Wednesday, 10:00

After not reading more than a volume or two of manga for...honestly, several years, I was looking back at some LJ entries (a thing I do more often than I'd like to admit), and suddenly found myself rereading Soredemo Yasashi Koi wo Suru…and staying up until midnight to do so. And then the next day I was at ebook Japan putting $100 of manga in my cart. (I did trim that down because my budget has forgotten what monthly manga orders are like.)

(I just checked an my last manga review was in 2015. So...welcome to my first manga review in 8 years????)

( how do I do this again? )

Will I keep up manga reviews? I dunno, but this was fun, so we’ll see.

Me: I want to support small businesses more!
Also me: *places $100+ order at ShopDisney*

🙄

Not only did I place an order at the US Disney Store, I also fell in love with this wallet at the Japanese Disney Store, so...I maybe ordered that also (through a deputy). Also, because I'm weak to the new Nuimo trend (that was part of my order to the US store), I had to get this...I might have a problem.

I keep checking Target to see if they've put the new Animal Crossing/Sanrio amiibo cards up for pre-order, but they haven't yet. *stares intensely at Target*

On another note, I've been watching a lot of cartoons lately (Dragon Prince, Adventure Time, She-Ra, Steven Universe, and [currently] Owl House)...I have Thoughts but also I don't remember how to put my thoughts into something coherent anymore so that's to come, maybe.

(this is a whole lot of nothing, but I'm still trying to form a habit)

Note from 2023: this was a private entry, but I never did a full trip report for this trip (or the one in 2018--the closest I have for that trip is a tumblr post), so I'm just going to make this public.

( trip notes )

(Yes, I'm still doing backwards reviews. My life is Comiket. Really.)

Kaeru no Prince-sama - Panko.
[note that the paper version of this book is called Kaeru no Prince-sama and the digital version is called Kaeru no Oujisama. I'm fairly certain they're the same book, though.]
It took me a while to figure out this isn't "the frog prince," but "the frog's prince." Because one of the characters is the frog and the other one is the prince. The frog is awkward with people and has an ugly voice and everyone at work makes fun of him, while the prince is handsome and popular and nice and everyone admires him. This is just okay for me. The main character's troubles at work are very moving and all, but I just can't feel the romance between the main characters.

Comiket verdict: We're hitting this table anyway, so I will probably get the doujinshi, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it. (Even if I secretly hope it's awesome and will make me love the manga.)

Omae wa Hitsuji. - Takasaki Bosco
Yuuya's apartment is destroyed in a fire, so he goes to live with a friend...and the friend's hot older brother, who also happens to be an assistant professor at their university. Tsukasa (the brother) has trouble sleeping, but accidentally discovers he can sleep while Yuuya is around. This is sooooooo pretty, but the pacing is so weird. I kept feeling like I was missing pages or maybe even whole chapters, which makes it hard for me to get into the relationship. I want to be thinking, "Just kiss already!" not "Wait, why are they kissing?"

Comiket verdict: I...why do I feel like I want the doujinshi anyway? Did I like it more than I thought? Or is it just that it's so pretty? Anyway, the other manga she's supposed to have a doujinshi for is this, which is not out yet, so...I guess the jury is out on this one? I hope Qpa stops being weird and lets me buy this as an e-book.

Eigyou Nika! - Kanai Kei
Sakisaka Ayumu and his sempai, Toujou Seiji are top in sales in their division (or the whole company? is division 2 below division 1, or above?) and so close everyone in sales division 2 jokes about them being a married couple. These guys are so crazy in love, it's ridiculous that they aren't together by the second chapter. Or maybe before the manga even starts. (Seriously, Sakisaka, snuggling in bed is NOT platonic behavior, even if Toujou is a little strange.) Instead we get misunderstandings and lots of pining, and, agh, JUST KISS. (Hey, remember what I was just saying about wanting characters to kiss...?)

Comiket verdict: YES I can't wait to see doujinshi of these dorks being all rabu rabu.

ETA: Oh, there's also going to be a drama CD of this in September. I hope it comes with an extra comic.

And, briefly, back to regular reviews:

Bokura no Gunjou - Akihira Shiro (sweh!!!)
Kinoshita Yuuma is a gay high school student who creates a blog with semi-dirty pictures of himself in the vague hopes of landing a boyfriend. Unfortunately, one of the teachers at his school finds it and Aoki Seiya (Kinoshita's homeroom teacher) tries to convince him to delete it. Kinoshita finally agrees, under the condition that Aoki play his boyfriend until graduation. (They have all these rules: no kissing, dates only in Aoki's apartment--limited to three days a week, etc, etc.)

AHHHHHHHHH. THIS IS SO ADORABLE. No, I'm calm. Sorry. But I'm SUCH a sucker for this kind of thing. The accidental discoveries of each other, the quiet scenes of them growing closer together, the hugging...GAH, THE HUGGING. And the pining! AHHHHHHHH. Just...bury me in this story and leave me to die. I'm sad that this is a regular review and not an anticipation of something to buy at Comiket. Why don't all the BL mangaka write doujinshi??

