The first full-body plushies are available in my store!! I picked Qifrey and Olruggio as my first featured characters. 🤗

I depicted them in their casual outfits and love how silly they look sprawled out on their tummies in this cute, round, exceptionally squishable shape. 😆

THEY SQUEAK WHEN YOU SQUEEZE THEM!!

In my shop here: Qifrey | Olruggio

There are other keychains & stickers & things available featuring them as well. 😊 What other characters in this plush shape would you like to see next?

Playing

Don’t Pick Up Strange Aliens – Very cute and cuddly and innocent.  This was one of many intriguing participants in Otome Jam 2026; a couple of others from the jam that I also bookmarked to play are Love’s Young Dream and Abracademia, but I didn’t get around to playing them. 😭  And looking at the list again, now I also want to play Starfallen Strength, Our Light Affliction, Mysterious Thief Emerald, and Ember Sands… GAH!  This is the whole reason that I’m supposed to have a “just play something, anything, just for like 20 mins a day, just do it do it do it the backlog is too long!!” habit, but I’ve clearly fallen off of it again. 😅

Watching the BF Play

Live A Live – (My representative image here is one of the countdown illustrations from Square-Enix’s twitter leading up to the HD-2D remake release – it’s cute!)  Only Oersted’s route and Final Chapter were left to do after last month.  I was very, very grateful that @wreckscalibur hadn’t been spoiled about key turning points of this game so the exciting moments came as a surprise for him.  You know a game has a good ending when you’re cheering “YEEEAAAAHHHH!!!” during the climactic moments of the final battle.

Fairune 2 – Fairune dares to ask, “What if Hydlyde was good?”  LOVE this developer; other good Skipmore games I can recommend in particular are the first Fairune (the series is bundled together on Steam), Kamiko (one of the first digital games we ever bought when we first got our Switch), and Synopsis Quest (very silly browser game).  Love to have a quick and snappy little adventure with satisfying progression – though this is larger than you’d expect.  When you first start, there’s an overworld map that you gradually fill out, as well as an ‘underground’ map where all of the caves are, and I remember assuming, “Ah, these two maps are probably the scale of the whole game.”  NAY.  There are MORE OVERWORLDS.  And even more after that!  Tons of very fun little secrets to find all around.

Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons – My childhood game was Ages and I’ve never seen Seasons in full.  I like the Subrosians, they’re silly!  Very interesting seeing the different versions of the items that upgrade in different ways between the two games (both games have a Roc’s Feather, but only Seasons gets the Roc’s Cape; and both games have Zora Flippers, but only Ages upgrades it to a mermaid tail, etc…).  It made me wanna reread the Zelda manga that I have, too, so you’ll see that in the later section!

Casual Gaming

Anthropeum – As in “anthropology.”  Try to guess where in the world an artifact (sourced from The Met Gallery’s collection) came from, and from when.  I’m okay-ish at the where but terrible at the when. 🤔  I tend to just default to 1 BCE for everything unless I know otherwise.

Huekle – A bunch of color-based puzzles??  Sometimes I can’t tell what the controls or instructions are.  But it’s so stylish to look at and there are SO MANY daily games here that one or two meh ones aren’t so bothersome.

Rebusly – A daily rebus puzzle (one of my favorite kinds of puzzles! and rare to find in daily/online format) based on a news headline of the day.  Your hints are snippets from the article.

Spellsword – It’s hard to get a screenshot of this one because there are about three different word games wrapped up in an adventurous little story.  You get a cute little intro, combine parts of words to identify the “enemy” you’ll be fighting, then you string letters together to do damage to its HP bar.  Then the enemy fights back, but you can defend if you unscramble an anagram quickly enough.  It’s not REALLY all that much like playing an RPG but just having a little bit of flavor or a theme of the day makes a basic word game more fun.  The “story” actually continues a little bit further every day.

