A mystery has befallen me, dear readers. On Friday I was too excited about the latest Yen Press announcements and couldn’t sleep, so I found myself scrolling through my books on BookWalker until I decided on reading Ai Ou Futari (愛追うふたり) until I settled down enough to sleep. And it was really good (more on this in a minute!)! But I haven’t owned this book very long; I bought it toward the end of April, yet I can’t remember why exactly.
If you know me well, you probably know I am a big fan of Bungo Stray Dogs and have been ever since the anime started in 2016 (yes, a whole ten years ago now!). But volumes of the main series and most of the side content sit in my backlog, mostly because I read the monthly releases of everything except Another Story and Wan!, so I take my time savouring the full volumes later when some time has passed. I imagine, with the main series currently on hiatus after the conclusion of Part 1, I’ll binge my way through those volumes once we hear tell of the series returning. And maybe I will write something about that at the time; I mean, at least by then the English volumes might be caught up too, so I can excitedly talk about it with friends who don’t read the Japanese releases like I do. But today I want to talk about Volume 3 of Another Story: Yukito Ayatsuji vs. Natsuhiko Kyougoku.
I buy and read a lot of manga magazines every month because if I can follow series from when they serialise, I’m less likely to spend money on full volumes down the road. At least, that’s what I tell myself. But I don’t buy Jump SQ (or Jump Square, as it’s often called) because Blue Exorcist, Seraph of the End and Gokurakugai are already simulpub in English through the Shonen Jump app. And sure, we’re not getting the whole SQ lineup in English, but it feels hard to justify buying it every month when I already fork over money to VIZ for their service and there’s that overlap in titles.
When I talk about shojo I was into when I first started reading manga, like many my age, the one’s that come to mind are Ouran High School Host Club, Vampire Knight, Say I Love You, and Dengeki Daisy. But there was another: Love So Life. I think this ultimately just doesn’t come to mind as often since it never got licensed in English. Which I can’t really blame any publishers for since it’s a long series (17 volumes), now an ‘older shojo’ (2008-2015) and has the problematic element of being an age-gap romance between a teenager and an established adult. And to be clear, that element is a slow burn and nothing even happens until she’s an adult, but I get that’s a concept that will put off a lot of people. Honestly, themes like this generally don’t bother me in fiction, particularly if it’s portrayed like this and nothing really happens until later.
I thought I would try something new for a change. Usually, when I have the urge to write about a book, I turn that into a review. But sometimes there are books I don’t want to deep dive on and put that level of work into presenting, but I still have some things to say about them. This usually translates into posting about them on social media, but that’s becoming fragmented (and character limits are a pain…), so it occurs to me it would be better to have a series on my blog instead. These aren’t supposed to be reviews, but instead snippits of my impressions. Something more personal without regard for my professional output, which is a lot better.
The naming scheme comes from the fact that, well, every book that comes in ends up in the backlog. I prioritise reading review materials for work and generally don’t read stuff I got in for myself personally until later on (with occasional exceptions). And while this isn’t fuelling a quest to get the backlog number down, it is more a byproduct of my effort to do that regardless. The backlog is a treasure trove that holds things for who knows how long, but eventually they come out.
I’m picking a completed series to talk about today, but that won’t always be the case. It won’t always be manga, either. Or at least that is the vision; the realities, as we all know, could be completely different.