Monday, April 21, 2025

Mii-chan Wants to Be Kept: Vol. 1 Manga Review

Cat/Girls are cute too

I’m a sucker for cute anime cat-girls, but Mii-chan isn’t exactly what I was expecting...

In this series by Waka Takase, our protagonist Natsume-kun, works in a supermarket, where he gets pushed around by the ladies at his job; but, he’s generally a good guy who’ll pitch in and help out when things get tough – as a result, he’s always exhausted and burnt out.

One day, on his way home, he takes in a stray black cat for the night, even though his building doesn’t allow pets. When he wakes up in the morning, he finds the cat’s gone, but an extremely beautiful (buck-naked) black-haired girl is sleeping in his bed.

The series is only mildly NSFW

As it turns out, Mii-chan, is a seventeen year old runaway cat/girl, who is a human during the day, but turns into a cat at night. The details have yet to be really explained; is it a curse? Is it just in her nature? Not too sure. Will I read on to find out more? Probably.

I really enjoyed the book for the first 90% of the volume. The interactions between the two main characters are pretty funy. Mii-chan’s cute, and the MC dude’s not annoying (honestly the most important thing in any of the manga where the MC is meant to be a self-insert protag). It’s also really funny how he’s got such a soft spot for Mii-chan as a cat, but is really hard on her in her human form.

<<Moderate spoilers for the end of volume 1 to follow, but I think it might affect whether some people pick this book up.>>

Toward the end of the volume, Mii-chan has a conversation with another Cat/Girl, and in that conversation, it’s revealed that one aspect of their “affliction” is that unless they have sex with a guy before they turn 18 they’ll eventually be stuck in their Cat form forever…

I’m generally not too stuck up about stuff like this, but this seemed so contrived and deliberate I got a bit annoyed – especially since the MC is in his early twenties; maybe the age-gap tension will turn into a plot point. I guess it’s always possible Mii-chan chooses to stay with Natsume-kun, but in her cat form, since he’s pretty obviously got a thing for cats. Who knows? I think that’d be kind of a funny possibility. I’m interested enough to see how it plays out that I’ll probably pick up the rest as it comes out. So far, Japan has 3-ish volumes worth of chapters and the manga is still ongoing.

This is one of those weird series where I enjoyed it, but the hook might make it super annoying. Also makes it very hard to recommend, so if this is your kind of jam, go for it.

Volume 2 is due out in August.

Mii-Chan Wants to Be Kept is published by Seven Seas Entertainment.

Purchase at Barnes & Noble for $13.99

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Shadow Student Council Vice President Gives Her All - Manga Review

 This manga, by ReDrop, features Meiko Shiraki, the vice-president of the Shadow Student Council from the Legendary Echi manga series Prison School; this one-shot gag spinoff features virtually no dialogue of any kind, choosing to focus entirely on random humorous episodes from Meiko’s dialy life. Basically just a fun little book with lots of over the top sexy panels and echi camera angles. Very NSFW. I thought it was funny - and the over the top lewdness was pretty consistent with the original Prison School source material. 

I picked it up on sale; there are definitely worse ways to spend $15, but this one was certainly a silly pickup. Snag it if you’re a fan.

When a picture's worth a thousand words


Saturday, April 19, 2025

Just Another Life Update???

 I feel like this blog has fallen casualty to posting only life updates as an excuse for why I don't post anything else anymore.

To be honest, I've not had much energy for writing, blogging, etc. in a long time. Very few views to the pages/posts with virtually no interaction on any of the reviews - even ones I cross-post from Twitter, or other places.

I mostly just dusted this off today since I got a new keyboard and wanted to see how well it performs for writing. Honestly, 5 Stars. It's one of those Huntsman Mini's, and with my laptop now on a swing-arm desk, I can blog from the comfort of my very cush arm-chair.

Is this peak performance? I think it's very well possible.

Recently, I've been exploring Substack; there's a nifty group of people over there doing what appears to be something quite similar to blogging... I guess I might start cross-posting over there and see if anything changes. 

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

A Year in the Life

Good lord, 2023 really went by pretty quick didn't it. What's that? It's almost 2025? It seems we've skipped a year haven't we? Somehow that's usually how things go for me and blogging. I'll set my mind to blog about all the books, or games, or trivial bullshit i'm involved in, and then life will get in the way of my daily posting routine and next thing you know it I've changed adresses three times and moved to another country. I got to go to anime Expo 2024 this year WooHoo!! Had an incredible time in fact! Went to some insane exhibits, saw some wild screenings (Look Back!!), meet and greets with a few really incredible people (HaneAme, NonSummer Jack, and most importantly Witch-Hat Sensei Kamome Shirahama!!). Stayed at the same hotel as the entire Trash Taste cast coincidentally and kept running into Garnt (arguably the one with the least trashy taste) at the elevators since apparently our rooms were on the same floor; wonder if he thought I was a strange, stalkery fan, but I never could get up the courage to ask him for a pic or a handshake or anything out of some strange desire not to make it weird (that probably backfired tremedously in hindsight). All said and done, managed to make it home with my wallet in One Piece *badum tss*. 