Threezy – Similar to the card game Set (which can also be played in your browser) but the cards get replaced instead of staying on the screen.  If you don’t know of Set, it’s a little hard to explain, but you have to find sets of shapes that are all the same in some dimensions (shape, color, fill style, quantity, etc.) but different in at least one other dimension.  It’s hard to explain in words but starts to make sense once you’re looking at it and giving it a try.  I was excited to find a new online variation because sometimes a different choice of shapes or slightly different rules can be all it takes to make something new and refreshing lol.

Reading

Manga Classics: Jane Eyre – I never covered Jane Eyre during school, so this was a read purely for satisfying my curiosity.  As with other Manga Classics I’ve written about in these summaries, I enjoyed reading Sparknotes study guides after finishing the comic for deeper understanding.  I know that the Bronte sisters have a whole library of wonderful books – are there others that you’d recommend I should check out next? 🤗  (I thiiiiink I’ve already read Wuthering Heights in school, but I barely remember anything from it.)

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher – I have other T. Kingfisher books in my Want To Read list that I’m still willing to try, but I didn’t jive with the humor in this one.  If the witty exchanges were more like just one (1) quirky observation from the heroine and one (1) clever response from the male lead as the action moves them along, it would be bearable, but it’s the fact that every conversation is 3-5x longer than it needs to be because each participant must make a witty remark about the witty remark that the other one just said.  I don’t mind “quippy” protagonists; I like Murderbot, and I like Saturday morning cartoons from the 80s.  If it were simply that the characters said their funny line and then the momentum moved forward, I’d love it, but nothing ruins a good joke like dragging it out.  I certainly might be in the minority here because this book has tens of thousands of positive reviews that all praise its humor.  Like I said, I’m going to go ahead and try other books from this author because overall I like the D&D campaign-like adventure.

Honeysuckle Cottage by P.G. Wodehouse – Listened to this as an audiobook (free on youtube because most P.G. Wodehouse books are in the public domain!) while doing crafts outdoors.  Very silly and charming and only an hour of time investment.  You may worry about the protagonist’s behavior and attitude toward women, but don’t worry, it has a good ending, which is that the woman doesn’t end up married to this miserable guy lol.

Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons – Gee, Oracle of Seasons, how come Mom lets you have two categories?  Well, because both the game and the manga are really good, that’s why lol.  Why not read along? 😄  Every time I reread one of the Zelda manga volumes, it just reminds me that one of these days I have GOT to check out the massive Twilight Princess series sometime.  And because I own this physically, it’s another comic I could enjoy outdoors in the sunshine. ☀️  There are some fun new dynamics present in this adaptation that aren’t in the game, such as some familial background for Link, the fact that Link joins and travels with the dancing troupe for a while, and eventually you get a whole little adventuring party with Ricky and Maple on the quest alongside him.

The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz – The protagonist of the first book (which I read last year) was a Miserable Man, now the POV has shifted to a Miserable Woman, and it’s remarkable how similar the two of them are considering how much she despised him.  There’s some morbid satisfaction in watching a Massive Jerk build what they think is an impenetrable fortress around them, but the weak foundation crumbles and we get to watch all of the consequences of their actions come crashing down and bury them.  I guess observing that sort of glorious train wreck again was what made me want to check out this second book, although interestingly things don’t turn out as terribly for the female protagonist as they did for the guy, somehow, other than all the murders I guess??  These aren’t protagonists to cheer for, so this is very much a “What if this happened, wouldn’t that be messed up” kind of story.

Watching

Pretty Boy Detective Club – I… thiiink I enjoyed this?  What a strange story, with a strange mood.  It’s a bit less of a detective mystery than you’d expect, more like just a bunch of weird things that happen involving their school… odd that most of the dialog of each episode is delivered through monologues (either the heroine’s inner thoughts, or very very long and roundabout deductions from the other Detective Club members that somehow always point toward government conspiracy).  I liked the Artistic Genius guy (wearing the oversized lab coat) because the rare times when he spoke were always very impactful.

