#ccscc

overthinking things under the cut:

Yamazaki: *opens his mouth*

Chiharu: 

Happy Tuesday!

This Week I’m Reading:

Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Imagine Me by Tahereh Mafi

and Shibuya Goldfish Volume 5 by Hiroumi Aoi

And I Finished:

Gemina by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Tokyo Ghoul: Re Volume 16 by Sui Ishida

and Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Volume 7 by CLAMP

Hello!

Sorry about taking last week off, between work and the epidemic and personal issues my mental health is really taking a hit. There may be some more hiatuses on the horizon, but I’m gonna try and keep reading and keep updating when I can!

Alright, so I finished my reread of Gemina and now I’m reading Obsidio for the first time! It’s slow going so far because I am NOT ready for the series to be done at all! But I was lucky enough to get a copy of Memento, so I’ll be able to read that afterwards. If you haven’t read the Illuminae series I highly recommend it. Even if you’re not a sci-fi fan, it’s use of form to tell the narrative, romantic subplots, and wonderfully fleshed and developed characters will definitely pull you in!

I’m reading the final book in the Shatter Me series, Imagine Me, alongside @books-take-flight and we’re about 1/3 of the way through it. So far we’ve already had a couple of plot twists I wasn’t expecting so I can’t wait to see how it all ties together. I have some personal reasons why Shatter Me is so important to me, so I’m full of feels about this series ending too! It has such a beautiful writing style and I simultaneously never want it to end and need to know how it ends!

And I’m continuing in Shibuya Goldfish! It’s been a while since I read the last volume so I don’t completely remember how it left off, but I’m excited to be prioritizing it more! Since I finished Sweet Blue Flowers, Shibuya Goldfish is going to be my main background series, if that makes sense? And it turns out that volume 7 came out pretty recently so it shouldn’t take me too long to get caught up!

I finished Tokyo Ghoul this week too! The last volume of :re came out recently and I was able to sit down and enjoy it and I’m all the feels! I’m so happy with some of the developments particularly the ones concerning Kaneki (of course), Uta, Hide, and Naki! I’m so sad that Ishida lost some of his passion for the series towards the end, but I’m glad for the amazing series he gave us and I hope what he does next is able to bring him a lot of joy!

And finally, the newest volume of Clear Card came and I read it so fast! Clear Card may be my favorite series that I’m following right now and volume 7 was by far my favorite volume thus far. There was so much Yue, and getting our guardian spirit counterparts back is everything I didn’t know I needed. I plan on rereading this volume sometime this week just because of the sheer amount of serotonin it gave me. My personal favorites aside, we get so many answers in this volume and the clear card story is starting to come together! Just like the OG series, the reader is in the dark Until CLAMP ties everything together in a seamless way that makes the whole thing so obvious in hindsight, and I will always love that kind of storytelling! CCS is a fantastic series in all its renditions and I hope that it will continue on for as long as possible!

That’s it for this week, and I’ll hopefully be back next week!

Some random notes:

I love it!

Sakura really is growing up, you can see it in how she doesn't keep plushies out, doesn't roller skate (although I'd argue it's because those died shortly after the 90's), she doesn't try to go to school with Touya and Yukito anymore (probably also because Syaoran and the fact they're in University now), etc. She even sometimes makes comment about how she's in middle school now and "when I was in elementary school..." (which is sooo cute and such a middle schooler thing to say. :'3). Voice is a bit deeper and calmer.

Meilin in the anime was one of my least favorite in the old show, even if she was a lot better by the end, but I'm so glad they brought her back and really developed her character for the anime, she's only so much more amazing now! I'm also happy to see Wei and etc. I like Meilin because out of all the characters in the show, she's easily the most likely to show selfishness, which is nice because I'm sure we can all relate to that sometimes. She seemed more human in that way sometimes.

I'm so frustrated by the inconsistencies in both the anime and manga! Especially the anime! Why does Sakura suddenly know who her great grandpa is now? I was looking forward to a shock moment where Sakura's all like "Holy cow, you're that guy I met at the summer house!" MOST OF ALL, WHICH I CANNOT GET OVER!: So now the movies are truly anime canon, ok cool soo... Akiho moved to Eriol's old house, y'know.. the one that burned down. Y'know that place where you specifically saw Sakura do that play at the amusement park that was built right on top of where your house that was supposed to have been destroyed is...!? How can you possibly be this bold!? What, did Kaito somehow duplicate Eriol's house and replace that theme park with it? How did they build a whole amusement park off of one mansion!? How is no one confused that Eriol's house is up again, in the anime where the movies are now canon!? Also the prologue doesn't fit the anime universe because the original ending of the anime became the canon, but they both still trade bears?? I guess it doesn't matter that much, but wow that's bold.

Random in note note: Yamazaki is my birthday buddy! He's awesome!

Tomoyo seems to have grown in some ways too. At first, she actually seems really out of character. She seems to have become somewhat yandere about filming, which is a bit weird. She was always really calm and pretty mature, now she seems a lot more playful. I have a theory though, her mom seems to be around more now even since the end of the last series. I suspect that before she had a bit more of a lady/princess like way about her because she grew up in a rich home, but was usually alone because her mom was always busy, so she was also not as social due to that. Now not only does she have Sakura, which reminder they'd only been friends for a somewhat short time before the start of the first series, she's now friends with more of her classmates and her mom seems to spend a lot more time with her now. (I think there was a scene like this in the manga, but it's probably been 10+ years ago that I read them. Oh no, now I remember, it seemed like this realization hit at the time where Tomoyo lost her voice). So because Tomoyo has more support and a way to be more like a child, I feels like a new side of Tomoyo has come out that was suppressed before.

There was also funny moments with Rocky where, at first I saw Syaoran was dressing up pretty nice and I know, as usual, that in Rocky's mind, if a guy dresses well or likes purple, it's gay. So, first time I was like, "ooh what a nice outfit! So -Rocky-, is it gay then?" She was like "Yep, pretty gay." It became kind of like a game after that. Everytime Syaroan dresses up dapper I'd be like "So Rocky? Is it gay?" And she'd be like "Mmm. Yep." Only in the second to last episode with the grandpa, he was wearing a cute suit and she was all like "Aww, look at how cute, he's all dressed up for his date." And I was like "so... is it gay?" And she was like "No, this is a suit, it's different."

As another note, Rocky's only experience with CCS anime before we watched it all together before was Cardcaptors. She really disliked Li, but now she says he's probably one of her favorite characters, and vice versa, she liked Kero a lot as a kid but gets easily really annoyed with him now (we watched the Japanese dub just before watching clear card). One notable moment is during the latest ending theme where Kero steals all of the takoyaki from Suppi. She's gets all frustrated and is like "ugh he didn't even enjoy/appreciate them. He just inhaled them and stole them from Suppi! It's just like my sister when we were kids!" She even compared it to her late cat, who'd eat everything so fast, trying to eat before any other cat could get to it, she'd throw it up after. It's funny what we tolerate from others when we're kids. X"3 Also cat influences.

If I think of anything else I'll add it, but I just felt like sharing!

Edit: oh yeah! I'm pretty sure the people in the end card/or well the corresponding part of that episode with the Piffle Princess mascot must be the same people who were employed at Piffle Princess in Angelic Layer.