Monthly Log: 2024-04

I had barely finished the March recap before it was already time to start writing April’s (

Structure

1. Input
   Reading: professional books, novels, and good essays all go here
   Anime: new shows, older shows, TV anime, theatrical releases, just a record of what I watched
   Others: films, dramas, and anything else that doesn’t fit the first two categories

2. Random Thoughts
   Whatever has been bouncing around in my head lately

3. Output
   Maybe a blog post, though my level is still low enough that I might easily go a whole month without publishing anything (

4. Travel
   If I went somewhere, I’ll write it down. If not, then there is nothing to say

5. Misc
   Small things that don’t fit anywhere else

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Input

Reading

Like I mentioned in the previous Monthly Log, the only book I finished across these two months was The World of Programs by Yukihiro Matsumoto. There are still parts of it I haven’t fully digested, but it is a very good book and absolutely worth recommending.

Anime

The April season arrived. Excellent.

• New shows I started in April

  • 末日列车去往何方/終末トレインどこへいく？
    One of April’s three big original anime. Dense dialogue, completely unrestrained developments, and the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic road movie. Out of the bunch, this is the one most perfectly on my wavelength.

    • Episode 1 reminded me of 少女终末旅行 in many ways. Someone on bgm commented that this show is like 少女终末(硬座)旅行, which is pretty accurate.
      What I especially loved was the departure scene at the end of the episode. The music does a lot of work there, and the train details feel carefully researched in a way that reminded me of Revue Starlight’s transformation sequences. A trip begins out of nowhere, everything ahead is unknown, and that lingering feeling carries straight into the ED.
    • Episode 2: cute girls doing rapid-fire manzai. Great.
    • Episode 3: the first half has a genuinely good horror mood, then the second half suddenly swerves into something almost heartwarming.
    • Episode 4: this is exactly why I watch anime in the first place. Unrestrained imagination, pushed all the way to the limit of what animation as a medium can do.
      The refined background art in the middle section, paired with the music, is also fantastic. It really sells the feeling of being on a trip.
    • Episode 5: a completely lawless development, which is precisely why I enjoyed it; it even loops back to pay off something episode 4 seemed to throw away

  • GIRLS BAND CRY
    Another of April’s three big originals. I hadn’t planned to watch it at all because band anime isn’t usually my thing.
    Then I clicked into the first episode on a whim, watched for a bit, and suddenly thought: wait, did they just run into Kawasaki? All right, now I’m interested.
    A lot of the landmarks in the second half of episode 1 are places I already know. Watching those ordinary, familiar streets become a stage inside the anime was a strange feeling. At that point I had no choice but to keep going.
    I’m currently up to episode 5. The script is excellent, Hanada is doing Hanada things, the story is dense, and the pacing still feels fairly well controlled.
    On the production side, even though it’s 3D, the visuals are easy on the eyes. It uses the strengths of 3D well, especially in all the tiny facial movements. Visually I’d count it as a clear plus. Very worth recommending.

    GIRLS BAND CRY pilgrimage, scheduled immediately

  • 夜晚的水母不會游泳
    Also one of April’s three big originals, and once again: another band-ish show.
    Opening with TikTok, influencers, idols, and illustrators immediately set off my internal warning bells.
    I forced myself to keep going. Then came the high schoolers talking at length about life, ideals, and confusion… there is a certain beauty to forcing melancholy before you have really lived it.
    Compared with GIRLS BAND CRY, the conflicts here feel much too light. It ends up reading like another cute-girls-bonding show, which doesn’t do much for me.
    I watched two episodes. If it doesn’t pull out some major turn later, I’ll probably drop it.

  • 怪人的沙拉碗
    A new work by Hiraska Yomi. The story is fun and the heroine is cute.
    Episode 3 touches on “inspiration scams”, a tactic commonly used by various religious groups in Japan.
    Maybe I just haven’t watched enough anime, but this might be the first time I’ve seen a work address that sort of serious social issue so directly inside the plot. The closest comparison I can think of is Bakemonogatari, where the heroine’s family goes broke after donating too much money to a religious group.
    Production-wise it clearly isn’t overflowing with resources, but you can tell the staff are still trying to make the anime entertaining instead of phoning it in, and I appreciate that.