An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess – This is SO STINKIN’ cute and funny, then, as most things do, makes a serious swerve in the last third.  Emotions get a little high, but it’s a comedy so it keeps making gags to keep things light.  I loved all the pretty clothes!  And if you’ve read/watched any otome isekai villainess anything, you already know how this kind of story goes, but it was interesting for the main POV to be from the male lead this time around, and that the heroine was genre-savvy as well!  (The heroine’s name is ‘Heronia’ btw, which made me laugh.)

Casablanca – I’ve seen this before (many years ago, and I didn’t remember much from it) but it was a new watch for Wreckscalibur.  Watching Casablanca is one of the most constant ‘Ohhh, that’s where that reference comes from’ experiences you can have, haha.  And afterward, it’s required viewing to check out some classic parodies, like Looney Tunes’s Carrotblanca, and who could ever forget all of the magnificently-adapted Casablanca scenes in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank?  (that’s a link to an entire movie btw. enjoy.)

The Great Mouse Detective – This is like the inverse of Casablanca in that it’s something Wreckscalibur watched as a kid, but this was my first viewing of it.  It’s great, love it!  Had no idea about Vincent Price as the villain, who naturally had some great songs as most Disney Villains do.  The surprise guest appearance of Basil Rathbone’s (posthumous) voice as the human Sherlock Holmes speaking off-screen was also a great cameo.

King Arthur & The Knights of Justice – Ok so you know how I read the recent Princess Gwenevere & The Jewel Riders comics in the past months?  The publisher of those ALSO did a similar comic series for THIS OTHER Saturday morning cartoon, and THERE’S A BONUS CROSSOVER CHAPTER BETWEEN THEM.  So the two cartoons themselves, despite being about King Arthur and Gwenevere, aren’t actually related, but the modern comic adaptations are.  So now I’ve got to watch this nonsense (affectionate), just to learn & understand a little of what the comic is going to be and so I can ultimately read the crossover.  It’s good nonsense!!  We only watched two episodes but that was all it took to download all of them and put it in our shuffled nostalgic cartoon playlist on our TV (btw I highly recommend this practice, it’s great when you don’t know what to watch, just hit shuffle on the folder).  It’s about a football team that gets isekai’d into King Arthur times and they all get dumb (affectionate) superpowers.  They hype themselves up with the chant “Knights! Knights! Knights!” in the same way you’d say “Lads! Lads! Lads!” and Merlin has the same voice actor as Doctor Light from the Ruby Spears Mega Man series.  Everyone should watch this.

I finished watching what’s available of the 4Kids English dub of Tokyo Mew Mew (which they changed to “Mew Mew Power”) recently and I LOVED IT to pieces.

I felt that form of nostalgia for something I never experienced, the feeling being transported back to watching Saturday morning cartoons, and I could TELL how formative it must have been to other kiddos who watched it as it was airing. The sort of thing that inspires kids to make up their own magical animal-based forms and twirling around during recess to act it out. Or inspiring kids to wish they were a cat?? I’m telling you, watching that dub made my mind teleport back to that time. 🛝

I also experimented a bit with this art style, trying to invoke how Sanrio depicts human characters when they collab with an anime franchise (example here). That’s where the reeeeaaally wide-set eyes are coming from haha. o______o (← she looks like this to me)

Maybe I’ll check out the more recent Tokyo Mew Mew New sometime, but I actually have what’s remaining of the original run to watch with subs, first. Man, 4kids really cut off right before things went off the rails, with Ichigo transforming into an actual cat and being able to talk to cats. 😸 I love every minute I get to sit down with this show lol.

If you like this art work, it’s available on keychains, stickers, t-shirts and more on ACGGoods and Redbubble!

Playing

My Friendly Little Island – Super cute little Game Boy indie game with good vibes and satisfying progression.  Seems like there are a ton more GB Studio games now than the last time I searched for them, so I’ve got to remember that that’s a whole other category of good games to check out and play.  I really enjoyed playing this, and unlocked lots of worthwhile secrets! 

