I like the cover of this one! I haven’t myself browsed a record store like that really, but nevertheless 「運命っぽいやつ、見つけたいんだ。」 seems to me a really lovely precise description of a particular familiar kind of looking for new (to you) music. I remember in college I did a lot of that, increasingly desperately trying to find a particular something I didn’t know the shape of yet myself, before finding it in Dan Friel’s album Life (https://danfriel.bandcamp.com/album/life). 運命っぽいやつ is a sweet way of describing that kind of thing.

Anyway – I finished reading another Harta, possibly catching up soon, possibly not! The course of reading through this issue for me really ran through the whole gamut of ups and downs with regards to the drive to prioritize clearing away physical backlog, from aimlessly not caring, to the drive getting suddenly resurrected back to maximum, to a hopefully relatively healthy middle ground. The possibility that the thing motivating that drive will actually happen and therefore not get danced around so much by me, specifically at some point almost a full year from now, is even starting to seem a little bit concrete!

But some highlights of this issue:

It opens with a 新連載 by 浜田咲良 called 夜をととのえる, about, sort of like, バイト workers for a cleaning agency that rather than normal cleaning work handles more whimsical character-driven psychological types of helping people put things in order. It seems like it could be pretty fun. The author’s previous series, 金曜日はアトリエで has always been quite low on my list of series that were running in Harta when I started reading all of which I intend to catch up on someday (for the rather unfair reasons of being already far along when I started reading, and seeming relatively plain and uh, straight). So I’m curious if this series will motivate me more to prioritize it. I do like the author’s slightly simple and cute art style here.

The chapter of 殺し屋の推し by 大島琳太郎 this issue was sort of interesting to me because it features prominently a group of pro wrestling themed idols, and I’m a fan of Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling, a pro wrestling promotion that features several combination idol/pro wrestlers. It’s a sympathetic portrayal that at least to some extent does capture the appeal of the combination (both pro wrestlers and idols are basically performers you’re meant to 憧れる and feel like your 応援 transmits tangibly to them and influences their success, so really it’s a natural fit), and I liked seeing the bits of actual familiar pro wrestling things like a Cobra Twist, Tope Suicida, and a Japanese style chairshot. But I do get the impression the author isn’t necessarily a wrestling fan himself, and so I can’t help but be slightly miffed in parts at the presentation of the concept as being inherently comedic – particularly in the character designs of the wrestler/idols (particularly one of the three), which lean a little too much on the familiar “comedically mannish woman” kind of character design which I never like when it turns up, and isn’t how women pro wrestlers in general look, nor the combination idol/pro wrestlers, who tend to just look like (and indeed are) regular idols. But hey – it’s a pretty fun chapter at the end of the day.

I found Atami-kun’s advice in this chapter of いやはや熱海くん by 田沼朝 to be oddly helpful myself!

本なら売るほど -古本屋十月堂とその客- by 児島青 has a cat theme this issue, highlighting particularly the (real) book ひげよ、さらば, which I get the impression from this issue is something tonally along the lines of Watership Down, a book you might mistake for an easy-going book about a cute cat that turns out to be significantly more emotionally intense.