It’s the 15th! Time for another Harta already!
This issue is quite short at 721 pages in the digital edition, and it’s uneventful, with no series beginning or ending (I think last month and maybe the one before that was the same way? Not necessarily so bad a thing, although 新連載 are always fun to see…). I enjoyed reading through it still, although through no fault of the magazine’s own, today is my first day back at work after two weeks away (kind of two and a half, counting jury duty) and so reading the magazine all yesterday I associated it more with that rather unpleasant “aw man I have to go back to work tomorrow” feeling moreso than I do with a nice evening like last month.
Some highlights for me:
My favorite 読み切り this week was シティーぽここ by 空次郎. It’s a really fun story about a (magical, shape-shifting) tanuki trying to navigate city life while passing as human. The art is impressive, and reminds me of maybe across between the style of What 6 Survivors Told and Far East Incident. I would be happy to see this one become a series!
This chapter of 午前二時は食卓で by 今東ともよ made me see its potential and charm a lot more clearly. It’s a little bit funny, a little bit spooky, and a little bit gay!
My favorite, いやはや熱海くん by 田沼朝 was pretty quiet this month but introduces a promising new character. I feel like I need to accumulate a few volumes of this and then reread it to really master the Kansai dialect. The month gap is just enough to start second-guessing certain things again. Here the example point good to remember is: もう決めてんねんけど = like,もう決めているんだけど もう決めてんねや = もう決めているの？ 決めてへんの = 決めてないの？ The ねん = confirmation/emphasis, へん = negation is I think one of those things where I saw both of them separately and this was the first time I consciously saw them right next to each other in exactly the same context.
ハクメイとミコチ by 樫木祐人 this month was a really nice and slightly bittersweet story about restaurants and trying to remember what one that closed was like.
