Monthly Log - December 2025

The material from my panel is now available as an article in Comic Frontier's zine. If you can read Indonesian, you may check it out there.

And now, for the stuff I watched and read in the last month of the year.

Watched

• Finished rewatching Myriad Colors Phantom World. Ishidate always directed my favorite episodes in this show. But it's also funny that series director Ishihara did the storyboard for the most meta episode.
• Watched Kimipre episodes 42-45. The Kaito and Kazuma plot actually gets resolved earlier than I expected it would.
• Watched Princess-Session Orchestra episodes 32-35. The Alicepians being energy beings with physiccal forms that have a different conception of life and death is a somewhat unexpected detail.
• Watched Genmu Senki Leda. It's a fine stand alone feature that makes as good use of bishoujo, mecha, and love story elements together. Also, Inomata Mutsumi's bishoujo design is truly sophisticated, it feels timeless.
• Started watching Attacker You!. The show was aired in 1984, just in time for the '84 Summer Olympics in LA and 20 years since Japan got gold medal in women's volleyball at '64 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. So, I can see what it aspired for (the opening sequence is not subtle lol. In real life, Japan's women's team didn't get gold nor play against the US in '84 and '88, though). The content is kind of the typical spokon stuff: melodrama, oppressive teammates, oni coach. Spokon stories can deliver convincing drama, but this series can feel like it's a caricature of the genre's excesses from how much slapping has occured so far, especially from Coach Daimon.
• Rewatched Doraemon the Movie: Nobita's Earth Symphony. This finale still gives me chills. Making it a music performance is brilliant.
• Watched The Lenticulars. Really liking how such limited animation techniques can still be compelling in visual narrative terms and not just look like crude 'ppt slides' if you know how to use them well. I think I should watch it a second time, though, to go over details I may have missed that show a different side to the series.
• Watched Milky Highway and Milky Subway. It's a fun story with a likeable cast and interaction between them as they together work out getting through the situation they have been put into.
• Watched Cecil B. DeMille's Carmen film. Funnily enough, this is the first Carmen media I've seen in full (only seen some clips of the opera and hasn't read the novella). The final line is pretty based.
• Started watching Cosmic Baton Girl Comet-san. This anime actually makes homages to both Showa era Comet-san doramas. Comet's mother is voiced by Kokonoe Yumiko, the OG Comet-san actress, but her past appearance seems to be based more on Ohba Kumiko's version of Comet-san. I like the implication that older viewers would recognize the anime is sort of like a soft sequel with a new generation Comet. A series built on a legacy.

Readings

• Completed reading Majigawa! ~Mahou Shoujo no Kigurumi~. Pity that Majigawa didn't get to be a full series, 'cuz aside from Sometime's usual fantastic designs, it makes use of some fun ideas, like having the main characters can use the same transformation item, but only either of them at a time, who has different fighting styles when they do. Would have loved to see how Sometime would play further with that setup.
• Read Majomoji Rurummo volumes 1-4. Sometimes it's funny to remember what kinds of manga outside of Yowamushi Pedal that Watanabe Wataru had been making.
• Read Chocolate Magic volume 1. It's an episodic shoujo horror series that draws its horror from the darkness in human hearts and the nasty retributions that fall on those who cling to them and mistreat others. In that way, it can deliver the horror while also upholding some moral value by punishing bad deeds and rewarding those who make the choice to avoid doing bad deeds.
• Reread Ponytail ni Yureru. It's kind of funny to do so while Toyobayashi is having an ongoing serial (whose heroine also has her hair in ponytail). It's a simple, cute manga.
• Reread Birdy the Mighty volumes 2 and 3. The many factions involved in the story could get overwhelming when I read the manga from rental shop with a deadline to return them. But I can take a more relaxed pace to map the characters' positions and relations this time.
• Read Shibuya de Aimashou. The story being put on a cliffhanger ending right just as everyone is arriving in Shibuya is kind of a funny situation.
• Read Seno Gumira Ajidarma's dissertation on Panji Tengkorak.The use of Barthes' method is fascinating, and the elucidation of the panel-by-panel analysis process gives important remiders about the discipline needed to do this kind of popular media study. Unfortunate that the dissertation's discussion of manga does not cover Natsume Fusanosuke's works. I wonder what the analysis would be like if his theories about panel logics, etc. are taken into account. Maybe his writings were not easily available outside Japan back then?
• Read To aru Hikuushi no Koiuta.There's something about two aviation-featuring LNs I've read in the past few years (the other is Allison), both have a setting where the world basically only has two feuding countries. But unlike Allison, where the countries occupy the opposite sides of one massive continent, the countries here are separated by a massive ocean somehow broken up through the midddle by a gigantic waterfall to justify their lack of contact prior to the invention of flying transportation. Also, the main plot of flying 12,000 km across the ocean necessitates the setting to have developed a power source that can be refueled with just water, justifying the plot not having the main characters to stop at fueling stations along the way. I like the direction it takes for its ending. It's bittersweet rather than a happy one, but it's one that's logical for the condition of the setting they're in. The reveal of the framing device at the epilogue is also a nice touch.