  • Unnamed Memory
    The original novel is pretty famous, but I haven’t read it.
    According to bgm comments, the anime adaptation isn’t great: it skips too much and becomes hard to follow.
    Probably better to read the novel.

  • 声优广播的台前幕后
    The appeal is watching the two heroines bicker. The visuals scream “low budget” everywhere, but the story is still kind of interesting, so I can keep going.

  • 狼与香辛料
    I went to a screening last month and watched episodes 1-4. Planning to start the new version from episode 5. Hope I won’t “go miao miao miao” and never finish (
    Holo’s design in the new version feels younger and cuter. The old version seems more melancholic. Saw a comparison image on bgm.
    
    Some comments also say the new version’s character design and story are closer to the original novel. Different strengths, I guess (but the OP is definitely better in the old one. Too classic).

  • 京吹3
    I watched a movie last month, but haven’t watched the TV version yet. I’ll definitely watch it someday (

  • 怪兽8号
    Production and music are good. The OP visuals look “mysteriously impressive”, the ED visuals are obviously lazy.
    The story hasn’t had anything particularly exciting yet. The male lead is constantly making horny jokes. I haven’t found other highlights.
    The male lead + male #2 best-buddy combo is there, but the male lead’s image is kind of weak, so “fujobait” is hard to sell.
    I still don’t get why they picked this kind of character.

  • 恋语轻唱/ささやくように恋を唄う
    The manga is known for its art, but the anime is… hard to describe. Not very interested.

  • 无职转生
    Mushoku is back again, but nothing has really popped off yet. I’ll let it pile up and binge later.

  • 从Lv2开始开外挂的前勇者候补过着悠哉异世界生活
    Isekai “toilet paper”, until I saw the OP of episode 2
    Premium isekai toilet paper. Straight-up character selling. The Kugimiya effect. Must-watch every week (

  • 单间，光照尚好，附带天使
    Character selling. It’s watchable.

  • 贵族凭鉴定技能扭转人生
    Isekai toilet paper. Just watch the parts with the mage.

  • THE NEW GATE
    Isekai toilet paper.
    The first 5 minutes speedrun an SAO script, then it turns into isekai. The only thing keeping me watching is the elf maid.

• Continuing

  • 迷宫饭/ダンジョン飯
    Stable performance in all aspects. Great work. Recommended.

Others

Recent TV/movies. I’ll try not to spoil.

• 奥本海默
  Japan finally got this movie. 3 hours long. My butt hurt from sitting.
  As someone with face blindness, there were too many characters and I couldn’t tell who was who.

• 空中杀手/The Sky Crawlers
  Directed by Oshii Mamoru. An older film. I don’t think I really understood it.

Random Thoughts

Experience or Taking Photos?

I saw a tweet recently. Roughly: when you’re young, you think memories should stay in your head rather than constantly taking pictures. But after 40, your memory fades a lot, and in the end only photos remain. So now you regret not taking more photos when you were younger.

私が20才前後の若き時、海外へ行って「思い出は写真なんかじゃなく、自分の記憶に留めておきたい。」と強く思っていて、そんなに写真を撮らなかったんですよ。　40才半ばを過ぎた今、記憶力が大変おぼつかなくなって、「結局残るのは写真だけ。」を座右の銘にして生きている。　参考にしてください。
https://twitter.com/dounagauncle/status/1777916611527311387

I really do have mixed feelings about taking photos.
At last year’s fireworks festival, I spent so much energy trying to photograph everything that I barely had the headspace left to simply watch the fireworks in front of me.
In the end I did come away with some photos I liked, but when it comes to being there in the moment versus keeping the memory through photos, I think I leaned too far toward the latter. At some point, taking photos stopped being a way to remember the experience and became the experience itself.
That doesn’t feel entirely right, but even now I still don’t know how to strike the balance between prioritizing the experience and prioritizing the record.

