Where I shoot the breeze on what I’ve read recently, much like this post. Note I read a lot of Bookwalker digital manga from my backlog while I was sick with COVID over the 2024 new year period, so I’m definitely not covering everything I read since the last time I talked about manga on this blog.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable and Golden Wind

I bounced straight off Jojo’s parts 1 and 2, which makes it all the more weird parts 4 and 5 jive with me enough to continue with them. (Then again, pt. 4 is a murder mystery in a secluded town with Stands, which makes more sense for my preferences than pts. 1 and 2.)

I’ve got omnibus 8 of pt. 4 and omnibus 5 of pt. 5 at the ready as I write this post on the 1st of February 2024 and…I think what people appreciate about the Jojo’s series is how it goes batsh*t insane while still somehow obeying the logic it sets out for itself, such as how Pesci can use his (fishing) Stand to detect and attack people’s hearts. It also has multiple genres and hops between them at the drop of a hat – such as how part 5 is an adventure series (chaffeuring Trish), crime series (because it’s about the Italian mafia) and action/supernatural series (with all the fights) simultaneously.

Sidenote: My examples from the previous paragraphs come from part 5 because that’s the part I read the most recently before this series.

Uta Isaki: The Lost and Found Collection

This release I got my hands on via a Kickstarter after liking Is Love the Answer?. I’d love to see more of Uta Isaki, even if only because it means more things to translate. $30 (local currency) is a lot to ask for when that’s the equivalent of a hardcover physical book, but considering this was paying for the 4 doujins in colour with a slipcase, it’s worth about the same anyway.

According to my ratings, I liked Silkscreen the best, followed by Mermaid in the Bottle, then Leaper and finally Mine-kun is Asexual. This is probably because Mine-kun is the only one with a continuation of sorts, in the form of Is Love the Answer?, and my bias lies towards the latter.

Silkscreen, meanwhile, is very much about perceptions of others and gender, the former of which I’m very conscious of and the latter which I’ve discussed extensively on this blog. I find it fitting I’m talking about Uta Isaki on Valentine’s Day (albeit via a scheduled post, because as I write this, I’m scheduled to be on a trip with my family and extended family on that day).

Mermaid in the Bottle has a brother/sister love story which consumes most of the plot and is kinda distracting. That aside, I’m particularly interested to know why the mermaid in Mermaid in the Bottle is referred to as “it”. The body suggests it’s clearly (biologically) feminine and “mermaid” already suggests femininity. Maybe Irodori Comics didn’t want to commit to third-person “they” or “she” without hints in-story for the mermaid’s pronouns…(?)

Sidenote: 1) “Ihatovo” at the end of Silkscreen is about this game. 2) The word for “mermaid” in Japanese is the kanji for “human” and “fish” together (ningyo), hence the name of Nii in Mermaid in the Bottle.

Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle – side DH & BAT+

(I put this section last because there are Hypnosis Mic spoilers in the last few sentences.)

This series finished its magazine serialisation in mid-December 2023, so I shelled out for it over the Christmas period (exclusive drama track, song and all) to read the epilogue. Like the other completed Hypnosis Mic manga series, the epilogue doesn’t add much to the story, but it means I can finally cross a manga off my list. (I also got the rest of the series – including the other song, Laugh Back, and drama track, Operation Prank – and a volume of FP & M+ due to a Christmas discount.)

Honestly, you can tell this series got the axe due to its magazine shutting down, because while the FP & M+ mangaka got to release several oneshots adapting the drama tracks and BB & MTC+ is hurtling towards its final pages at its usual speed of a monthly manga, the mangaka for this series, Calamarium, only got 2 volumes (as opposed to the usual 4 or 5). Of course, this is unfortunate, but with the announcement of the 3rd Division Rap Battle after the 9th live show (Zero Out), we can get DH & BAT++…or something of the sort *sweatdrops*. As for the content itself, it’s just adapting the drama tracks (the one scene of Sasara and Rosho in the rain in Rhyme Anima+ was from DH & BAT, which I talked about in the post above the cut), but since there were different names of Jyushi’s main bully between media (Uozaki and Iyogi), Calamarium found a way to include both of them in the one bit of dialogue.

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