Altogether pretty swell experience if you ask me. Definitely making plans to go again next year, but preferably in a room of my own next time. Best friendo snores.


In terms of the not so swell, In the year that's passed since my last seasonal anime wrap-up and manga review posts (god, was watching Frieren and Apothecary at the time wasn't I??), my health shit the bed (then recovered, then shit itself again in the past week or so), my dog died (still fucked up over that tbh), and I've gotten promoted at work (twice! - yay?) but as a result now have far, far less free time, and also far less will to live less energy, so blogging has become rather complicated in that it's something that I'd always love to do, but never have the willpower to sit down at my desk and ACCOMPLISH. But, I've now bought myself a swiveling arm-desk thingy so I can sit in my big, comfy leather chair, and not at my crappy pc desk, so I mean to get back to it for a few reasons:

1) I'm broke, and all of my hobbies cost money.

2) I'm broke, and all of my hobbies cost MONEY.

My current obsession is the One Piece TCG. It started casually last year at Christmas. We'd get a few packs in every month at work, and I'd buy them, and rip em open and get nothing of any value. Then, they started getting packs at the local BNoble, which was all in good fun, until I cracked something worth about fifty bucks, that triggered a tragic dopamine reaction in my brain leading down the path of hunting for boxes. Several thousand dollars later and I've opened up close to a dozen by now, sourced from local LGS's (support your local business) - and not even remotely come close to breaking even. I reconciled this by starting to play the game too, instead of just collecting shiny cards, but I'm utterly shit at it, mainly as a result of only playing the Waifu leaders and not the decks that are S-tier in the meta (though my Reiju deck is pretty much tournament-grade, I just need to pilot it better).

Lately though, I've managed to curtail the OPTCG obsession to some extent by just buying singles for the decks I'm playing, and I sold off all the money-cards. I know when set 9 rears its ugly head I'll get sucked back in again though, so I think I need to make a break for it before I do any further lasting damage. Sadly, best friendo is pulling me back to the financial black hole that is MTG, and that's a dark, dark path I'm not keen to travel solo). I figure, the best solution to spending all of my time and money playing trading card games every week is to rededicate that time to pouring over the manga collection I've invested my hard-earned dollars in and write more reviews of the individual volumes/series that I've amassed at break-neck pace over the last few years.  

Maybe even sell some stuff off to make room for all the new series I'd prefer to pick up if I had the space for them, or so I tell myself knowing this will never happen.

Right now, my physical manga hoard is sitting at around 2500 volumes with another 500 or so in digital. Finding space for all these paperbacks has become a major conundrum. Owning my own little manga library used to be the end goal, but I've gone way past that and don't have any room for it anymore. Have had to start spreading the collection out into other spaces of the house - which the rest of the family aren't too keen on (especially since I started moving the mature books into the communal living spaces). They need to experience the culture though, so it's ok.

I've now begun measuring the value of the books I own in terms of missed opportunity cost; specifically as it relates to the value of the Honda I could have purchased had I been someone who made good financial decisions. Currently, we're looking at a nice 2025 Civic LX, but probably couldn't afford the sport, so I guess when all things are considered, that's not that bad right? 

But I digress.

Current life goal #1 is to get this place up off the ground, especially with the site formerly known as Rightstuf burnt to cinders and twitter quickly following suit. I used to post reviews of all the stuff I read on Rightstuf, Barnes&Noble and Goodreads, but then Crunchyroll nuked all the Rightstuf product review pages making that site, for me at least, very much the Wrongstuf. I haven't shopped there much since (did maybe one order to test things out... it didn't go well). I don't know why I never got into Goodreads more, but I suppose I should. Or mabye make a bookstagram? I guess that's a thing, but I'm not sure how I like hearing my voice in recordings. Generally, just want a place to reconcile my thoughts, longform, with words, about the books and anime I'm reading, and I want to do it on a more regular basis. Consistently. 

