Hell yeah, Meirin. I love seeing the Phantomhive employees doing their secondary duties, it's a refreshing comparison to how incredibly inept they are as actual domestic servants.



Meanwhile, Ciel is being shoved further and further into the trauma of his past, eventually breaking so far that he disregards the one of the few tenents he lives by (following the Queen's orders). He has Sebastian "turn everything [here] to ash". And he does, in spectacularly attractive style (don't judge me).



It's very telling that Ciel believes that the deaths (he caused) of the missing children, whom he shared similar experiences with, were in line with a mercy killing. His trauma lies very shallowly beneath a thin veneer of aristocratic pride and duty.

And then we end the volume with an exceptionally creepy tailor?? Well, that happened.

And here we see the core of Ciel's belief about humanity, the thing that allows him to be a dang good Problem Solver at such a young age. He shares this philosophy with other notable fictional detectives Sherlock Holmes and Dr. House (who is certainly more vehement about it). Ciel, due to his past experiences, tends to lean towards the cynical House side rather than the more clinical Holmes. He never takes someone at face value.

Still, it hasn't irreparably harmed him. Yet.



[context: through a loophole in orders, Sebastian "accidentally" placed Ciel in danger from venemous snakes]

I find it interesting that Sebastian chose to elaborate on what he did, creating a game between himself and his Master. Ciel is historically interested in games of all types, even more prideful and competitive than the average preteen boy. I think I was on the right path earlier, with the misery fondue. A challenged soul tastes better.

Our intrepid duo eventually comes across the horrorshow that is Father and his ~dream~, where we are treated to the idea that Jack the Ripper was actually quite mundane in the way he murdered people by comparison.



This all culminates into a clusterfuck of nightmare proportions for Ciel as we wade our way into his Level 4 Tragic Backstory.

Also, a glimpse at the #1 Hottest Manga Dad which makes the angst approximately one thousand times worse because we know he dead and shy baby Ciel is gone forever.



Oh, Vincent. [heart eyes emoji]

How adorable is Hori's little brother??

Japan qualified for the World Cup in 1998 and then proceeded to lose every damn match in their group (Argentina, Croatia, Jamaica). This series opens up before their first game against Argentina, using it as a backdrop for the protagonist's own journey in footy. I can only imagine the country's continued losses will be used as a metaphor to ~push through~ despite the odds, because I have read many a sportsball manga and I am genre savvy.

We're introduced to Kazamatsuri Sho, a highly enthusiastic, but ultra terrible junior high soccer player. He's a transfer student to Josui, a low ranked public school - shenanigans ensue, leading him to a squad of misfits and Tatsuya, the school's best player, playing against the upperclassmen. Spoiler alert: thanks to their exhaustive practice and can-do attitude, they totes win.

I do like that Sho is cognizant of the importance of creating his own play style that befits his smaller size rather than attempting to bulldoze ahead recklessly like a typical shonen protag. Sho is a hard-worker who earnestly in love with the game, which is so endearing. Definitely a character trait I never get sick of.

livetweeting my read-through:
• ... is Sho's brother a gigolo?
• No, he works at a host club, which is basically the same thing. Also, he called it an escort service later and implies that he works as such because he didn't agree with their parents' plans for him. I sense perhaps a Level 4 Tragic Backstory.
• GIANT SOCCER RICE BALL!!!

• Sho, you haven't even been introduced to this guy and you're going to call him by his given name? I sense a deep, all-encompassing friendship awaiting you and pretty boy Tatsuya.
• I can't believe Sho legit just dropped out of school to practice all day, every day for weeks (this is Hinata Shoyo's dream). He's lucky his older brother seduced the teacher into forgiving his absences with a few smoldering looks and some slight negging.

• Tatsuya's "special skill" is making people upset, hah! I do enjoy these little tidbits.

The art elevates this manga significantly. It is gorgeous even if the people do tend to have a bad case of the Same Face Syndrome - at least that face is pretty!