Hunt A Killer: Lakeside Slaughter – Okay so when the heading of this section is “Cool Stuff I Liked Playing in June 2026”, that means physical board games go in this category, right?  We celebrated Memorial Day a little late this year, and this game was something that the fam got together to solve.  We’ve played a few games in this Hunt A Killer series, with I think our overall favorite being Dead Below Deck for stumping us the longest.  Lakeside Slaughter had a more straightforward resolution but it still led to some great cooperative moments, such as dramatic readings of the alibi interviews, assigning different people to figure out different coded messages (one was a ROT13 cypher!  shout out to doyoulikethisvideogamesong), and when we took a lunch break to eat the good stuff from the grill, the conversation about murders and motives continued while sitting on the porch outside (I wonder if any neighbors overheard? 🤔).

For these two, am I allowed to summaries of games I didn’t personally play? 🤔 I watched @wreckscalibur play these, right beside him on the couch, so we kinda enjoyed them together.  The experience was there, so I’m officially proclaiming: It counts!

The Adventures of Elliot (Demo) – The full version is out although we haven’t picked it up yet, but the demo was beefy!  I’m definitely intrigued by the (Radiant Historia-like?) story and the wonderful characters.  The spiritual succession from the Final Fantasy Adventure/early Mana series is tangible, which is a good thing!  I’m sure we’ll check out the full version before too long.

Live A Live – Rounding out the HD-2D Power Hour, my partner is playing this for the first time – I’m familiar-ish with the SNES game through the old LParchive Let’s Play.  I gave the whole LP a skim and made notes of secrets and missable stuff for him (there are a lot).  We still have the last couple of chapters to get through, but man, this game is so good.  There’s a reason it’s been such a beloved cult favorite for all of this time, and the remake treatment is both faithful and beautiful. 🙏  My fave characters are Cube, the Earthen Heart Shifu, and [REDACTED]. 🤗

–

From the many game showcases and conferences this month, the Wholesome Direct was a massive highlight.  My most-looked-forward-to’s are Capy Castaway, Froggy Brews, Humblets, and Otterly Lost.

From Nintendo’s Direct, the strong points for me were Hello Kitty Party Land (the Premium Edition comes with a coloring book 🥺), a new Xenoblade game, and a very brief but very exciting glimpse of the Ocarina of Time remake.

Also, Yoshi & the Mysterious Book released this month.  It has a very cute visual style which I love very much but sidescrolling platformer gameplay isn’t fun for me.

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Reading

Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders, Vol. 2 – Vol 1 was mentioned last month, Vol 2 is the conclusion (so nice to finish something quickly!).  Things wrapped up nicely, with a cute glimpse at a “How did the characters first meet and become friends?” flashback.  The colorful, sparkly art is the highlight, or maybe the story emphasis on Gwen’s Mom and her sister Kale, who were once Jewel Riders themselves.  Drake is redesigned to be WAY too “cool”; he should be more of a hopeless dweeb to match his role in the original cartoon.  It seemed like Merlin’s out-of-character behavior was going to be an important plot point, but then the story ended and a “reason” for his lashing out was extremely briefly mentioned in the epilogue and I was just like 🤨 okay??  We’re just glossing over the casual intention to usurp the throne I guess.

Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Tangle & Whisper –  Had to read some backstory just to learn who these characters are, which involved some research into what chapters they first appeared in and which compilation volumes those ended up in (answer: it’s the end of vol. 2 and some of vol. 3).  The “Eggman War” storyline was just. not interesting to me at all LOL so I skipped most of that and just started reading Tangle & Whisper.  Got some cute one-off chapters at the start, including some which didn’t feature a single Tangle and/or Whisper at all for some reason (cute stories anyway though), followed by a more serious exploration into the friendship between these two and (gasp) Whisper’s tragic backstory!  …Also found that they feature in a TailsTube video!  How cool to have read these comics and then see them in motion, with voices!  I like Whisper a lot, she is super cool. 🥷

