Huh, it’s been a while since we had such a long federation delay between ani.social and lemmy.world. Seems like things are back to working fine again but I almost made an alternative post since this one didn’t populate on my side. Good thing I checked the main instance first.

I’m not ready to write about anything new today so instead, I’d like to talk about some series I’ve been following for a while now. Call it a “catch up update” or something.

• Mary-san
  Simple idea, great execution, still going strong. While it doesn’t always land perfectly, even the “worst” chapters never fail to make me smile so I’m always happy to see another chapter being released.
• The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All
  This series has been all over the place since the time skip and I’m only reading it through sheer inertia at this point. I hope things will get back on track relatively soon as I’m starting to get pretty bored with the current arc. The art is still pretty at least.
• Unexciting Date
  Probably the biggest surprise of the year and one of my favourites, which is surprising since I really didn’t expect it to have so much staying power. Despite simple premise and pretty limited joke list (used in a great way) it’s a really solid series and with a good pacing too!
• Fool Night
  I finally took the time to catch up with the last few chapters and it looks like I can breath a sigh of relief - the spy action arc seems to be finally done! Having the story go from a slow(ish) paced, relatively down to earth and personal topics to a full-on espionage thriller with gang war elements was not something I wanted from this series so hopefully things will go back to the former approach to story telling.
  These first few chapters of the new arc look promising but I’ll wait a while longer before forming opinion on that. If things can slow down again that would be great, if it’s just a short break before another bout of action however I’ll probably drop it for good. Action is not what grabbed my attention when i first heard about this series and it’s not something that can keep me interested.

I think I wanted to write about something else as well but it looks like I forgot so… yeah. Oh well.

This might be a controversial comment. I read Inio Asano’s Solanin over the weekend and I… couldn’t care less about it. I don’t think it’s bad, but I actively dislike most characters, particularly the guys. The women in the manga also got done dirty, particularly the FMC, who didn’t really seem to be much of a character on her own outside of being someone’s girlfriend (I didn’t read that as being some kind of criticism), even after the big event. She was even criticized for trying to better her life because it was putting pressure on her boyfriend, who wasn’t pulling his own weight. Her struggles seemed to come secondary a lot of the time, unless they were related to him. That felt… icky, unintentionally so.

I did like it more after the big event, but that’s already like 2/3rds of the way through.

On paper, I should like this manga. It ticks a lot of boxes for me, but just ticking them is not enough it seems.

I think I might not jive well with Inio Asano’s work. I also didn’t like Girl On The Shore, though I do think Solanin is better. I know Oyasumi Punpun is the big one, but I’ve been avoiding that one.