Also if I had to guess what the Nostalgia Project is, I think it's nuclear weapons. The world of Spy Classroom doesn't seem to have them yet and with how they're coming up on a second world war that feels like the idea that reflects the real world the most

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Finished Spy Classroom vol.7

In this world running rampant with fear,love like mine is taboo. it's a crime, a mental illness. All my feelings are gonna do is cause problems for people.

And see that right there is why I decided to destroy the world

Monika do be gay and doing crimes(terrorism) this volume. Monika has been my second favorite character even before her spotlight volume but after it she might just be number one. Another excerpt I really liked was:

That was why she fought. That was why she held her high, knowing that her very existence was one of rebellion.

Magnificent. Best volume so far. The way everything came full circle to their first solo mission was incredible. With Monika seemingly betraying the team again and the reject team being the only one remaining. Also every Spy Classroom volume ends with a cliffhanger but that one was just evil.

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Been binging Spy Classroom. Just finished vol.2 of the short story collection.

Some good comedic moments and a nice epilogue to the first story arc of the series. Really loved how it concluded the storylines of the first few volumes especially Thea's story. Lily's short story was especially great. Past the first volume Lily's role in the story has mostly been as the comic relief so it was nice to give Lily her own cool moment. It might be my favorite short story of the entire series so far.

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Maebashi Witches episode 7.

This show has been really surprising me with the issues plaguing young girls that it's willing to tackle. It's been a while since I felt so genuinely disgusted at a fictional character's actions.

The ending really hits hard because the idea of a closeted queer kid who looks up to a youtuber/vtuber because they give them a space and/or makes them feel represented is something you can really sympathize or even relate to.

I really sympathized with Kyoka's situation so when they got that creepy DM from someone who they've looked up to for so long in that moment I was almost as disgusted as they were when she saw the DM.

I'm not saying youtubers dming their minor fans isn't always disgusting behavior but in the general scope of fiction there are worse things to see. That genuinely disgusted me because of how hurtful I imagine it would be for a struggling queer teen to not only realize but be a target of the fact that a youtuber you looked up to was a fucking creep.

The Choco part was great too.

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Finished reading volume 19 of Shikimori-san. I know the series is fully translated on mangadex and usually I always read stuff online even if I know I’m gonna eventually buy i ton physical anyways but I just can’t do it for this series. I’m just delaying the inevitable because I love this series too much to stomach the fact that it has ended a long time ago. So I’ve just been following it physically.

Great penultimate volume. It showcased really well how much Izumi has grown. There was also a few hangouts with the gang that served as a really nice conclusion and final get together(at least far as we the readers are concerned). The character art is still great as usual Keigo Maki might be one of my favourite character artists along with Shiro Usazaki.

Also loved this bit lol. She was so excited!

This teeny Shikimori too

Can't believe there's only 1 volume left 🥲

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Plenty of light novels are a form of teenage wish fulfillment. Like being popular in school, being surrounded by cute girls, or being transported into a cool fantasy world. This book reads like it's wish fulfillment for the desire to rebel.

There are other light novel and manga that are about revenge(though usually that focused on personal issues rather than systemic ones) or rebelling against a tyrannical government but having a story about rebelling against a normal school(though I guess it is a bit over the top) gives this series a strange sense of realism.

Though that isn't to say this is a shallow book. There's clear themes about fighting against fascism, how doing meaningless acts of rebellion to feel better is meaningless, and how you're obligated to rebel for real when you're opressed that I find interesting. Conceptually it's all very intriguing but the story was just alright. Also wow that's a lot of kissing.

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Started reading Show Me Your Love. It's cute.

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Mimosa Confessions Vol.2

I very much liked the first book but I was hesitant to continue the series because of the ending. To be clear, it was good and intriguing. It's just that I very much hate drama revolving around a simple misunderstanding they have with each other. It's probably one of my most hated tropes/plot structures in all of fiction and the ending of the first book seemed to be setting that up for the second volume.

I still hate the trope but this book did it well. It wasn't dragged out and resolved in natural but interesting way. There was no real antagonists this volume but the drama was still exciting. Each of the 3 main characters experiences some form of self-loathing and the way how each of them responded to their own self-loathing made for an interesting contrast and story.

