Must-read Monthly Monday (Jun. ’20 ed.)

 

If it’s not specified, the time period covered in this post is from the 25th of May 2020 to the 22nd of June 2020.

Other People’s Reads

It wouldn’t be a round-up post without them. However, since I scour people’s archives on a regular basis, these may not even be from the right time period…

Welp, having fallen out of touch with simulcasts lately, I’ve just been cleaning out my folder of reserve posts. I think that’s gotten kind of obvious with some of the more recent lineups, but this one in particular reflects that.

• YuruCamp: What Makes It So Comfy? by Ethan (Anime as a Cup of Tea) – Normally description in reviews and posts is looked down upon unless you’re on a writing blog, but this one’s description elevates the sense of atmosphere and nostalgia it has, particularly for those who can’t be in the great outdoors due to quarantine’s “no close contact” rule…dangit, now I want a hot beverage and a blanket…Update: I did get myself tea afterwards, so I guess that works…
• Arte by Kei Ohkubo Episode One #Manga by Claire McAlpine (Word by Word) – It’s interesting seeing the different approaches people take to anime and manga if they haven’t had much exposure to the media before. This person seems to be a book blogger first and foremost, so their style also reflects the general WordPress approach towards books, but I feel like because there aren’t as many manga bloggers as anime, comic/graphic novel or book ones, more novice viewpoints on manga is a good way to inject some life back into the manga subset of the blogging community. (By the way, this blogger also has some interesting posts on translated fiction if that interests you.)

• Even If You Can’t Speak Japanese, You Should Try Watching Anime Without Subtitles by Frog-kun (Fantastic Memes) – Just as a Japanese learner who’s still “taking the training wheels off” in some ways, so to speak, I’m coming at this post from an entirely different angle…(Hate to state the obvious here, but Gunjou no Magmell is incomprehensible, with or without subs, when you start at episode 3.)

• Sing “Yesterday” For Me (Because I Don’t Believe In It) by Atelier Emily – The brief comment about what is highly likely to be the American government aside (although all governments are doing pretty badly this COVID-19 season), this post is very much a product of its time and so it’s best to share it while the chaos is still fairly fresh…Rikuo’s aimlessness is relatable, okay?!

• Light Novel Review – The Devil is a Part-Timer! by Krystallina (Daiya Manga)
• Why you’re supposed to hate Makoto in School Days by Iniksbane (In Search of Number 9) – This post is still as provocative as it was when it first came out.
• Given: Music is an Outlet by Scott (Mechanical Anime Reviews) – You ever see someone take on something you’d never expect them to watch? *glances one way, then the other*
• Life Lessons in Fruits Basket by Matija (SimplyMK) – How’s that Fruits Basket remake, people? This post is characterised by its thoroughness in that the author thought up life lessons applying to Uotani and Hanajima as well as Tohru + the zodiac.
• Anime Corner: Cells at Work! by Chris Joynson (Never Argue With a Fish) – In this time of pandemic, we could all use a biology lesson or two…
• Land of the Lustrous as a Story About Burnout by Alex (The Afictionado) – This is an interesting post to finish on because I confess the How Lockdown Messed With My Watching Habits post (below) was spawned by a stocktake on what I’d consumed this lockdown period, culminating in watching most of an 8 hour anime marathon… which has left me with almost no motivation to watch anime and almost no other creative energy either (aside from toying with some half-baked Hypnosis Mic AU ideas that don’t make a proper story). I guess that’s one reason why I’m digging in my folder of reserve posts right now…

Spellbook Offerings

#AniTwitWatches (Perfect Insider)

• #AniTwitWatches Round 6: The Perfect Insider 1 – 2
• #AniTwitWatches Round 6: The Perfect Insider 3 – 4
• #AniTwitWatches Round 6: The Perfect Insider 5 – 6
• #AniTwitWatches Round 6: The Perfect Insider 7 – 8
• (ep. 9 coming the day this post goes out!)

Other Stuff

• Why Aren’t There Enough Good Female Lead Characters?
• Ode to Anime Studios – Brain’s Base
• The Case of the Bland Otome Heroine
• Looking Forward (?) to Summer 2020
• Amagi Brilliant Park: Maybe Brilliant, Maybe Not…(TBR/W Post)
• How Lockdown Messed with My Watching Habits – This acts as a pair with the “Quarantine Reading Material” post below.
• Move the Way You Want [Jun. ’20 OWLS Blog Tour]– Addendum: I did end up finding One Dance in the scanlation database in the end…
• Quarantine Reading Material

Current Obsessions

• AMQ: Went further afield when I started to hear of things reopening, because AMQ was facilitated by having all that spare time during Jon’s weekly slot. I got stomped flat by players 10 times my level in two rounds, so I experimented with the AthenaBOT for another two (although that doesn’t let you control the room settings). As I type this in the middle of the month, I have about a 30% success rate which is mostly OPs…LOL. 
• Princess, ‘Tis Time for “Torture” and Isekai Shikkaku – Two manga which are fairly fresh from the 2020 Tsugi ni Kuru awards nominee list. The former is a hilarious parody on when the demon kingdom gets the warrior princess to talk, the latter is…another parody, this time on hitting a suicidal author (heavily implied to be Osamu Dazai, based on the manga’s title) with the period-appropriate version of Truck-kun and getting him to save the world he’s been transported to. 

Coming up next…

• Last month’s post had duplicated sections due to a last-minute wrestle with the page jumps (the app automatically converts it to block editor code), so I need to find a way around that by making the same thing in the block editor. The “top of page” link stays because it works, but if you’re wondering where page jumps went, that’s why they’re gone. (Did anyone even use them, outside my testing…?)
• I’m getting back to my non-quarantine lifestyle this month. That being said, my usual monthly posts slipped my mind, between that, AMQ sessions to get the skin (plus an extra background to see if the toggle feature worked – it didn’t, as far as I’m concerned) I wanted, the burnout (explained above) and stuff I should have actually been doing (although I’ve been slacking off on it all because COVID-19 is still allowing for it), so if my Ode post later this week seems like a rush job…now you know.

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