I started this issue in a mood hoping to use aggressively catching up on Harta as a way to jumpstart momentum for myself in this second half of 2025. I read about half of it very quickly in that time, and I remember I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t as perfectly soothing for my mood as I was hoping at the time, and so I wandered off to do other things. What ended up helping more was revitalizing my backlog system which I’d been ignoring all year to have it provide a better balance of focus on still clearing out physical backlog but not as single-mindedly as before. That really helped out my mood this week and I was more relaxed to naturally gravitate to finishing the second half of this issue this morning.

Some highlights:

The issue starts off with a 新連載: 極楽にはまだ早い by 天野実樹, the author of ことり文書! It’s about an Edo period executioner, which is very different in tone from that series. It’s always interesting how there’s some authors whose work all pretty much feels of a kind to each other, and some authors where you never quite know what they’re going to do next. Neither’s wrong, but the latter’s definitely exciting to see when it turns up. Anyway, this was a multipart 読み切り a while back, and while I definitely don’t remember it well enough to know what the differences are exactly, it was a highlight for me then and I think it will be in this form too. Something about the author’s art style seems to suit Edo period fashion, the stylization around the decapitations is really striking, and it seems like the knack for poignant relationships shown in ことり文書 will continue but in a much more bitter and less saccharine context (not that that series wasn’t melancholy in its own way sometimes), which I’m up for.

海底清掃マタタビュリス by 本山とらじろう is an interesting 読み切り, about roughly a plucky little deep sea diver in a flooded world. I feel like I underestimated it and then enjoyed it more than I was expecting. Something about the premise and character design reminds me vaguely of like a Play Station 1 or Dreamcast kind of aesthetic, which I enjoyed. Seemed like the type where it’s more of a test for a series than a one-shot, and I couldn’t particularly complain if that turned out to be the case in the future.

I also liked the spooky 読み切り あらざれば by 國分秋良about someone lost in the woods. The supernatural concepts are super cool!

やっぱり I really love the odd, distinctive but realistic dialogue in いやはや熱海くん by 田沼朝 and this chapter involved the characters themselves being unusually self-reflective about it, which was fun.