The prose is great. Idk if this makes sense but the way the various vague discomforting feelings the main character experiences over the course of the story was so eloquently described that I was able to understand and in some cases relate to these vague feelings despite them being vague. I never noticed how good the prose was when I read the first book but I think that's just because I'm somewhat more literate then when I read the first volume.

Overall good book.

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I usually buy books online and the delivery guy always comments on how many light novels I buy.

Crazy thing is I was just reading one of said light novels at the mall and he just happened to walk across me??? He recognized me and we engaged in some banter. It's a small city but still crazy.

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Finished Kakegurui Twin Vol.14

I love the og series but I very much prefer how Mary looks in this spinoff. She looks so pretty in every single panel.

I'm obsessed with how great she looks. Kei Saiki's artstyle really has improved so much since the first volume. Maybe one of my favourite art styles just cause of how Mary Looks in the latter volumes

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Finished Tomozaki Vol.1

As many others has pointed this book especially the first half of it is written much like self-help book written in the form of a story. It works surprisingly well. At the very least this book has gotten me to be more self aware about my posture. Maybe that's just speaks to how easily influenced I am especially when a cute anime girl tells me to do something. Regardless, the concept works pretty well as a story.

I think the ideas of this book presents is somewhat reductive and simplistic. The world is an unfair place but at the same time as someone who plays a decent amount of video games I do agree that even when you lose because of luck it is important to continue to think about how you personally could have done better.

The dialogue can be a bit cringe at times specifically some of the gaming lingo and the usage of the term "normies". Some of the intentional cringeness is quite well written I have to say. When Tomozaki says something stupid or fails to read social ques in his narration I definitely related and empathized to it.

Out of the 5 female characters introduced in the story the main character really only has chemistry with arguably 2 of them. That being said based on the setup of this volume I am interested to learn more about these characters as individuals.

I was quite invested in seeing the main character grow as I read the story. The final scene in the epilogue was simple yet I found it to be such a cute and satisfying conclusion to the book. I'm interested to see how the main character continues to grow as an individual which is something I rarely feel when it comes to manga/light novel romcoms.

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A critique about of the weird pacing of Brunhild The Dragon Princess by discussing a specific scene. Now unusually fast pacing can be found in multiple sections in the beginning of the book but the example I want to focus on is near the climax of chapter 1 where the titular main character of the book Brunhild is dealing with the fact that she was betrayed by the person she trust the most.

For some background, after being betrayed she basically enters a depressive episode where she can barely function. Unable to eat, talk, clean herself, or do any other basic task to take care of herself without assistance.

She also develops an unhealthy attachment to the only other person she trusts, constantly asks for reassurance, and is in a state where she constantly believes she will be left alone and requires constant companionship. When I got to this part, I was rather excited.

With how rushed the plot felt up to this point I thought to myself now that the book has rushed over so many things and with the plot twist that just happened, the book is finally gonna settle down with its pace. I was also excited to see where the direction for Brunhild's character would go.

The change she experienced seemed to me like it could go to some interesting places and seemed like it would show an interesting contrast between the first and second main character on how they deal with their toxic relationships.

Literally the next page after it being detailed how traumatic being betrayed was, how it affected Brunhild, and how she was being taken care of its apparently a month later and she's basically relatively normal again.

After really digesting the book I do understand the reason for Brunhild's whole breakdown and being unable to function in the one month timeskip period was to give a reason as for why Brunhild wasn't doing anything for a certain period of time so that the second stage of the plot could be set up.

I can’t really figure out how it should have been done better either but of course it’s not a critique’s job to fix something. The way it was done just made it feel like Brunhild experienced a whole story/character arc in one page.

The scene was also supposed to showcase how Brunhild has become less trusting in people by showing she needs constant reaffirmations. For this aspect however you really didn't this need this scene to show(basically just *tell* really) it, because the book already does a great job of showing how the betrayal affected Brunhild's sense of trust in people through her actions and decisions. A great example of "show don't tell" in both ways really.

You can also interpret the story as though Fafnir (her servant) is the true protagonist of the book. The scene I have described isn’t supposed to be relevant towards Brunhild’s character arc but instead Fafnir’s. The book makes it rather obvious how it’s supposed to parallel how she first took care of him when he was unable to take care of himself. This scene still feels rather forced even with this reading though.

