Manga

So, as I mentioned in my comment in the anime discussion thread this week, I have been doing lots of traveling the past few weeks with very limited internet access. I am tentatively back home this week, so I have quite a bit of catching up to do. I'll do my best to pick up my reading again, but in the meantime I just want to give a huge shoutout to all of you that have continued discussions in my absence!

This week I had a few that I truly enjoyed.

Akujiki Reijou to Kyouketsu Koushaku: Sono Mamono, Watashi ga Oishiku Itadakimasu!

The story follows the daughter of a count who is known as the voracius villainess because she eats monster meat. This is mostly seen as a taboo and also as a crazy thing to do since monster meat is considered toxic. The story is hilarious, her drooling face when thinking about food never cease to make me smile.

There's apparently also an anime coming out this fall!

I also went through (only 13 chapters) Pinning Down Joy.
It is a cute story of two shop owners secretly in love with each other, and each of them having a guardian spirit. Really enjoyed it.

I also finally finished Ojousama no Shimobe.
I say finally because it really overstayed its welcome. The story started fun and interesting, with a good set of characters. The only character that never grew was the main character.
No justice for the maid, too. 😢

I have been enjoying Yukizuriman's One Night Stand lately. Each chapter is really short, and it gets updated frequently.

It's about this Power Ranger-like superhero who "defeats" (read: wins over) monsters by - as you can guess from the title - laying them. He's the embodiment of "Make love, not war".

Also, for some reason, the monsters he encountered all turned out to be ladies. Typical manga logic.

A couple of the manga I've been following ended in the last couple weeks, so I'll briefly discuss them:

Super Psychic Policeman Chojou:

The main character is of course what it says in the title. This is a gag manga, and I think it succeeded at that. Good goofs; nearly every chapter had me laughing. I'd give it a 7.5/10. A good time while it was around, but I won't particularly miss it.

Syd Craft: Love is a Mystery:

This is a story about a great detective who doesn't particularly want to be a great detective and is clueless when it comes to love. Showed some promise at first, but quickly became a generic harem thing. It actually had some decent mystery stories, and it was also still funny sometimes, but I probably wouldn't have read it to the end if I didn't think it was likely getting the axe soon anyways (it only survived for 28 chapters). 6/10. Maybe 100 Girlfriends raised my standards too much for what a harem manga can be, but it's kind of damning that I find myself happy to have a few minutes of time back each week rather than sad that it got axed.

My prediction for the next WSJ manga to get axed: Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi

Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi impressed me in the first few dozen chapters with great style and a great sense of humor. It's been letting me down in the last couple dozen chapters though with a combat arc that just goes on and on and on with the most boring-ass generic shounen fights I've ever seen. It's really sad how far it's fallen; I'm still reading it out of hope that it'll return to humor at the end of this arc but I'm worried that the arc seems kinda final and it'll end on the most mid note imaginable. The first half is probably an 8/10 for me but lately it's been more of a 6/10 manga.

Meanwhile I'm re-reading Kaguya-sama: Love is War, Blue Box, and Demon Slayer in Japanese. Those have all been a lot of fun with Kaguya-sama especially showing off just how great a love comedy can be. It's not quite perfect, but it's close.