Three Blind Mice – Needed an audiobook to listen to on a drive and picked this.  Similar in premise to And Then There Were None.  Very evocative writing where you can tell what some of the original stage directions were (it was a stage play before being published as a novel), and easily visualize some of the dramatic cinematography.  The “other stories” are a handful of Miss Marple mysteries which we’d also recently listened to from a different collection, but also some Poirots which were new (to us).  I never get tired of any of them. 😄

The Burning Page – Started reading this in April, then my library hold lapsed, got it back early this month, read a few pages, then totally forgot about it (not the book’s fault, I just super dedicated myself to art and opening up some merch stores), then my hold lapsed again.  Then I got it back last week and have slowly (very slowly) been reading just a little bit at a time.  Idk, the stakes are high in this volume and the main emphasis of what’s going on is a big confrontation with the big, dangerous badguy, but to me, the story was much more fun when the characters were actually participating in the premise promised by the blurb (world-hopping librarians traveling to unique alternate histories to collect rare editions of books that are only available in that world).  It isn’t really this book’s fault that my interest is waning, because that whole concept of “the stakes eventually raise higher than the fun original premise” is so, SO common in EVERY media, it’s like, a staple of storytelling.  Just the usual case of me liking the first book in a series the best and falling off after that.

The Fire Opal – A physical book which I’ve set aside for reading outdoors, and I spent recent months reading comics in my sunshine reading time so this one has been getting neglected, even though I’d basically already reached the end.  My progress through his book has been on-hold for so long, the last time I mentioned it was in my 2025 yearly summary.  Also, this is book 4 of a series I first started reading as a teenager, easily 15 years ago (or more?) – the magic system based on colors & shapes in this world is sooo cool, and don’t you LOVE the beautiful cover art by Stephanie Pui-mun Law?  Anyway, now that I’m finally wrapping up the story, the important plot explanations are being discussed by the characters, and I can’t BELIEVE how badly I failed to catch on to the hints that were dropped about the real identity of the male lead from the start.  I definitely was supposed to latch on to the fact that the cousin and her husband that he disapproved of were some of the main characters from book 3, and to notice the suspicious way that he smudged his name when he was signing documents… I didn’t even reread book 3 all that long ago, his name & relation to the previous heroes should have been fresh in my mind, so I don’t feel that I can blame the fact that my reading sessions were so broken up.  I just wasn’t paying attention and the super obvious hints flew over my head. 😅
But also, yaaay for Ginger landing herself in a position of power just by being her sweet self 🤗 and burning to smithereens everyone that wronged her. 😊  She deserves a little vengeance inferno, as a treat.

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Watching

Oh My Goddess: The Movie – I have an extremely nostalgic connection with this movie because I first watched it over a friend’s house when we had a slumber party (where we also connected our Game Boy Advances with link cables and played Four Swords!).  This is such a good endpoint to finish off watching the Oh My Goddess anime series in its various incarnations, even though the actual air date of this was between the 90s OVA series and the 00s one.  You need some introduction to Peorth and Chihiro and others just to know who they are, as well as get a feel for the escalation of Belldandy & Keiichi’s relationship, so it’s worth watching the 00s seasons first.  Plus, the high drama going on in this movie just makes it the perfect place to wrap up the story.  🤗  (I like Celestine.  hes hamdsomne)

Tokyo Mew Mew – I’m in the thick of the back half of this now, beyond what 4Kids dubbed, so I gotta watch subs now, which drastically slows down how frequently I can catch an episode.  Man, 4kids really cut off right before things went off the rails in a glorious way, with Ichigo actually turning INTO a cat, and that she can talk to other cats now?!  Okay!