I can believe that Brunhild would act the way she did but the execution and bad pacing made it feel unnatural. It makes the supposed contrast between Brunhild and Fafnir feel cheap. Thematically the idea was great but the execution was not.

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The first book was definitely one of the most unique first volumes and introductions to any harem romcom light novel/manga I've ever read. This book however(and I assume future entries) follows a more traditional plot structure for harem romcoms where one of the harem members has an issue and that leads to the main character helping them as the central plot and gives a reason as to why said character has an increase in character interactions compared to the other harem characters.

The main character is more likeable than how he was in the first book. I wouldn't say I like him as an individual but unlike the first book I definitely didn't roll my eyes back or was filled with the desire to strangle him every so often as I read it. He's still a little too perfect to be really interesting but he makes up for it for by at least being unique compared to other high school harem romcom protagonists.

The main heroine of this volume was quite likeable and had pretty good chemistry with main character. The fanservice and general cutesy scenes with heroines from the last book was quite underwhelming and bland for a harem romcom as popular as this one but overall I found the cutesy scenes with the heroines in this volume to be way more charming in various regards.

Slight spoilers for this next part

How the antagonists were handled was fine even if it was a bit cheesy. The way the protagonist forced the main heroine to confront her trauma was so stupid in so many different ways. I have to commend for how it was seemingly gonna end with the exact same plot structure as the first book but expertly subverted my expectations and delivered an ending that was pretty satisfying. Even though the plot twist was pretty obvious at first and in retrospect it surprisingly worked really well. It used my low expectations of the story just redoing the first book really well. Overall pretty much an improvement of the first book in many ways and definitely an enjoyable read.

Excited for the next volume love mysterious senpai type characters.

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Finished Brunhild The Dragon Princess.

I absolutely loved the first book but I have mixed feelings about this one. My biggest issue with this book is the pacing. In the first half of the book so many thing happens and they happen and resolve at a speed that makes it feel like I'm reading a summary of events instead of a book. While I was surprised they just directly admitted it in the afterword I was not surprised to learn that the author did in fact "when it comes to writing, endeavor to not hold out on things".

This book definitely could have benefited from either the author having more restraint on what to include with what limited pages I assume they had or from more pages to fit all the author's ideas. The thing is though, I actually really liked all the ideas and especially all the different themes presented by the book. Some of it really does speak to me personally. I'm also quite a fan of the prose. By the climax of the book I also found myself being satisfied by how the character arcs were resolved. Overall, I did enjoy reading this book and I'm still excited to read the author's future works.

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Finished reading JK Haru.

From the very first line of the book it immediately had me hooked. This book is so many things and it does them all super well.

Its dark yet can be quite funny at times. The jokes are hysterical, quite intelligent, and a great form of satire towards the modern isekai genre, the misogyny found in many of them, and the things sex workers have to deal with.

Besides being a good satire on the genre, its also a super interesting take on sex work that's set in a misogynistic dark fantasy world. The various depictions of sex in the book are all very well written and all of them are interesting for various different reasons. Some of it can be quite hard emotionally to read but it makes the climax of the book quite satisfying and cathartic.

The chapters can feel quite disconnected from one another and the book feels more like a collection of short stories than a normal novel which I assume has something to do with its nature as a web novel. Though I have to say most of it actually works fine as standalone stories but they also tie pretty well each with each other.

The characters in this book are great. Some are entertaining satires of certain stereotypes of different kinds of men and the ones are who aren't that are all generally pretty likeable. I love the main character. While part of it is because she's forced to partake in the profession given her situation I really found her genuine pride as a sex worker to be very interesting.

Overall I enjoyed reading this book and while I personally didn't have much problem with what this book depicts I can see it being harder for some but if you can stomach it, it's definitely worth the read.

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Finished Lostorage Conflated Wixoss

I wasn't quite a fan of how the first Lostorage anime looked and I really liked the general art style of the Selector series so the first Lostorage season was quite a downgrade for me. This series is definitely an improvement from the first Lostorage series in terms of visuals. The art style looks much better (even though I still do prefer the look of the first Wixoss series) and the animation and backgrounds looked quite nice at times. The music of this series is always great and this entry to it is no exception. Unlike certain other entries to the series like the second it also uses it's soundtrack well and instead of randomly starting and/or ending it.

