Cool Stuff I Liked in May 2026
Sunday, May 31st, 2026
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!!!