Over the last year I hit a life milestone with my anime consumption - I cleared the "Year of Your Life Spent Watching Anime" statistic over on MAL. Over 1000 series completed. That's just so much anime - and even with my average score being so much higher than the norm, so much of the anime was just... shit.  Goal #2 is to catch up on all the anime worth catching up on, and polishing off a bunch that aren't anyway, but in all honesty, the amount of anime that exists in the world is currently growing at a rate greater than the amount of time I have free in a week; even if I multi-task and watch anime while reading, or gaming, I still don't have enough hours in a week to watch everything that's airing seasonally taht I actually give two fucks about. This has led to a pretty huge backlog, which I'll gradually get through, but I'm being much less completionist about (and that kills me - really). I do however want to continue contributing anime reviews to MAL, but that site, like Goodreads, is picky about sweary content, so I'll most likely continue to cross-post the uncensored reviews here.

So, I guess expect more posts here from me if you'd care to read them. Or don't. Reading's hard, and nobody has the attention span for it anymore. Suppose I should just train an AI to write my blog for me; that would be the real 2025, way of the future, thing to do. But, sadly, I can't stand the idea that instead of the machines replacing my day job, they're replacing the escapism I used to seek out to get away from my day job. Crazy how things turn out isn't it? 


Friday, August 25, 2023

Fall 2023 Anime Watchlist - The Season that Had Too Much

There's Too Much Anime Next Season

Where the hell do they expect me to find time for all this????? There's 36 shows airing next season that I want watch!! WTF???? That's more than 5 shows a day I'm going to have to plan all my time around. And this is during the time of peak holiday retail??? I'm going to be so damn busy. 

Bruh...

anyways...

MY TOP 4

--------


The Apothecary Diaries

This series reminds me so much of the TV series HOUSE, M.D. that It hooked me instantly. When you add in a smart gremlin-like girl, and pack it all into ancient China; this is a uniquely intriguing series that can keep everyone enthralled. I reread the manga from start to finish about every 2 weeks these days, because each time I crack it open I find a new page I love. Watch this, then go out and buy them books!!


FRIEREN: Beyond Journey's End

What's to say about Frieren? You're going to cry. A lot. Especially during the first episode. Go give your loved ones a hug, because they're not going to be there forever - that is what this show has to tell you. After the premier though, I'm looking forward to seeing Frieren and Fern on their adventures and Frieren being generally a goofball. The soundtrack for this show will be an insta-buy if I can find a CD for it, because it's done by the same genius that did Violet Evergarden. 



The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You

We're getting part 1 of, what I hope to be, many, many parts of The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You, this fall. This series is PURE Parody - think Gintama, but for the Harem/Rom-com genre. I adore this manga; it was one of my favorites from last year when it made it's English debut. From the poster art though, it looks like we're only going to get 12 episodes at best, and probably only see maybe his first handfull of gals (he's over 40+ in the manga at this point i think on the JP side...). Go give this series a watch, support the release, and then hopefully, maybe we'll get to see the rest animated.


Shangri-La Fronteir

Shangri-La Frontier is Sword Art Online without all the Edginess and the Sexual Assault. The series is entirely players in a game, playing the game. This is Bofuri without the Parody. It's just straight up, super high adrenaline action, with a vast and interesting world, and fun characters to boot. There's no "if you die in the game, you die IRL" plot to this, but somehow I felt like the stakes were even higher than SAO or the like, because when the players risk they're items, or the NPC's risk their lives, there's no coming back for them - and the idea that one of the lovable NPC's in Shangri-La Frontier might bite the dust is WAY more believable to me than Kirito or Asuna actually dying in SAO. I will be counting the days till I get to see that Weathermoon fight scene. 


Beyond my top 4 though, there's a whole basket of new series I'm excited to watch listed below here in no particular order.


NEW SERIES

----------

Under Ninja

I Fell In Love with the Villainess

Girl and Her Guard Dog

You Were Experience, I wasn't

Boushoku No Berserk

Lamentations of a Shut in Vampire Princess

I'm Giving the Disgraced Noble Lady I Rescued a Crash Course in Naughtiness

The Kingdoms of Ruin

Ragna Crimson

Undead Unluck

Tearmoon Empire

Hoshikuzu Telepath

To eat the Pig Liver

Shy

Overtake

MF Ghost

Migi to Dali

Yuzuki-chan no Yon Kyoudai

Rainy Day Protocol


But, what's really bad about next season is this.... 

Look at all these damn seqels and continuations. Holy crap. There's over a dozen of them. And all of them are bangers. I'm super excited for these and will most likely be watching them weekly. Gotta stay current.


SEQUELS AND CONTINUATIONS

-------------------------

JUJUTSU KAISEN Season 2

AoT REALLY FINAL PART

Eminence in Shadow part 2

Spy Family s2

Goblin Slayer s2

Dr Stone S2 part 2

Faraway Paladin s2

Dead Mount Deathplay part 2

Helck p2

Tokyo Revengers

Kanojo Mo Kanojo s2

Sain't Magic Power is Omnipotent s2

Ancient Magus Bride S2 p2


Hit me up on twitter with your thoughts and which shows you're most excited for this fall!!


