Monthly Report 2021-04

This month was very busy for me, so I couldn't do as much as I did in the past months. In the first half, I didn't even watch a single anime episode!

Well, I still did a few things worth mentioning :)

Japanese

Nothing special. I started reading Dr. Stone, the manga. I feel like my reading speed improved a bit with it. I managed to read up to (and even further) the point where the anime ended. It was a bit difficult for me to decide whether to read beyond the anime, but I figured the anime will always be behind the manga, and that I would still enjoy watching it as I enjoyed reading the beginning of the manga. And, since I would already know the story, it would hopefully help me focus more on the Japanese than the story.

Anime

This month, I managed to watch a decent number of shows.

Finished shows

I finished Yakusoku no Neverland. It was very good, but some dialogues were a bit difficult. Sometimes I had to rewind, to listen again, and even temporarily put subtitles back to check the meaning.

I also finished the latest season of Dr. Stone. As you might have guessed, it's one of my favorite shows now, probably because of the scientific theme behind it. To be precise, there's no real science in this season, it's more like engineering and applying knowledge gained through science, but it's still very, very enjoyable.

I started and finished four other shows.

First, Urasekai Picnic. The show follows two girls who travel between this world and the Otherworld (ura = the other side), a world of monsters. For some reason the show is not really frightening, but rather kinda relaxing. I found it very good, but, maybe because it apparently doesn't follow the source material faithfully or because of some cgi scenes (I've seen way worse, though), the show didn't get the high score it deserves. In any case, I'll check out the manga for sure!

Second, Wonder Egg Priority. The show follows a girl who dropped school because of bullying and because her only friend committed suicide. The show kinda reminded me of Made in Abyss, in that behind the cute characters and art, lies a more serious theme. The show was good, it left some directions unexplored, so I wonder if they plan a second season.

Third, Yuukoku no Moriarty. The show follows Moriarty (yes, the same Moriarty as in Sherlock Holmes, who the show follows in the second half). He is depicted as being patriot. He simply uses every means that will help him make the country better, by creating the conditions for nobles to be killed and commoners to learn about their mischiefs. The show is certainly well directed, but the story is not very interesting. I was not able to follow it without subtitles.

Last, Mushoku Tensei. Yet another isekai, but this time the protagonist is actually believable. The show is taking its time, has some fun moments, almost like a slice of life in another world. There is however a real sense of progression as we see the main character growing from a baby to a 10 years old. The show was very good, and the last few episodes were very different from the rest, as if starting a new story arc. I can't wait for season 2!

The main character is talking a lot, which made it difficult to follow in Japanese. Plus, I couldn't disable subtitles like I usually do, so I could choose between English, Spanish and Portuguese. I thought Portuguese would be a good choice, because I don't speak it, so I wouldn't be tempted to read the subtitles, but I was wrong. Although I can't understand a thing in spoken Portuguese, the written form is actually still very close to the latin roots, so I could still "read" them, and didn't follow the Japanese as closely as I would have otherwise. Since I was ending up learning Portuguese, I decided to switch to English and enjoy the show anyway.