That tweet made a little too much sense to me.
I’m not someone who has much confidence in my memory to begin with, or rather, I have a lot of confidence in how quickly I forget things.
One of the reasons I started this blog in the first place was also recording:

• Record what I think and feel. It’ll probably be interesting to revisit years later.
• Record tinkering experiences. Might be useful in the future.
• The Monthly Log series I recently started is also a record of what I did each month, as a small-stage review.

Ever since I bought a camera, I’ve occasionally gone back through older photos, and they really do leave a different kind of impression from text.
Text has to be written down by hand, and the part you choose to write is more or less the part you’ll be able to recall later.
Photos are much easier. Press the shutter once and the whole scene stays there. Later, one glance is enough to pull you straight back: “Oh right, I went there that day,” or “So that’s what I was doing back then.”
And it isn’t just about vivid memories. Sometimes you notice tiny details in the frame that you never caught at the time, which feels a bit like finding treasure after the fact.

So maybe I’ll take more photos in the future.

Output

Reading: The Mythical Man-Month
In April I finally organized my notes on The Mythical Man-Month as promised.
This book is worth rereading. I’ll come back and read it again in a year.

Travel

Cherry Blossoms: Nika-ryo Yosui Sakura-lined Path

At the beginning of April, the cherry blossoms finally opened. Time to grab the camera and start shooting.
The Nika-ryo Yosui cherry-blossom path is a long, narrow canal lined with sakura. There are wooden viewing decks along the water, and people sit here and there beside the stream and the blossoms, looking completely at ease. It’s a lovely place to spend time (except for the salaryman sitting under the cherry trees doing overtime on a laptop, which did ruin the atmosphere a little).

The cherry blossoms look nice with the light-colored buildings behind them. Only downside: the weather was a bit overcast. Blue sky and clouds would’ve been perfect.

Close-up (there’s a tiny flying bug on the flower on the left)

Cherry blossoms go well with all kinds of cars.

Saw a few trees in full bloom at night. Really lucky.

Sneaking a shot of someone taking photos of cherry blossoms.

Besides cherry blossoms, I also saw a few white camellias. Very pretty.

Walked the whole day, took a ton of photos. Big win.

Pilgrimage: Girls Band Cry

Ordinary scenery showing up in anime, the holy land descending right next to me.
I’ve already finished scouting the locations that appear in the first five episodes. While taking the photos, I kept noticing just how absurdly accurate the backgrounds are, to the point where I started wondering whether they had simply rendered over real location photos with filters, even though some details are still different.

I’ll organize it later as a “water” blog post: Pilgrimage: Girls Band Cry (Kawasaki), currently in production.

Update 2024/05/23
Anime Pilgrimage: GIRLS BAND CRY officially published

Misc

Nothing else to add, I think.

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Closing

Up to now, my plan for the Monthly Log series had been simple: create a new file at the start of the next month, then look back on the previous one while the memory was still relatively fresh.
But reality has gone like this: the January Monthly Log was delayed by half a month, the February Monthly Log by more than half a month, and the March Monthly Log by a full month.
Procrastinating this consistently does not seem like a sustainable system.

So I’m going to change the way I handle these Monthly Logs. From now on, I’ll create the file at the start of the month, sketch out the outline first, and then gradually fill it in over the weeks that follow.

Only starting the retrospective in the following month means the workload isn’t enormous, but it isn’t exactly light either. A lot of time still disappears into gathering and organizing everything.
Work that isn't simple + priority that isn't especially high is exactly why the completion date of the first three Monthly Logs of 2024 has drifted later and later with perfect consistency.
If I create the file at the start of the month, draft the outline first, and fill it in piece by piece, maybe I can break the work down and reduce the pressure.

And over the last few months, the same thing kept happening: I’d have thoughts that clearly belonged in the Monthly Log, like seasonal anime reactions, but because the file didn’t exist yet, there was nowhere to put them, and those half-formed thoughts would just disappear.
If I create the file at the beginning of the month, at least those things will have somewhere to land.

Yes, this seems highly scientific and entirely reasonable. May Monthly Log: time to create the file with full ceremony.