Manga

I dove into a couple series this past week worth mentioning. I think I must have been in a dark fantasy mood recently.

• Death's Daughter and the Black Blade / Shinigami ni Sodaterareta Shoujo wa Shikkoku no Tsurugi o Mune ni Idaku

I have really enjoyed this series a lot and ended up plowing my way through the whole thing this past week. Basically, the God of Death ends up adopting an infant human that it finds on a whim and raising it. Then, it turns loose this human that has been raised to become an almost supernatural killing machine loose onto the world with zero common sense of how human society functions. The main character is a lot of fun, and the supporting cast has been great. However, most importantly, the world is pretty well fleshed out (the most maps of any manga I have read recently), and the antagonists aren't idiots. There are lots of great breakdowns of tactics and strategy in this sword/shield style warfare from both sides of the war. All the while, our protagonist is happily murdering everybody as a form of offering to her adoptive father (remember - God of Death). So, there is a lot going on, but it comes together really nice and I could not put it down this past week.

• The Evasion Skill Turns into a "Wall Clip Bug" Under Specific Conditions! When I Clipped Through the Dungeon Wall, I was Able to Collect an Infinite Amount of First-Time Clear Rewards and So My Stats Skyrocketed!

This is one of those series that got purged from MD with no legal English option available. However, I saw that it started getting updates on another source (bato). I am now up through chapter 17 and this series took a hard turn from the silly, glitchy fun it was in the beginning to really dark in the past couple chapters. It has been really good, and it has helped set this series apart from the rest of the gaggle of other series that has fun with a similar gimmick-y skill that becomes OP.

• NSFW - Nectar of Dharani / Shinju no Nectar

I made a meme post recently about a joke LN series in a manga I had checked out. However, in the comments, @lvxferre@mander.xyz pointed out that the joke title was more or less the real plot of Shinju no Nectar. So, in the name of science, I thought I would see what the series was about. I was expecting horny degeneracy, and the horniness is there, but I was not expecting an actual, really dark story to go along with it. Our MC is summoned into a world and his situation is bleak. He is moments away from dying, just moments after being summoned, and our main party ends up fleeing for their lives for the beginning of the story (I haven't gotten too far yet). Unlike the joke LN though, our MC is far from overpowered. I actually plan on continuing to read this as it has been really engaging (even if there weren't plot). I was really surprised by this one to be honest.

Just a quick meta comment that I would like to welcome @Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world to the moderation team of the community! I have been particularly busy with work lately, so I appreciate having another person able to tend to things if they crop up.

Just finished volume 9 of Daemons of the Shadow Realm and I've got to say it's really good. I think I might actually like it more than its more famous older sibling, Fullmetal Alchemist. It'll be impossible to tell until it's complete of course, but at the least I think it gets off to a stronger start. The anime will definitely be one to look forward to this spring, though the subtitles in the latest trailer have me worried that the localization might be a little lazy and flavorless. It's really only one line in particular that has me feeling that way though, so maybe it's fine.

I didn't have much time to read (it's that time of the year after all) so I ended up catching up on few things. Both Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You and The Useless Idol and Her Only Fan in the World had some really cute chapters recently. This Healer is Annoying doesn't really hit as much lately, though that might be because the breaks between chapters are so long it can be difficulty to stay invested.

Besides that, I'm still sticking with few of the villainess manhwa I talked about before, many others on the other hand fell into update limbo and may or may not reach their conclusions. It's a slow life at the end of the year it is.

I have tried lightly reading some of my ARIA volume, without dictionary or computer. The beginning is very hard because of the exposition. After that it is mostly characters in conversation, which is easier to follow. I think I can understand more than half in those parts. There are also some lines not in bubbles that are hand drawn and without furigana. That's gonna be difficult.