Today’s deck is the Solar Kingdom Tarot.
It’s an interesting one, with a lot of sun and moon imagery through all the cards, iteven has cards for every phase of the moon, eclipses, and the actual The Sun is called “Midday Sun”.
Wheel Of Fortune Seaon continues as today’s reading warns agains holing up myself too much.
My right shoulder popped SO HARD when I woke up holy shit.
And speaking of waking up, here’s a midly amusing thing: So I started using Obsidian (the software) around the middle of May and it has a “daily note” section that’s been handy to just keep tabs on the things I do through the day.
Small tangent, that’s not just for this blog, I struggle sometimes with feeling like I’ve “wasted” days, so seeing something that’s like “no, you took out the trash and washed the dishes, you did stuff” helps.
ANYWAY, due to how I create the notes where even if I wake up at 9PM of June 11, I think of that day as June 11th; AND the fact that my sleep schedule has been shifting forwards so much, it resulted in the note for June 20th just being… empty.
I’ve mentioned that it’s gonna be fun to see on the blog’s one year anniversary how many posts under 365 there are and and get a quantifiable drift margin, so it’s interesting to see it, like, right here in the meantime.
By the way, I realize I haven’t updated on the matter, but shockingly the posters that gave me grief for like two weeks haven’t fallen. Turns out the method spraying matte topcoating worked…
I’ve been feeling oddly relaxed today, like, in a very specific “My back muscles aren’t as tense” way and I kinda wonder why since I can’t really say I’ve done anything too wildly different from the usual.
One change that did happen ws that I was finally able to set up my trip for this month… I actually set up my trip for next month too.
I’ve mentioned (I think?) wanting to go to Tottori, and checking Shigeru Mizuki’s hometown but that idea got me so excited that I decided “you know what? I’ll save that for my birthday”, which means that next month’s trip is set, so where to go this month?
I decided on Iwate, where I picked a hotel near some random beach (random because I picked it at random not because it’s an unknown beach, I don’t know that). The only thing I know about Iwate is that they have Geodude with alpha layer legs as an official pokemon ambassador because Iwate is written with the kanji for “Rock Hands”.
SO ANYWAYS let’s go back to the bookshelf stuff shall we?
I mentioned Okusan being in a container, so let me elaborate on that. The system I’ve developed is that manga series that are ongoing or are short one-shots I really like are gonna stay in the bookshelf, but series that have ended can be in a container since there’s no need to keep on hand which volume was the last I checked and such.
This one has Okusan, it has Bartender and also has the one, the only: Prunus Girl.
Prunus Girl is a romcom centered around Aikawa a cute girl that from the moment they introduce themselves they insist on the fact that they’re actually a boy.
Normally I would call this a coward move, but the thing in Prunus girl is that this feels like it’s less “we don’t wanna commit to having an explicitly transgender character” and more like it’s deliberately tapdancing on the gender line until it’s gone.
You see, we never really get a confirmation that Aikawa IS actually a boy, we only have Aikawa’s word for it and Aikawa is mischievous and loves to play pranks so who is to say this isn’t just a bit? You sure get quite a few moments where Aikawa might indeed be a cute boy but just as many where she might indeed be a girl.
The end result is that the lines are kicked like in that one scene from Jojo Part 5 until Aikawa stops being “A cute girl” or “A cute boy crossdressing as a girl” and becomes just Aikawa, nothing more and nothing less. Of course there’s also an implicit genre-based trust that Aikawa IS crossdressing and the constant teasing about their gender is flaunting the fact that they can pull it off so well.
The key component is that you never really see Aikawa dress as a boy only wear baggy boyish clothes at best, you also don’t get introduced to Aikawa as a boy and then see them change clothing preference.
This makes Prunus Girl arguably the best entry point in that crossdressing genre. In fact I should know it is because I was exposed to it when I was like… 14-15? The line is a bit blurry, I had discovered 4chan, I was still in school, and I discovered the manga because people kept using Aikawa reaction images.
By that point I distinctly remember being aware of Princess Princess but let me tell you, tame as Princess Princess is in the grand scheme of things, being exposed to it so casually as a Latin American boy from flyover town was basically a medieval peasant eating hot chip and dying.
The fact that I was so enticed by that idea of “oh Aikawa presents as a cute girl but insists they’re a boy” feels like very on-the-nose foreshadowing for what I became about 13-14 years later.
I do wonder how much reading CLAMP’s manga softened me up in the process though… that’s probably an analysis for another day.
Futo PI is going into the sales bin. I really like Kamen Rider W especially when you consider I love mystery and each volume feels like a contained case like every duology in the season, it’s just the Isekai Red thing of “eh, I’ll get it digitally though”.
I got this one because I saw clips of the anime and I… kinda prefer the anime just because the art itself is fffffffffffine but seeing it in motion does more for me. Into the sales box it goes.
Ushiro no Shomen Kamui-san is a supernatural comedy. Basically there’s a cute girl called Shizuka who sees ghosts and attracts them like a magnet, so she’s the assistant of the titular Kamui, which as the second pic shows is very unorthodox in his exorcisms.
I seriously hope I don’t have to explain Nozaki-kun. In fact, I refuse to explain this masterpiece because you should know about it already. Moving on…
Not much of a comment on this one, I’m just simultaneously like “Damn I have a lot of coolkyou manga” and “DAMN COOLKYOU-SENSEI CHURNS OUT SO MUCH STUFF”.
This one is going to the sales box. I got it because of the memes but the manga itself isn’t much my thing.
Prisma Illya my beloved isn’t going anywhere if I have a say about it. I mainly bring it up because I vaguely remembered that it felt like Volume 14 took a bit to come out so I check and yeah it took TWO YEARS.
I’m not the kind to be in a hurry for releases of things though, there’s plenty of stuff to keep me entertained while I let others cook in peace.
This one is going to the sales box. It’s basically about an Uber Eats boy that serves this imposing tall as hell woman with poor social skills and turns out she’s also the vtuber he likes.
It’s not bad, I’d even recommend it to the right people, but for me it’s one of those where it’s like “we have one joke, one bit, and we’re neither funny enough nor degenerate enough to compensate for the repetition”.
Cataloguing aside, I got to pet a local cat which makes the day immediately one of the bests.
I still wasn’t sleepy near midday so I went out to get stuff in Nipponbashi.
It was a productive day all in all given that it was a Saturday.