Sherlock Hound – Have actually been watching this now and again with my partner for a long while now, but since we finished all of Oh My Goddess we filled in that space with what we haven’t seen yet of Sherlock Hound.  These stories are just great. 😊 The doggy characters are soooo endearing, every episode has some manner of very exciting vehicle chase scene, and the vintage English dubbing is delightful.  Very fun to see how the Sherlock Holmes stories are adapted, a similar feeling to watching anime Poirot & Marple.  Genuinely shocked that even super diehard Ghibli/Miyazaki fans never seem to mention this, and it never gets mentioned in cozy/wholesome anime lists either.  Is it really just the fact that absolutely no one knows that Sherlock Hound exists?  Well I’m here to tell you: it does, and it’s good!

Hey there, long time no update!

I’ve been making these “Stuff I Liked” posts on Tumblr and thought I should revive my personal blog with them too. I’m also hoping to make some regular art updates again, and these diary-like monthly summary posts are a good way to keep things personal, too!

Playing

Café Enchanté – Ohhh this is sooooo lovely!  My previous Switch otome game was Cupid Parasite and WOW the difference in color palette, even with the same illustrator/character designer for both games… (it’s hard to come back down to reality after the fluorescent neon fever dream that is Cupid Parasite).  I love the super sweet angel boy soooo much!  He’s such a nerd and the other characters baby him because he has an aura of endearing helplessness. 😆  And he’s sooo pwetty. 🥺  I can’t wait for the chapter where the heroine visits his heavenly home world, and ultimately to see what his personal route is like~

Reading

Miriya & Marie – Yeah, that’s Marie from The Aristocats haha.  This comic is sooooo cute!  It’s in full color and every page is sooooo piiiiink!! 🌸🩷🎀🍨  And the illustrations themselves are super pretty, with many beautiful fashions and accessories that the heroine wears. 🎀  I actually love that the whole story is contained in one volume.  It’s nice to read a full arc and be finished, sometimes!

Free Comic Book Day (thumbnail shows only a few, in actuality I brought home many more than just these 😄) – This was quite early in the month (on the 2nd) and I’m always super lucky that our friendly local comic book shop stocks plenty of freebies!  Apparently there was some hubbub around free comic book day this year, because the main publisher that runs it went out of business last year, but more publishers such as Penguin Random House (which owns Dark Horse, Tokyopop, Webtoon Unscrolled etc.) have stepped up to fill in the gaps.  I didn’t know about that at all when I went by our store, I only learned it after the fact when I saw that some of what I’d brought home had a different logo (“Comics Giveaway Day” instead of “Free Comic Book Day”) and did some searching on the subject after coming home.  I hope it keeps running for a long time, because I always love the excuse to drop by the store and buy a physical book or two, just in time for it to be getting warmer so I have something screen-free to read outdoors!

Out of the freebies I picked up, the Jem & the Holograms + My Little Pony combo is almost like it was tailored for me specifically LOL.  This Jem is only okay to me – I’ve actually already read this comic series before but I don’t physically own any of it so this is kind of just like a bonus goodie for me.  I like the 80s cartoon much more than this reboot, the truly truly truly outrageous fashion and hairstyles just don’t quite hit right.

Dungeon Crawler Carl is a book that’s been sitting in my library holds for months, so I figured checking out the first chapter in graphic novel form would be like getting a preview, but I’m not sure that I like it. 🤔  I’ll still wait until I actually read the book before forming an opinion.

Sonic – I’m fairly familiar with the Archie Sonic series but these IDW ones are new to me.  More than the main comic content itself, a bunch of the ads in the back successfully hooked me lol.  Now I’ve got a few more IDW Sonic side-stories on my ComicsPlus shelf (the app my library uses). I don’t know who “Tangle & Whisper” are but I’m about to find out!

Mabel Mulligan – This is REALLY GOOD and I’m looking forward to when the full story releases in October!  Loooove the soft art style and coloring.  Easily my favorite of everything I picked up.

Also read some others like Street Fighter, Mega Man, and Archie.  Didn’t realize that recent Archie has a cast of modern new characters (there’s a nerdy girl that plays TTRPGs!) since I’ve only been reading vintage ones (I like the Betty & Veronica-specific books and have been sorting by oldest when I search them on ComicsPlus).  I’ll definitely sprinkle some of the more recent books into my reading now.

