Monthly Log - October 2025

If you're in the Greater Jakarta area, I'll be having a panel about manga categorization in the upcoming Comic Frontier 21 on Sunday (November 16) afternoon. In the meantime, here are some of the stuff I watched or read in the month of September.

Watched

  • Watched Miracle Girls episodes 23-40. After losing the first director for 12 episodes, they got Touch and Yawara's director to take over by episode 30. The comedy gets noticably more slapstick in some places. But the story also gets into a pretty serious arc when an esper guy approaches the girls for his plot to take over the world with other espers. I like it that they give more screentime for the girls' mom in a couple of episodes, though.
  • Watched Kimipre episodes 34-38. Making an episode that tie up to an IRL event is a pretty neat synergy. The reveal of Jogi's relation to Kaito also makes the direction of their character arcs more clear.
  • Watched Princess-Session Orchestra episodes 25-27. I like that they begin the new arc by highlighting an ordinary girl who is inspired by the main characters, and after a bit of misunderstanding, ends up being a hero in her own right to another younger girl. The anime team certainly understood their assignment.
  • Starting the anime adaptation of A Wild Last Boss Appeared!, mainly to enjoy Koshimizu Ami's performance.
  • Watched Pauvre Pierrot. I thought the animated figures in it look oddly somewhat translucent. But, as I learned, it's because the work was made for a completely different projection technology from what we are familiar with in the modern day.

Readings

  • Read the first volume of Nanashi wa Ittai Dare Deshou?, one of the older manga written by Yamada Kanehito of Frieren fame. It's an alternate timeline near future Japan sabaibu-kei political conspiracy thing? Feels very 2000-ish in that regard.
  • Read Hitoribocchi no Chikyuu Shinryaku volumes 4-7. Ogawa made good on her words that she wanted to depict character relationships in this manga. The backdrop of mysterious interstellar civilization and conflicts is sure something intriguing too, but it is when I feel dread at the thought the main characters might get separated and feel relieved when their connection prevails in keeping them together that shows how much I've been absorbed into the work. Ogawa's works have done this to me twice so far, and reading them not through binging certainly strengthened the effect.
  • Read DCD Diamond Cut Diamond volumes 1-3. Esper serial murder plot aside, with its busty older heroine having excessive obsession with the male lead, this is a Taguchi Kenji manga all right.
  • Reading Jonathan Clement's Anime: A History. Quite interseting to contextualize certain things about anime history. Also addresses the challenges in examining historical sources, e.g. memories of the people involved are not always reliable or things might be selectively memorized to serve certain narratives.

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