We went to a couple of bookstores in Japan, so I of course I had to buy some copies of new series I'm obsessed with after watching the anime adapatations!
Yakuza Fiance: Raise wa Tanin ga Ii vol. 1 by Asuka Konishi
My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999 by Mashiro
Happy Memorial Day!
There are so many interesting anime series and movies coming out this spring!Alec and I started watching the first three anime listed and are quite impressed with them (besides the lack of budget for movement/action scenes in The Beginning After the End)!
Anime:
I read a lot of good books this month, but I didn't watch much besides finishing Arifureta Season 3 and watching some ongoing winter anime like Solo Leveling Season 2 and Shangri-La Frontier Season 2.
Instead, my coworkers got me hooked on listening to Smosh Reads Reddit podcasts! We like listening to different episodes and discussing how messy people are lol. That and debating on if some of the stories are true or not.
I read:
After moving most of my books back from my parents' house, I quickly realized that we don't have enough space in the den to hold all of my books. It took a bit of mulling over, but I decided that I wasn't interested in these series/books anymore and will donate or sell them soon.
Angel by James Patterson
Nevermore by James Patterson
Complicit by Stephanie Kuehn
I, Coriander by Sally Gardener
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater
Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater
After Lu Mo transmigrated into a Zerg novel, he was asked to play a cannon fodder male zerg and to never act OOC.
The original owner was ruthless, had a low IQ, and was very lazy!
Lu Mo executed each request ruthlessly, and after looking at the female’s increasingly numb face, his heart was full of guilt and pain.
I’m really sorry that you met a scum like me!!!
Previously, he had thought the female zerg already had a broken heart and had woken up from his dream; that from then on, he would give up his illusions, face reality, and become a calm and rational zerg. Although Lu Mo’s heart ached, he was still very dedicated to his work and would never be soft hearted.
But when the female zerg rolled around the room while holding a quilt and calling for him, red-faced—Lu Mo couldn’t help but feel a thud in his heart.
What the hell! How could this be!
__
Ling had never seen such a strange male zerg.
The male said that he hated him, but gave him an egg.
The male cursed him for being weak and useless, but gave him freedom.
The male never said that he loved him, but he never glanced at other females.
Ling was confused and at loss.
His friend slammed the table: Wasn’t this just being tsundere?!
Ling had a sudden realization!
That’s it!
The male master was indeed a very good zerg.
Three years later.
Lu Mo looked at Ling with a despairing expression : “Whatever. Just destroy it, hurry up. ”
So weird! How did his scum setting collapse!!!
Gong who is mistaken for a tsundere X Shou who is really a yandere but doesn’t know it.
3 STARS - I LIKED IT
MY REVIEW:
It was a bit jumbled at times like I missed a scene before certain chapters/POV switches, which made the reading experience jarring. Also, the author acknowledged that the plot changed after they started writing, so the summary isn't totally accurate. However, it was still a cute and funny novel where Lu Mo had to constantly go against his conscience as a human and act like a scum, but his actions get misinterpreted due to culture differences lmao.
I liked the romance, the main characters, and the extras, but what about Reed??? I felt like there was a lot of missed potential about this kid and his origin!
Qi Baicha was the last god in the world. He lived until the modern age, where he found an ordinary person to fall in love with and marry because life was too boring.
Then he really fell in love with him. Every day, he worried about what he would do when his partner got old and died. It turned out that his partner was also a god, and he worried about the same thing every day.
After Qi Baicha mentally prepared himself, he decided to tell his lover the fact that he was a god: “My dear, I want to tell you something.”
Fu Mingye said nervously, “My dear, I also have something to tell you. Actually, I am not a mortal, I am an evil god. Don’t be scared when you hear the word ‘evil’. Those self-proclaimed righteous gods are a group of sanctimonious things… Right, what did you want to say?”
Qi Baicha: “Actually, I am not a mortal either.”
Fu Mingye: “… What are you?”
Qi Baicha: “A sanctimonious thing.”
The evil god, who listened to every person’s hatred, curses, greed, and arrogance, fell in love with the world’s most gentle and clean snow.
“I will love you against my divinity.”
Cold and gentle snow god shou x domineering when outside, controlled by his wife when inside gong
3.5 STARS - I LIKED IT
MY REVIEW:
It has a similar comedic setup of two husbands hiding their identities from each other like in Mr. Melancholy Wants to Live a Peaceful Life. However, I felt like this novel placed more emphasis on anticipating the reveal than on the humor. After the reveal, it wasn't as humorous anymore and instead switched to different genres. The translator did a good job of setting expectations ahead of time that this novel is genre bending, but if that's not your cup of tea, this might not interest you.
Wen Zhi picked up a man. He is so handsome...
Wen Zhi swears that this is the most handsome man she has seen since she regained her eyesight!
While he was unconscious, Wen Zhi carried him home, but who knew that the man she picked up turned into a zombie and had some problems with his brain.
The stupid zombie was stupid and weak, and he immediately burst his tears when she flicked his head.
"Ahhh." The man's tears fell in pain, and he was so aggrieved that he had to kiss and hug him to feel better.
Wen Zhi simply treated him as if she had picked up a son to raise, but why did she pick up more and more people?
What arrogant beautiful boys, clingy twins, dull big macho men, and cold big tree spirits...
Her team also inexplicably became the strongest team in the end times.
-
Jiang Chi turned into a zombie, which was what he expected.
But there seemed to be something wrong with his brain. He only had a short period of clarity every day, and then he would fall into chaos.