The muddled concepts of alichino and the oddly translated "bond" humans are the crux of the plot. Further reading only makes picture murkier. Are the alichino just really, really ridiculously good-looking wish-granting humanoids or just assholes preying on weak-hearted humans? There's a lot of exposition, but not much actually said.

But still, incredibly pretty.

Despite the lackluster space initiatives in the past two decades, there's already just a crapton of junk floating in orbit around the Earth. It's incredibly plausible to me that astronaut garbagemen could be a thing in the future. Especially if we 1. finally allocate more money to our space programs and 2. keep up our wasteful human habits while doing so.



The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?

There's some really excellent technical art in this series, from the junker shuttles to the bits and bobs that make up their atmospheric suits.



Yuri's Level Four Tragic Backstory gets me right in the feels. His wife (presumably) dies in a traumatic crash and he spends the next six years tirelessly looking for her body, likely floating in the wilds of space. He avoids moving on at all costs. Yuri serendipitously finds her talisman during the course of a routine mission and in an emotionally charged moment, he lets her go. He realized that while she's forever lost to him, he has found a new space family in Fi and Hachimaki ... lots of dust in my eyes, okay. It happens.



P.S. Yuri and Hachimaki seemed to have switched hair colors starting in the third chapter?? Am I crazy? what heck

I knew going in that this was a zombie novel (or at least, a novel with zombies; I believe there is a distinction to be made), so this bit as Sloane sees the end of the world is morbidly hilarious: "A group of people run down the road, so frenzied their movements are jerky and uncontrolled. I watch one of them fall, a man. The others surround him, they're so desperate to pull him to his feet they overwhelm him and I can't tell where he stops and they begin."

Sloane is a girl who has had enough of life, its hardships and betrayals. She doesn't want to be here anymore. In a quirk of fate, she is one of the few in her area who lives through the initial brutal apocalypse.

"I don't know how I'm going to do this, move through the hours like someone who wants to still be breathing when I had so firmly made up my mind to stop." I like this - not the feeling indicated, but it shows that even removing the source of abuse does not remove the depression and suicidal ideation.

This is a story about a story that is based on a fictional true story. Makes sense? Okay, good.

Once upon a time, there was a group of friends in high school, but only two are really important. Herman and Laura orbit around one another, with heated glances and lots of adolescent male posturing. Scenes of this are interspersed with Laura's short "affair" with Jan Landzaat, one of their teachers. It's appalling, the responsibility for this situation the author puts on Laura. A seventeen year old involved with a thirty-something man who has, nebulous though it may seem, authority over her. After she ends it and gets together with Herman, the teacher mopes and becomes very awkward, culminating in an uncomfortable confrontation that ends with his disappearance. This is the story that our titular Mr. M bases his best-selling novel on. Dear Mr. M, however, opens with an adult Herman stalking the author years after its publication.

The most interesting thing about the changes in POV is being able to get a more rounded understanding of the characters - how they see themselves, how their significant others see them & how strangers (or their stalkers, as the case may be) see them. For example, Mr. M clearly sees himself as a man of great talent who has been, of late, underappreciated by his formerly enthusiastic audience. Ana, his much younger second wife, brings the perspective of his unsavory mannerisms (untidy drinking, racist & judgmental commentary on the people around them) while resigned to being groped and leered at by his aged contemporaries. Herman seems darkly amused by Mr. M's fumbling into his dotage, ironically commenting on Mr. M's lack of self-awareness.

The author tried so very hard to paint the portrait of Landzaat as a man who is desperately clutching at the quicksilver feelings his ill-conceived relationship had elicited in him. Were we supposed to pity him? Feel empathy for this pathetic mess? I hope not, as all my emotions were focused on being exceptionally grossed out. In the end, I was not at all upset when

Landzaat approached Mr. M secretly after the publication of his book and was subsequently murdered to maintain, uh, artistic integrity.

Alls well that ends well, in my opinion.