The antagonists were quite underwhelming as they didn't really provide any new and interesting dynamics with the protagonists and they're motivations in general wasn't too interesting. Even Incited Wixoss was better at this. While I enjoyed having the protagonists of the original season back, given that all their character arcs are resolved and finished you don't really any growth of them here and Akira's character as a whole is just all over the place to be honest. They also don't get to really shine as characters but like I said I did like having them back as this season was supposed to be the finale of the series as a whole and having them back for it was probably for the better. For the characters that debuted within the first Lostorage season they had more of an actual story. Specifically the 2 main characters from it, I thought it was a nice resolution to their story from the first season.

I actually liked the plot despite its flaws. Without a doubt the true main character of this final season was Mizushima Kiyoi AKA Piruluk from the first series despite never being an "actual" character in the first anime which I thought was a really good thematic choice. It's not the most thought provoking character direction I've seen (even just from this series) but having the character who took part the most in the so called cycle of darkness even as a minor side character in the main story to be the one in the center of fighting probably the best path this series could have taken for its finale. While this anime did quickly adapt the manga in which we see Kiyoi's backstory and learned more about her character for the people that never read it in one episode it is quite obviously a rushed version of the story and reading the manga definitely provides a much better experience. Really I would say, you NEED to read Selector Infected WIXOSS -Peeping Analyze- before watching this anime and for you to really enjoy it.

It's definitely not the best entry in the series in terms of story but overall I thought it was worth the watch. Instead of a standalone story it's definitely more of an epilogue for most of the entries in the series so far and it did a great job at it. I was quite satisfied by where the characters ended up and I was a little emotional at the end.

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Finished episode 10 of Wixoss Selector Infected.

Great episode. Ruu being disturbed by Hitoe's mom's comment was a real good moment. Her being reminded of her own mom and Hitoe's relationship with her mom now being a contrast to Ruu's relationship with her mom is such a great evolution for her character. Also I know I made fun of Hitoe for relying on a magic wish to make friends but oh my god I love love love even though she lost her memory and is suffering and now have the chance to make another wish, her wish is still the same as it was before because that is so deliciously tragic, I love the Sisyphusian aspect thats in play here. From my least favourite to one of my favourites, I knew her character had potential. Such an interesting character, as the only normal person in the cast and the only one with a normal wish she serves as such a good contrast to the others. That fact that she's the most normal to the other makes the fact that she's the one suffering the most even more tragic.

Really interesting what happened to Yuzuki and Hanayo in this episode. To focus on Yuzuki's thing with Hitoe first, I was rather surprised to see her reaction. Her not wanting to replace her was not whats surprising to me(even though she did consider it at first) what really was surprising to me was that she didnt want to love her brother in another's person body cause I would expect now that she could possibly be in the body of someone who wasnt related to her brother she would be happy cause it potentially meant a "normal" romantic relationship between them. I mean its kinda weird of her to *only* want to be in a romatic relationship with her brother *as* her sister (I say this like the twincest thing in general isnt weird but) usually with these kinda of things you hear them saying stuff like "oh I wish I wasnt related to you" and the like but Yuzuki HAS to be his sister. Part of it of course her wanting to always be who she really truly is which I find really interesting and likeable about her character. Her wanting to be true to herself was always part of her character even before the eternal girl thing so I find it really cool and interesting that even after what happened to her she literally does not want to be someone else even it means she can attain freedom and have a chance at a "normal" romance with Kazuki.

Finally the other part that really interested me was the bit with Hanayo. I was really afraid for Kazuki cause now that they were dating and the wish has technically been fulfilled Hanayo would do something to Kazuki so that she wouldnt have to continue to date Kazuki so I was surprised and intrigued with this episode when she's still going along with it. Also at the end its later shown Hanayo was aware that Ruu and Yuzuki(did she realize yuzuki was there too?) were watching so she could be playing along for now cause of that and will do something to Kazuki when she's sure they wont be around anymore but she did give an affirmative nod so it seems she's gonna keep going with this forever which is really surprising to me if thats the case. Also surprising that end the of the day Yuzuki is glad that "she" is dating Kazuki even if she isnt the one in her body, thought she would kinda torn about that but she seems genuinely happy. Kinda have to think more about what that means for her character epsecially in relation to her obsession with being true to herself. Overall great episode.