Of Swords and Parasols

What are you currently reading

I'm rereading Sailor Moon with the intention of finally reading it all the way through (I read a lot of it my first year at WisCon, when I stayed with laceblade ) and then the first couple volumes released by Del Rey/Kodansha before finances changed and I couldn't buy all the manga I wanted any more, but the library has all of it now. Apparently I made it all the way to volume 11 the first time, but I feel I had more than 1 volume + short stories left, so who knows. I'm on volume 6 now, though, and remember a lot of plot that I haven't made it to yet. Love the girls and their epic destinies and BFFness, amused by Mamoru always getting abducted and/or brainwashed, eternally weirded out by that...thing ChibiUsa does on Nemesis.

Reading Wings of Dreams by Fuyumi Ono a Twelve Kingdoms novel that never made it stateside, but for which translations can be found online. it's about an adoloescent girl who decides to make the pilgrimage to see if she'll be chosen as her country's King because apparently none of the adults have been deemed worthy, and someone has to take over the job and get rid of the monsters. SHE IS THE SASSIEST THING EVER. I'm about 1/4 through it.

What did you recently finish reading?


Dogs: Bullets and Carnage Vol 4-7 by Shirow Miwa. I get a lot of entertainment out of this rather violent seinen sries, but don't have many deep thoughts. I mostly enjoyed Naoto and Heine's respective backstory reveals and connections (though I'm glad I didn't read this right after certain parts of 7 Seeds, because Heine's backstory delivers a similar gut punch as some parts of that, though with less emotional connection to the characters) and their partnership, and was less interested in Mihai and Badou's hijinks, entertaining as they were. I also still get very distracted by Mihai's resemblance to Hohenheim in FMA.

Ooku Vol 6-7: These volumes finish up the reign of Tsunayoshi, and then bulldoze through a few decades to bring us back to Yoshimune, and where we started the series. I don't have anything to say that hasn't been said at length by others, and so give a general thumbs up with the caveat of a continuing sideeye over consent in the series (but then, we're meant to be uncomfortable about mostsexual encounters in the series).

What do you think you'll read next?

More Sailor Moon and Wings of Dreams.