Tired.
Manga
Same as usual, I have been very slowly continuing GTO, Inari Konkon, and keeping up with Shibuya Near Family. Something I like about GTO is how Vice Principal Uchiyamada is frequently the butt of the joke, the subject of Onizuka's accidental torment; and the mangaka goes out of the way to show that he is absolutely a terrible person with very few redeeming features.
Anime
I am almost done with The Twelve Kingdoms, and yet it feels nowhere near done. It's good.
Sailor Moon S is a step forward compared to the previous seasons, and that is largely because of the more eccentric villains. It's good.
Cardcaptor Sakura is a cozy, and so far low stakes show. It is something I did not know I wanted to watch. Very good.
Space Battleship Yamato holds up very well to this day, and the very 70s soundtrack makes it better. It was extremely ambitious back in 1974, and it is significantly grander in scape than like 95% of slop airing these days.
You're Under Arrest is episodic (copaganda) fun with an ensemble cast, and basically a very slightly worse Patlabor with no mecha. The show's biggest strength lie in the world created. The authors are good at not only creating memorable side characters, but also not forgetting about them.
I have started Overman King Gainer today. The OP is iconic from the moment you witness (or hear) it. The show has a good start, but I am waiting for Tomino to explain the setting more.
Live Action
I have started a project of a Martin Scorsese filmography dive. Who's That Knocking at My Door was mid. Boxcar Bertha wasn't that good of a movie, but the topic was unusual (it's an adaptation of a novel by an anarchist, and union struggles in 1930s America are the core of the story). Mean Streets was fun. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore was a major surprise, and an excellent movie with a perhaps somewhat lacking ending. Taxi Driver deserves its reputation. It is a very interesting movie.
I swore I'd already put this one in the bottomless pit of PTW but apparently not. Time to rectify that!
I take it that's why you put the star there.
This activated a neuron of me as a brand-new weeb watching my "first anime" (Little Witch Academia) and just looking at the episode list when I was halfway through it just to see how many of the episodes I could remember.
The obvious cliché answer is just "read Yotsuba&!" but I can do you one better: My Journey to Her (Boku ga Watashi ni Naru Tame ni, abbrev. BokuWata). Single volume with eight chapters. Most terms have no furigana, but I didn't let that stop me. It's an autobiography of a Japanese trans woman going to Thailand for SRS.
Aside from Yotsuba&! and BokuWata I have also read ARIA in Japanese and really enjoyed it. I also have the first volume of Doraemon in Japanese but I've hardly touched it, alas.
Cute!
Great recommendation! But perhaps too good of a recommendation, since I've already read it
I guess I could re-read it in Japanese, but I read it relatively recently so I don't think I'd have that same pull. Incidentally, that's the second manga in the "autobiography of a Japanese trans woman going to Thailand for SRS" I've read, the first being Umareru Seibetsu wo Machigaeta (I Was Born the Wrong Sex) which I think I've read in both English and Japanese.
As a dutiful Japanese learner, I do have Yotsuba&!, and I've read a few chapters, but the kind of thing that really gets me hooked is well-developed characters and emotional turmoil (hence Ikoku Nikki). I think when I get to the point where I can easily read in Japanese at about the same pace I can in English, I could read something more lighthearted, but in the meantime I need something properly dramatic to keep me plowing ahead.
The
is on me, hahah. I'll add Umareru Seibetsu wo Machigaeta to mia planlisto. And it's interesting that you have that attitude towards Yotsuba&!. I guess for me Yotsuba&! is good because one doesn't need to understand much of it to follow along on the plot, but one gets more out of it by understanding more of the text, so it's basically easily read as long as I accept that I won't understand everything. But I can also see your perspective.
This is also a case of having different needs from an immersion text: I've now gotten to a point where I actually want something on around a high school reading level without furigana (or without copious furigana, at the very least) so I can really test and reinforce my kanji and vocabulary knowledge. But early on, I was much happier to read something along the lines of Yotsuba&! which I could get through without giving up in disgust. It's all about finding that right balance of challenge and enjoyment.