If you'd like to peep the livechart to see when these series air, and check out the full list of all the shows, including the ones I left out (*cough* rise of the lame hero *cough*) click the link that's highlighted here.


Saturday, August 19, 2023

Manga Review: "I Don't Know Which Is Love" vol.1

I don't know if this is the only harem yuri series that exists...

but it's the only one I think I've ever read.

I'm a sucker for cute romance series. So, when I saw that we were getting a light-hearted new yuri series from Yen Press I decided I had to pick it up. I'd say I'm a pretty big fan of the harem romcom genre to be honest, since I grew up on a steady diet of Tenchi Muyou and the like. So, the idea of a yuri harem series intrigued me. I did a quick google search for "yuri harem manga" and couldn't really find much - certainly nothing on my shelves. So, this would be a first for me.

The plot for this one: In high school, Mei was in love with a girl who left her when she found a boyfriend, now in college, Mei is determined to get a girlfriend. I'd say the struggle in this is going to be making JUST ONE girl happy, because from her first day of school Mei already has a sea of admirers, each of whom falls for a differnet aspect of Mei based on the five senses.



There's:

Riri Shirosawa, a fellow freshman, who's also a pin-up idol, but is very shy, and doesn't like being surrounded by men. She's soft, and squishy, and loves holding Mei's hands. 

Next up:


Maria Todomeki - she's a teacher in the psychology department who becomes Mei's advisor. She's great at reading body langauage, and especially likes looking at all of Mei's different adorable reactions to things. She's got that mommy-energy too, which Mei might be a bit into.

Then we've got:

Minato - she's a bit boyish and works in the cafe (reminds me a lof of Kashima a.k.a. "The Prince" from Nozaki-kun) She's a couple years older and Mei's senpai. She's an audio tech for the drama club - and she's really into sound; bordering on ASMR fetishist. She falls for Mei's voice

Also:


Karin Ajima, also of the drama department! She's an actress, but only as a hobby. She's also really into taste: especially the taste of girls lips - she's very, very kissy and aggressive. How in the world is Mei going to fend off her advances?? 

Lastly:


There's Kaoru - who's got a very good nose. She's going to be Mei's roommate in the dorms. She hates the smell of fabric softener, but loves the smell of Me (I can't believe I just wrote that sentece). She's a bit silly, but also smart; strict, but fair. Seems like a really nice senpai to have around.

And thus the stage is set for an epic battle for Mei's heart.



I was delighted by volume 1 of this series. I went in knowing nothing about it other than yur+harem, but what I got out of it far exceeded my expectations. All the characters are fun, and the art is really great. Mei's blushing, normy-in-distress vibe is a perfect compliment to each of the over the top characters gunning for her heart. 10/10 for a volume 1. I'll be eagerly awainting volume 2! Looking forward to reading more from Tamamushi Oku! You can give them a follow on twitter @tama_64.

"I Don't Know Which Is Love" is published by Yen Press and comes out on August 22nd! (probably in your local book store already!!)
Retail price is $13.00
Find it at your preferred retailer, none of these are affiliate links, I just want you to buy this book!
Barnes & Noble 
Right Stuf

Thursday, May 4, 2023

Manga Review: "Run Away With Me Girl" vol. 2

I had Norah Jones's "Come Away With Me" stuck in my head after reading this for some reason

I was on the fence about whether or not I was going to continue this series after the first volume, despite giving it five stars, but after reading the 2nd book I’m glad I did. The ‘running away’ starts here and I definitely enjoyed seeing them escape. I’m very hopeful for the relationship between Maki and Midori and I wish them the best (reasonably sure we’re heading toward a happy ending now not some lovers’ suicide/tragic thing, but who knows). More than anything I just want Midori’s fiancĂ© to disappear from existence. Dude is a scumbag. Hoping he’s not in book 3 much. This manga has this weird way of flittering between beautiful and depressing that it’s rather tough to read, but I think it’s worth it. When we see Midori from Maki’s perspective and she’s always sparkling it really hits me with a sense of wonder – but then you see the world from Midori’s side and things are rarely ever that dazzling. On a side note: really enjoyed meeting Komori for the first time. Her addition was welcome.

REVIEW OF VOLUME 3 COMING SOON!

If you'd like to purchase, do so at these links (not sponsored):

Barnes & Noble

RightStuf

Amazon

Mii-chan Wants to Be Kept: Vol. 1 Manga Review

Cat/Girls are cute too I’m a sucker for cute anime cat-girls, but Mii-chan isn’t exactly what I was expecting... In this series by Waka Ta...