Today’s deck is the Spoopy Tarot.
It’s neat! It’s functional, it’s simple, minimal, perhaps too minimal for some.
I didn’t even shuffle the cards today, I was checking the deck and exactly three cards fell so I went “yeah sure”.
Today’s reading is saying that for new ideas to arise, you gotta be mindful of your own self-care and being patient with yourself. Very fitting for today, actually.
I woke up kinda stressed, specifically from this sense of “I should be doing something, I should be working, I’ve spent too long without doing something work-related”.
Not only was I already feeling the start of tension, but it’s Sunday, it’s meant to be the day to do nothing and also even if I wanted to do something I wouldn’t see a reply soon anyways. So I pushed against it and let myself be lost in the sorting of books, and today I did a shocking amount of it, so let’s get to it.
I got all my Shaman King sorted in a single place. To recap there is:
- The original manga (actually a rerun they did when the new anime was announced).
- Shaman King 0 (a duology of all the short stories released between the original manga and its sequel).
- Shaman King Flowers
- Shaman King The Superstar (both are basically the same but the magazine got cancelled during Flowers so they had to rebrand… it happened AGAIN by the way, but this time there was time to finish the story arc and announce the next series)
- Shaman King Red Crimson (spin-off focusing on Horohoro and the Taos)
- Shaman King Marcos (spin-off focusing on Lyserg and the X-Laws, both of these are parallel to The Superstar)
- Shaman King And A Garden (prequel focusing on the origin of Hao’s three female lackeys)
- Shaman King Faust 8 (Novel).
- Shaman King Faust 8 (Manga adapting the novel)
- And Shaman King Anime Guide.
They’re not all in that container though, they’re in this next one sharing space with…
Seikon no Qwaser babyyyyyyyyy.
I unironically love Seikon no Qwaser, it’s one of those “come for the tits, stay because of the engaging plot and worldbuilding” situations. However, having come from the anime, there’s a bit of a whiplash when you first see it. It’s not just the style developing or by extension the tits not being as big, but the fact that when it started the magazine didn’t allow nipples to show.
You can also see in the container Scary Campus College University, which is a light horror slice of life manga that’s already done and completed.
Speaking of spin-offs, I’m a known Baki enjoyer so of course I have the spin-offs. Here’s a list of the ones sorted so far:
- There’s Scarface which is centered around Hanayama’s life away from the main plot. Imagine a Baki-flavored Ryuu ga Gotoku game, by which I mean there’s a scene where a cop is peeing into Hanayama’s cell before Hanayama punches his way out of prison because it’s his birthday and he wanted to celebrate it with his loved ones.
- There’s the Retsu Isekai spin-off. You see, after Miyamoto Musashi’s clone (long story) kills him, a different spin-off started RIGHT THEN AND THERE where Retsu now got back the leg Pickle ate (long story) and is now set loose in a fantasy world with him being as he was right when he left the Baki plot. There was also a chapter where a DQ3 Loto-lookalike tries to mug people at night and gets decked in the face.
- There’s the one where Gaia and Sikorsky are roommates. Basically Sikorsky was one of the guys in the “deadliest death row inmates” arc that totally and utterly TROUNCED by Gaia, Baki’s friend from an earlier arc. Sikorsky finds Gaia for revenge but Gaia not only completely ignores his threats, not only upstages him in every possible way even casually, Sikorsky even carries the trauma of when Gaia terrorized him in their final match. So basically you’ve got a superhuman assassin being kept in check by living near a more well-adjusted inhuman assassin and it’s amazing.
- And of course there’s Keisuke Itagaki’s autobiography where he depicts in excruciating dramatic detail the time he was in the JSDF and couldn’t jack off for weeks.
I love Baki in case it wasn’t obvious.
Sabage Banashi is an airsoft manga by the same author that goes by LunaticMonster on twitter and posts a bunch of Uma Musume trivia in comics form.
The Corrector Yui manga is neat, though the tone and artstyle is decidedly different from the anime (read: less horny).
Kimiiro Liver is about a hot shy girl that tries to be a livestreamer. It’s fine but the artstyle does a lot of the heavy lifting for me.
Interspecies Reviewers hopefully needs no introduction.
“Noa Senpai is a friend” is the by now usual formula of light workplace romcom with a cute girl, but the dynamic here is more that of an overly emotional and anxious girl bouncing off a more calm and stony guy. The artstyle is neat also.
There is indeed a manga about a gyaru fishing, and not only that but it’s ACTUALLY about fishing down to techniques on how to clean fish.
I forgot to mention but there’s also a Maid Dragon spin-off with Elma where it’s basically about a very hungry office worker.
The third one is about a wrestler that has just become a mom. I tend to not gel with parenting stories (as some of you know by now I hate babies) but this one gets me not just from the wrestling or the fact that the main character alternates being a responsible parent with turning her rival into a fine mist (and said rival dropping by in one episode to congratulate her) but the baby of the story being unnaturally strong.
Suika meanwhile is a 4-volume surreal horror comedy. I don’t know if I’d recommend it, but I would definitely say giving it a try is a safe bet.
Kagaku na Yatsura is a manga that I found out about because of an OVA of all things, it’s a neat percy manga that I keep more for sentimental reasons than outright quality to be honest.
Of course I have Saki in the bookshelf, why wouldn’t I?
And then there’s the infamous Robopon manga that I keep more for the novelty of it than anything else. Why infamous? Dunno man, look at the nipple pockets in the boob pockets of a design published for elementary-aged kids.
There’s Senpai wa Dekapai. You see, the pun is that Deka means police detective, but it’s also because she has big tits. It’s neat.
Ichinichi Goto Ni Dere Ga Fueteku Tsuntsuntsuntsun Tsundere-chan was basically a bunch of twitter illustrations depicting a tsundere that grows increasingly dere with each one. One fun detail is that the end of the volume actually goes “yeah I actually drew her getting fucked plenty of times but it couldn’t be published here so go to my fanbox”.
Then there’s The Big O manga, there’s six volumes and then there’s two volumes of an epilogue “Lost Memory”. It’s great because as you can see from the sample page, the tone is EXACTLY the same as the anime, so it feels like an extension of it.
There’s the Baroque manga but let’s not get too sidetracked by me talking about Sting… not today at least.
There’s an Isekai where a speedrunner is using speedrunning tech to be an adventurer, including things like going through walls. It’s a cool idea but to be honest it’s the sort of thing where you go “hahaha!” once and don’t really feel excited to see where it might go next. into the sales it goes.
Likewise the third one is going into the sales. Think 2.5D temptation with more horny and less passion dripping from its pores. It’s not bad but the horny part isn’t anything too crazy.
I think I managed to do so much all in all because when I was emptying the bookshelves, the first ones to be put into containers were the ones that were already sorted so the further in I went I went back to that initial batch.
There’s others I wanted to mention, but they were all loose volumes to be sorted, so I’ll do that later.