When he woke up for the first time, the female zombie in front of him was helping him take off his clothes.
Jiang Chi: ...
When he woke up for the second time, the female zombie was bathing him.
Jiang Chi: ...
The situation was getting worse and worse. Jiang Chi suspected that the zombie was a female hooligan and even considered staying away from her.
Who knew that there were more and more men around Wen Zhi!
Jiang Chi, who originally refused to admit that he was a crybaby, began to play dumb and crybaby in order to win favor. He
even cried harder than before.
He didn't want to be like this, but when he cried, Wen Zhi called him baby.
#The male protagonist who is sick from time to time vs. the cute and optimistic person
#Double zombies, HE
#Too many private settings-
3 STARS - I LIKED IT
MY REVIEW:
The ending was pretty abrupt. There wasn't much satisfaction with how things ended. I thought there would be extras that explained the afterwards or even the future, but there was nothing, like the author gave up and decided to finish the book quickly.
Ahh, yes, I remember being completely obsessed with reading Demon Slayer at this point because I NEEDED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED NEXT. God, I can't wait for the movies to come out, because the fight scenes are going to be AMAZING. And sad. So many tears. Then I had to go and read fanfics to both feel better about the ending and to get over the book hangover this series left me in lol.
I read:
I watched:
The few winter anime that I watched were SO GOOD! Really need to finish watching SAKAMOTO DAYS and cross that one off of my list.
Anime:
Movie:
Chu Yu was good-looking and had a good family background. Despite being male and an irredeemable slacker, he was still elected as Jianing Private School’s school flower by an overwhelming number of votes.
The whole school knew that Chu Yu was on bad terms with the second year’s top student who’d won so many awards from various competitions that his hand had gone limp with exhaustion just from holding them. He was the cold, restrained, taciturn, and indifferent to anyone school grass, Lu Shi.
That was until one certain day after school, when someone saw Chu Yu amongst the trees behind the school building, pulling on the sleeves of the study god’s white shirt while speaking pitifully, “Lu Shi, give me a bite, I’ll be gentle.”
Lu Shi put his finger in Chu Yu’s mouth. “It doesn’t matter if it hurts a little.”
——
Chu Yu was frightened to discover that, overnight, he had awakened a strange bloodline that required him to suck a drop or two of blood everyday in order to survive. However, the blood of everyone was bitter and smelly, except…Lu Shi’s.
#The Heavens must be pitting me#
4 STARS - I REALLY LIKED IT
MY REVIEW:
Chu Yu and Lu Shi kind of remind me of the boys in Lovely Allergen, except yandare and more codependent. And it works because Lu Shi doesn't hide his possessiveness and paranoia when he realizes his feelings and Chu Yu consents to being in this type of codependent relationship because he also wants it and needs it. Both are traumatic boys dealing with many problems, on top of this random turning into a vampire thing, and it was enjoyable seeing how they opened up to each other and watching their growth.
My main complaint is that there's no extras! I understand why the author left it at the end and didn't need to have extras, but I want to see their future! I want to see them be amazing as adults and what shenanigans their friends are still up to!
As he woke up, Wei Xuan realized he returned to the day when the apocalypse had just begun. Wei Xuan, who had a second chance at life, immediately decided: not to go to a survivor base, and not to return to human society, instead, there is only one thing he wants to do now. Find the half-zombie Du Hang, and live with him in the city full of zombies, farming and living together until old age. Wei Xuan, who stayed in the zombie city after being reborn, unexpectedly found out that zombies are not as terrible as humans think…
3 STARS - I LIKED IT
MY REVIEW:
I remember liking the auther's other book, The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse, so I wanted to give this book a shot. However, even for a slice of life zombie apocalypse book, it got pretty boring at times. Part of it was because the author over-explained and repeated a lot of content, so it got repetitive at times. I can understand why they did it for a serialized novel, but it was written out and explained for dummies many times and lost a lot of appeal for me because it became boring.
The romance was also kind of hard to understand in the beginning because the ML was literally an unconscious zombie running on instincts. I get that Wei Xuan was also basing a lot of his feelings from his previous life with Du Hang, but it was still weird to see him falling for an unconscious guy for the first half of the book.
Dayeon is… tired. She’s so tired that she’s been transported to a new world and she’s still too tired to do anything. But most of all, she’s tired of Emperor Mikhail’s near-constant attention! He’s just so perfect… always concerned about her well-being and shielding her from the church’s attempts to label her some kind of saint. And he keeps finding reasons to brush her hair behind her ear or stare dreamily into her eyes. How’s a girl supposed to sleep through all this endearingly loving attention?!
4 STARS - I REALLY LIKED IT
MY REVIEW:
Dayeon was a super relatable example of how a burnout and depressed protagonist would actually react if they were suddenly transmigrated into a fantasy world with high expectations on themselves. That's why watching her slow growth throughout was wonderful. The art was cute, the characters (peanut gallery side characters were hilarious) were great, the main characters were realistically flawed, and romance was cute and funny. Highly recommend!
Sherry and I had a manga exchange last week, so now I have two more series to read!
I don't remember what sparked it, but I suddenly had the need to know what was going to happen next in Demon Slayer and was too impatient to wait for the movies to come out. So I finally busted out my physical copies and started reading the series right before we headed over to DC to spend Christmas with Alec's family. I also packed a bunch of volumes and read them the week we were there.
Also finally felt in the mood to watch movies while on the flight back from Japan from our honeymoon and on the way to way back from DC lol.
I read:
I watched:
