2020-08-08 10:36
An excellent article on Setsuka Hara that I just read.
I read a bunch of comics in the past couple weeks that I did not write anything about, which breaks my routine of writing about all my reading. Some of it is just because I'm not sure what to say about them. Often that means I want/plan to reread them so I can form some kind of judgement. Sometimes a first read feels more like a trial run, an attempt to see if I might possible like the work. Sometimes I waver because I've read enough other people praising something that I feel like I missed something excellent in a work that I felt pretty meh about in a first read. I certainly felt this way about to recent manga reads The Swamp by Yoshiharu Tsuge and The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud by Kuniko Tsurita. Neither really wowed me on a first read.
I finished the latest Berserk Deluxe volume (5) yesterday. It wraps the first big arc and then transitions to the next one with a longer story, a shifting of the environment and general situation of the protagonist. This one had another overly detailed sexual assault in it, which was meant to be horrific (and is) but also was still drawn in a way that was just too much. It also fell into too easy tropes for the both the (male) protagonist and the female (victim) that he loves. I'm hoping the woman's story turns around because she is up to that point one of the most interesting characters, but for now the story seems to step back from her, so it's hard to say. Rethinking how much I want to keep reading this series.