It’s the last reading log of the year! It feels like it has been a busy year, and I’m looking forward to seeing how my yearly stats have shaken out. Especially having moved a lot of my reading from English to Japanese partway through the year, which arguably I am slower with. But first, let’s see what I read this month!

Bold = completed series
Italic = dropped

= recommendation

Manga:

1. 酔っ払い令嬢が英雄と知らず求婚した結果 volume 1
2. Blooming Love (Manga Plus) 
3. A Curtain Call for You volume 1 – review
4. Vampire Knight: Memories volume 10 (JP)
5. ゴッホ始めました。(Young Ace)
6. 罪悪押見修造短編集
7. 筋恋 (Comic Tint)
8. 副社長がはじめてを捧げてきます (Comic Tint)
9. Pupposites Attract volume 3 – review
10. 遺品かく語りき volume 1
11. Touring After the Apocalypse volume 4 (JP)
12. Black Sesame Slat and Custard Pudding volume 1 (JP)
13. Touring After the Apocalypse volume 5 (JP)
14. センチメンタル無反応 真造圭伍短編集
15. I See Your Face, Turned Away volume 2
16. Fifteen Minutes Before We Really Date volume 3
17. 赤い糸で結ばれて殺人鬼 volume 1 (JP)
18. The Engagement of Marielle Clarac volume 9
19. From Villainess to Healer: I Know the Cheat to Change My Fate volume 4
20. The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects volume 11
21. Mr. Villain’s Day Off volume 6 (JP)
22. I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons volume 5
23. I’m a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, So I Might as Wel Try Mastering Magic volume 5
24. A Wild Last Boss Appeared! volume 8
25. お前になにんか抱かれるか！volume 1
26. The Magic in This Other World is Too Far Behind! volume 12
27. Imperial Reincarnation: I Came, I Saw, I Survived volume 2
28. March Comes in Like a Lion volume 4
29. 花風キラーチューン volume 2
30. The Hitman Stans volume 3 (JP)
31. Cooking with Wild Game volume 12
32. Sometimes Even Reality is a Lie! volume 6
33. The Otome Heroine’s Fight for Survival volume 5
34. Given: 10th Mix (JP)
35. 身を焦がすほどの愛を知れ (Bessatsu Friend)
36. まことの愛をするものは (Bessatsu Friend)
37. 高嶺の花宮くんとぼっちな彼女 (Noicomi)
38. 推しつ誰されつ恋になる
39. Medalist volume 2
40. The Otaku Love Connection volume 3
41. Mr. Villain’s Day Off volume 7 (JP)
42. Tsubaki-chou Lonely Planet volume 10
43. My Death-Defying Dog: Man’s Best Friend, World’s Worst Saviour volume 1
44. The Invincible Summoner Who Crawled Up From Level 1 volume 5
45. Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 2 volume 10
46. Isekai Tensei: Recruited to Another World volume 12
47. 新刊１００億冊ください volume 1
48. Mercedes and the Waning Moon: The Dungeoneering Feats of a Discarded Vampire Aristocrat volume 4
49. Rebuild World volume 13
50. Oversummoned, Overpowered, and Over It! volume 10
51. The Retired Demon of the Maxed Out Village volume 3
52. Scooped Up By an S-Rank Adventurer! This White Mage is One Hack of a Healer volume 2
53. Sweet Reincarnation volume 12
54. Medalist volume 3
55. Tsubaki-chou volume 11
56. あたらしいともだちがわじるう短編集
57. ドラマな恋は基本から (Morning)
58. Medalist volume 4
59. My Special One volume 10 (JP)
60. My Special One volume 11 (JP)
61. Matcha Made in Heaven volume 7
62. Honey Lemon Soda volume 8
63. Teogonia volume 1
64. A Condition Called Love volume 14 (JP)
65. Vampire Knight: Memories volume 11 (JP)
66. 前世出殺した相手の担当編集になりました (Pixiv)
67. Otaku Vampire’s Love Bite volume 2 (JP)
68. Suzume volume 2
69. How I Met My Soulmate volume 4
70. 剣を持たない剣聖貴族に支配された騎士学園で無双する volume 1
71. The Transcendent One-Sided Love of Yoshida the Catch volume 4
72. 汝、星のごとく (Kiss)
73. All The Way with Idol-kun (JP)
74. Sasori to Otome: Scorpio & Virgo volume 1 (JP)
75. In the Clear Moonlit Dusk volume 8
76. A Condition Called Love volume 15 (JP)
77. Koigakubo-kun Stole My First Time volume 7
78. Koigakubo-kun Stole My First Time volume 8
79. Suzume volume 3
80. Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and the Inexperienced Me volume 3
81. Earth Expansion volume 3 – review
82. はばたけ魔術世界の姉弟たち (Comic Alive)
83. Tokyo Tarareba Girls Returns 2 volume 2
84. The False Saint’s Exile (Comic Dengeki Daioh)
85. Earth Expansion volume 4 – review
86. オオカミは月に恋をする volume 1
87. The Invisible Man and His Soon-to-Be Wife volume 1 (JP)
88. Just Like Mona Lisa volume 5
89. God Bless the Mistaken volume 2
90. This Can’t Be Love (JP)
91. Wind Breaker volume 12
92. Spacewalking with You volume 2
93. Wistoria: Wand and Sword volume 10

