rubyr

Thanks for the good times, Cohost.

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Professional Communications, Print Media, Advertising, Writing.
I love Japanese Print Media.
Learning Japanese since 2019


A fairly balanced week of reading considering other major obligations have started again. I read a volume of ダンダダン, かぐや様は告らせたい, and about 1.5 volumes of 葬送のフリーレン. Spoilers for each (mostly フリーレン) inside.


ダンダダン Vol 10
Finally caught up to the latest volume release of this. The story continues fairly slowly at first. There's no progress on the バモラ language barrier stuff (although she is learning some Japanese), they bring the mirror-ghost back for some reason, but it does play into a nice scene where 綾瀬もも deals with her feelings of longing for オカルン. The last few chapters bring the speed up fairly suddenly and it ends on a big cliffhanger for Vol 11.

かぐや様は告らせたい Vol 1
I started to read this series. As many people said, it's definitely a challenging read from a linguistic point of view. The first chapter in particular was very rough. There were some really entertaining chapters, though. I really liked the chapter where Kaguya and Shirogane try to pick the right seating at the cinema and end up overthinking their messaging. The chapter where Shirogane realises he's shit at brainteasers and goes off to study them and comes back as an undead creature.

葬送のフリーレン Vol 3 (-4, partial)
I really feel like this series gets "good" from Vol 3, ironically only after all the action scenes. The chapters finally have this perfect balance of just the right party composition, the right balance of present and past, and a perfect balance of comedy and pathos. Big standout chapters for me (spoilers):

  • シュタルク's birthday was very funny. I love フェルン's desire to make everyone feel welcome in the party and how she often has to learn something about everyone else in the process.
  • Coming to the town with the legendary sword and finding out that ヒンメル never pulled the sword out of the stone, but knowing that he wasn't defeated by that and knowing that he went on to save the world anyway really got me emotionally.
  • フェルン's birthday gift in the chapter where the cart gets picked up by the monster. フリーレン has a ring made of the same material and each of them was given their gift by the men in their lives (シュタルク for フェルン and ヒンメル for フリーレン) and the 花言葉 for the design is "enduring love". For フェルン it's very unlikely that it was intentional but when フリーレン gets her ring back after the monster ordeal a memory reveals that it was likely ヒンメル knew what he was doing.
  • And lastly the フォル爺 chapter (the last one I've read) which has one of フリーレン's longest-lived friends dealing with memory loss. The whole chapter is sort of about keeping promises even when the person you promised is long gone, and the idea of carrying the hopes and memories of others into your life for them and it's handled really well.

Life Stuff
School started up again. It was kind of a tornado week, though. I was feeling under the weather from the start of the week but it really ramped up on Wednesday (my first day on campus) and I felt too sick to go in on Thursday. Now I feel super behind but still too unwell to get much done. The stuff I've learned so far is already kind of interesting, though. The elective I chose due to a clash in my timetable, Speculative Futures, is super cool and I talked to my tutor about my Dragon Quest X Silent Running article.
Hopefully next week will have lots of positives to report back.


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