Yamada to Shounen - Mita Ori (sweh!)
Chihiro is a high school boy in love with his friend, and gets drunk on Christmas Eve while his friend is out with his new girlfriend. Yamada, a straight, average joe kinda guy, happens to find poor Chihiro passed out in some bushes, and takes him home. Chihiro falls for Yamada pretty much right away, and Yamada is confused to find that he's also kinda attracted to this adorable high school boy.

Oh, this is super cute. Chihiro just so cute and innocent, and the way Yamada dotes on him is so sweet. Awkward, but sweet. (He needs to take doting lessons. But he tries.) Gah, I just found the author's blog and there's an extra story for this in Canna 42, so I'll have to get that, too.

Two posts in 2015 (before this one). Two. Sheesh. Maybe I can improve on that in the next couple of weeks. Before I get into reviews, some housekeeping:

1. I know I owe gnine some fanfic recs; should I post them here? (This is like that "anyone who's not here, raise your hand" joke...) If there's somewhere else that you would see it sooner (email or whatever), I can do that, too.

2. I have a tumblr (or here if you don't care about about tags, which is just crazy talk). It's...90% Haikyuu and cats, but if you are interested in those things (or don't mind scrolling past them), feel free to follow.

( reviews and scans )

Before I talk at great length about Haikyuu, I want to talk about deputy shopping services. I have been using Noppin for years (since they were Crescent, even) and have been happy with them. At the end of December, however, just as I was getting ready to place a bunch of bids on Winter Comiket doujinshi, Noppin closed for a week for the holiday and server maintenance. I panicked and started looking for a different deputy service, because what if I missed all the Comiket doujinshi?? But I soon calmed down and realized that 1) everyone was going to be closed at least for a few days for New Years, and 2) I already have a sizable deposit at Noppin, and it's kind of annoying to have to make a deposit elsewhere as well. So I decided to be patient and wait out the holiday, and of course I didn't have any trouble getting anything I wanted.

The reason I tell this story is that while I was panicking, I found a service called Goody Japan. They don't have real time bidding the way Noppin does, so I doubt I'll be using their auction services. BUT their fees for shopping services are way cheaper (¥400 + 7% vs ¥1000 + 10% at Noppin), and placing orders is much easier compared to Noppin's clunky message board. (Since I mentioned the deposit above, I will say that with Goody's system, you make a deposit for each shopping order, and then it's subtracted from the final total you owe, so they don't keep money for you the way Noppin does for their auction service.) Frankly, it makes it dangerously easy to order things from Animate, or Tora no Ana, or any number of shops. They also were super fast in getting my things packaged and ready to ship out (Noppin can take days to get a package ready, especially when apparently they think your package is going to get confiscated because it has freaking udon noodles in it), and everything was packed perfectly. I kind of laughed that they made a big deal out of the air pocket padding, but the box really did seem lighter compared to just newspaper. Anyway, I will definitely be using Goody again--in fact, I just placed another doujinshi order this weekend because Haikyuu!! (Those exclamation points are in the title, but they are also the punctuation for that sentence.) This is...as good of a segue as any, I guess?

( let's talk about volleyball )

I took this picture because I liked the little snow caps on the bushes, but considering how much snow we got since Monday, it just makes me laugh now.


This is our yard after we got a foot of snow dumped on us. (It snowed more overnight, too.) Well, we're not Buffalo, I guess, but it still seems like a LOT of snow for November 18th. Our school had a snow day (yay!) and Dad and I went cross country skiing. It wasn't great (the ground isn't frozen yet, so the snow is pretty sticky at the bottom), but it was better than the last time we tried to go this early--that was on just a couple inches of snow, I think, and we turned back because it was so sticky.

Funny thing: I tried to take a couple more pictures of our yard when coming back from skiing, but I couldn't because my phone got too cold. Apparently Apple only has one error message for extreme temperatures, though, because it told me my phone was too HOT and needed to cool down. What, you want me to go stick it in the freezer or something?

Still working on getting an awesome sunrise picture. This isn't spectacular, but I like the view down the main street of our (tiny) campus. The building I work in is on the right.


I had a (two hour, ugh) meeting in the new building on campus yesterday, and took this picture of the art wall that makes up a big part of it. I read a little info card about the art project (involving college students telling stories and then putting their words into a non-linear format), but I can't remember the title. (Why didn't I just take a picture of the card?) Anyway, the wall is really cool in person, though I think the lighting doesn't make for a great picture.

(The picture is not upside down, the measuring tape is.)

This is sad (because litter), but also kind of funny. All along the street where I take my walks, there are these fragments of measuring tape. I really can't figure out how it came to be like this. One would think it got crushed while still rolled up, but the fragments are spaced such that it looks like it happened when it was unrolled, which...how? This is not one or two pieces, this is dozens of pieces. I guess maybe it was uncoiled in a kind of a twist, and a car ran over the length of it?