One Shot

1. ライブアクション (Good! Afternoon)
2. F30のきみ (Good! Afternoon)
3. The Detective & the Fortune Teller (Manga Plus)
4. The Forbidden Forest (Manga Plus)
5. 厄病神は幸福を愛したい (Honey Milk)
6. What if Nothing Goes Right? (Manga Plus)
7. Emotional Knockout (Manga Plus)
8. The Prince I’ll Never Be (Manga Plus)
9. Stage Fever (Manga Plus)
10. Grim Doctor (Manga Plus)
11. Dream Over Dream (Manga Plus)
12. 飼い犬シロは同級生 (Dessert)
13. テレパスの君と俺 (Shonen Ace)
14. 君とマリーゴールドの約束 (Shonen Ace)
15. 音の糸 (Shonen Ace)
16. My Lying Big Brother (Manga Plus)
17. Pouring Love Into Steel (Manga Plus)
18. Spirited Cake Shop (Manga Plus)
19. Doomsday Countdown (Manga Plus)
20. Mee-chan’s Secret (Manga Plus)

Light Novels / Novels

1. The Amazing Village Creator: Slow Living with the village Building Cheat Skill volume 1
2. Buying You on the Day You Were to Die
3. The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop

Slacking on reading light novels/novels again, but I have been slowly reading a bit of Violet Evergarden every day in Japanese, so I’m doing something. Buying You on the Day You Were to Die was quite heavy, and I think that might have put me off a bit. Been putting my efforts into getting the backlog down, which is a losing battle against end-of-year sales! Although personally, I think I’ve done pretty well despite that, especially in reading stuff I have or need to review.

— Feel free to skip the tangent, I marked where it ends —

Also, this month I’m filled with many feelings about finishing Vampire Knight, again… Vampire Knight was originally one of the first shoujo I got into when I started buying manga (explains a lot about my tastes…), and the English releases finished in 2014 with a nice collector’s edition. And then it resumed with a sequel series in 2017! Of course, I was delighted to be reunited with the cast, even if the structure of the story was different and not as focused as the original.

But y’know a lot of time has passed since I started Vampire Knight. It’s gotta be 15 years or so, I’m a full-fledged adult who’s turning 31 this year! But the things I came to love because of Vampire Knight are still here. I’m sure back then, I’d have never even slightly thought of learning Japanese and that I’d finish the sequel series in an entirely different language. What a wild journey that has been. Also, for the CE of the final volume, they released a new drama CD with the original cast, and I suddenly realised the reason I could never hate Zero is that Mamoru Miyano played him lol. Even unknowingly, it’s impossible to hate a Miyano-led character, huh. Now, when I watched Vampire Knight, there is absolutely no way I cared about or knew anything about the seiyu. Nothing at all. It’s a total coincidence, but Miyano is actually in a bunch of things I really liked at that age, looking back (Ouran High School Host Club and Death Note, too, of course), and in some small way, I’m sure that played a part in shaping my tastes to this day. Most of my friends reading this probably can’t imagine a me who isn’t obsessed with this stuff. Especially those who just this past season heard me yelling about how “I have to watch A Gatherer’s Adventure in Isekai since they cast Nobunaga Shimazaki as the lead, and he so rarely gets to play leads or be in isekai shows!” ….cough… Maybe this development wasn’t for the best.

Actually, this is a total tangent, but yesterday I was talking with friends about how Jun Fukuyama hasn’t been cast in a lot of morally grey protagonist roles like Lelouch since. He’s still really active and plays a lot of eccentric characters, but I feel he’s become a little more pigeon-holed than Miyano who still plays a large variety of roles of different types (mentors, enemies, high school dorks). I was thinking about this since Fukuyama is also a seiyu I came to love in a similar time period to Miyano. However, I suppose Miyano also possesses the expert all-around entertainer quality; he’s a man who gives his all to whatever he’s doing and has proven himself in numerous roles and types of entertainment.

Well, this is ultimately getting rambly and off topic, so let’s get back to the matter of books.

— Tangent Ends —

With that, let’s look at my realtively uninspired charts for the year

Honestly, looking at it across the year, there’s not a huge difference from usual. The real thing that went down dramatically was the light novels, and that’s really just because I can’t decide what to do moving forward. I read so slowly in Japanese that it doesn’t seem helpful to swap the stuff I read in English, but I’ve still had issues (and honestly, at this point, just pessimism toward the process of) getting them that I’m just stuck in place. But if I get faster at reading in Japanese, that will probably change my feelings, so my goal for next year is to push onward in that area. And honestly, swapping the manga I follow from English to Japanese did help me a lot. I’m actually up to date with things! I’m excited about new volumes!

Also, you can really tell when I started facing difficulties or got fed up with the English side by that dip in arrivals between Feb and May (the March bump is due to some long-awaited stuff from a friend, but I think if I took that off the number, it would be low again). Constantly closer to 50~ tends to be where I sit, bumped up by Bookwalker sales and the like. And hey, I ended the year with the backlog decreasing so we will call that victory!