Princess Gwenevere & The Jewel Riders, Vol. 1 – Vol. 2 of this was my physical book purchase of choice when I stopped by the store for Free Comic Book Day.  I just needed to give vol. 1 a reread to remember what was going on here, which is fine by me because it just gives me more reading material for my time outside. 🏞️  I loooove the color palette of these books.  Every turn of the page is just delightful to the eyes.  The Jewel Rider outfits have very cool redesigns (Gwen’s in the original cartoon is a little goofy, this version looks much better), although, I wish they could have been given sparkly transformation sequences.  Exploring the backstory behind the Queen (Gwen’s mom) and Lady Kale (the main villain) is a worthwhile storyline!  Now, I can move on to the new purchase (vol 2) next month!

Everyone in this Bank is a Thief – The fourth in the Ernest Cunningham series which I like quite a lot – every book in the series has been very exciting, and that can’t be said of a lot of other series.  (I’ve posted about previous books a couple of times!)  Btw, read them in order and don’t skip ahead.  Personally, I love the cheeky foreshadowing on just about every page; the writing style is very ‘Did you notice the important thing that I just mentioned, reader? 😏’, which negative reviews always highlight as being grating, and I totally understand that, but idk something about it in these particular mysteries is very enthralling to me.  I’m always like “What do you mean we already learned the laptop password, where was it? 😲” and I go scan the previous passage that listed all of the details in the office to try to catch where it might have been hinted. I always speed through these in just a few days because they really hit the ground running and keep you captivated all the way through, with cliffhangers that make it hard to put down between chapters, and again, all of that delicious foreshadowing.  They are great books for trying to puzzle out the secrets and mysteries on your own before it’s officially revealed, and the whole point of the hint-wink-nudgey writing style is to encourage you to do so.  I can highly recommend this series for Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie fans – they’re filled with direct references to both – BUT just know that the violence is much more grisly and gory than any of the old golden age detective stories ever depicted it; these are not “clean” murders, and poor Ernest gets mangled in some horrific new way in each entry so far.

Watching

Tokyo Mew Mew – YO THIS RUUUUUUULES!!!!  Would you believe that I call myself a magical girl fan, despite that I’ve NEVER watched this before?  Remedying these gaps is exactly the point of this habit…  Up until I actually started watching, I thought that all of the girls were cats.  What do you mean they have mutated genes from endangered animals?!?  Now, I know that there is a pretty recent ‘Tokyo Mew Mew New’ that I could have watched instead, but I deliberately wanted to go back in time and see the old English dub by 4Kids, where its title is actually “Mew Mew Power”.  Sure, the modern version or an authentic subbed version without all of 4Kids’ editing and cuts would be “better”… but I’m not here for “better”. 😄  I frickin’ love the catchy “Mew Mew power IN YOUR FACE!” slogan with the super-obviously edited-in-post hip hop-style backup jingle.  Absolutely nothing is “better” than that. lmao. Alas, this is in the same situation as Corrector Yui and Saint Tail, where only about half of the episodes were dubbed into English and if I want to see the conclusion, I have to carve out time to watch the subs (can’t multitask when you gotta read 😔).  But at least once I move onto the back half, I’ll be able to hear the unedited music and see what the full transformations look like! 👍

Sailor Moon Super S – Things are Fully Weird in this season, which I’ve always heard is because Kunihiko Ikuhara had a lot of creative control at this point in production (can anyone confirm?).  Like yeah the monster-of-the-week designs have always been Out There, but now they are REALLY, REALLY Out There.  Even so, this is another season that I like a lot, because the shenanigans that the Amazon Trio get up to while in civilian disguises are super fun and it reminds me of Jedeite & Co. from the first season.  But more than anything else………… the pretty unicorn boy is one of my all-time favorite characters!!! 🦄  I know it’ll be a while before we see him in pretty boy form but I can wait!!!