Shokusai no Oukoku – Barbaric Japanese TV show

I like food and I’m always looking for new Japanese TV programs to watch, so Shokusai no Oukoku (食彩の王国) sounded like a good fit. Each episode takes one food, or a few foods from a certain region. First they show the various ways the locals prepare it, then they show a professional chef who uses the item in various high-class dishes.

It’s not really what I was looking for because most of the ingredients are things like eel and fresh wasabi and abalone, etc, stuff I can’t get in my country no matter how much money I pay. Most of the cooking done by the chefs can’t be replicated by an amateur cook by me – besides the dishes always look so fussy and artsy. That only leaves the home-cooked version of each item, which only makes up about 1% of each show.

But if that was the only problem I might have kept watching it. It’s interesting to learn about new foods and the narration is very soothing. The problem with Shokusai no Oukoku is the sheer barbarity of their food preparation methods. The cruelty with which they prepare the animals while they’re still alive is just too much for me to take.

I’m not a vegan or a vegetarian. I’m more of a People Eating Tasty Animals kind of person. I believe God gave us both plants and animals for food. What I don’t believe in is causing untold suffering to creatures in the course of preparing that food.

In one episode of Shokusai no Oukoku, I watched a woman prepare crab miso soup by crushing live crabs and mixing them with hot water and miso. Why crush them while alive? WHYYY? It’s too horrible. But that woman was a home cook. Maybe she doesn’t know any better. Let’s turn to our professional chef… He’s doing that same thing! Crushing them with a brick!!!!

Okay, that was just one episode. It won’t happen any more, right? Right… as far as crabs go… But then I watched the episode about octopus. Oh, the octopuses. It was horrible. Really horrible. Especially when you know what I do about how sensitive and intelligent octopuses are. Just pure Japanese sadism at its finest.

First they chopped up an octopus while alive, and that was presented as a good thing. “See how fresh it is, it’s wriggling!” OF COURSE IT’S WRIGGLING WHILE YOU’RE BUTCHERING IT TO DEATH! Rgggh. And it got worse with a cooking method known as jigoku yaki (地獄焼) which is grilling seafood alive. Yes, alive. I will spare you the gory details. I just wish someone had spared me. I must have lived a very blessed life so far because it is easily the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen anyone do to an animal.

I don’t want to watch Shokusai no Oukoku any more. I don’t want to watch any Japanese cooking show any more. I’ve just… I’m done. This post was a warning to stay far far away from this horrible, inhumane program. You were warned.

I read Ascendance of a Bookworm manga up to chapter 31

I’m still reading many different isekai manga. It sucks that so many of them are in very early stages, sometimes only 3 or 4 chapters are out. Usually there’s a light novel or web novel behind them, but I can’t be bothered to track those down for most series. Ascendance of a Bookworm / Honzuki no gekokujou is one of the few exceptions where I read the scanlation up to chapter 12 and then read the raws all the way up to chapter 31, the latest available right now.

Summary: Urano, a bookworm who had finally found a job as a librarian at a university, was sadly killed shortly after graduating from college. She was reborn as Main, the daughter of a soldier in a world where the literacy rate is low and books were scarce. No matter how much she wanted to read, there were no books around. What is a bookworm to do without any books? Make them, of course. Her goal is to become a librarian! So that she may once again live surrounded by books, she must start by making them herself. [from novelupdates]

What’s so good about Ascendance of a Bookworm

  • Although it’s an isekai fantasy series like a hundred others currently running, it’s low fantasy with a bigger focus on slice of life and everyday survival. Main lives a life far removed from castles, demons, goddesses, stat level ups, just a little kid trying to get by in the world.
  • It has one of the few protagonists who is not hopelessly overpowered right from the start. In fact Main is totally weak and prone to illness.
  • Main is not super-intelligent either, just blessed with a lot of book knowledge. In particular she doesn’t know much about business and would be swindled regularly if it wasn’t for adults looking out for her.
  • No harem, no huge crowd of adoring fans lapping up his every move. A few people know just how amazing she is, but the majority of people including her own family see her as an ordinary, rather weird girl. She does have the obligatory good-but-not-too-competent isekai companion though.
  • You read a lot of manga where the heroine/hero can make a lot of stuff just because they saw it on TV once, but Main doesn’t have it that easy.
  • The art is excellent and the little children are drawn suitably adorable. The food looks great too. I know there’s a web novel, but the manga is so cute and clear and easy to follow that I have zero desire to try the WN.
  • The pace is relatively slow and there’s no real story so there’s plenty of time for world-building. You get to know a lot about how the city is run, how society is organized, how people relate to each other, etc. It’s very down to earth and interesting if you like to get immersed in fantasy worlds.
  • I learned a lot about making paper from scratch by reading it. That should come in handy if I ever go to another world, right?

What’s not so good about Ascendance of a Bookworm

  • It’s ridiculous how few people are suspicions of Main’s true identity once she starts making paper. It’s an extremely convoluted process requiring very specialized tools and materials and yet she knows all of them and all the right proportions? At only 6-7 years old? No one gets suspicious and starts fishing around when a kid that young starts going in and out of various workshops under Benno’s guidance, ordering this strange item and that? The world is a little too idealistic. The adults are a little too conveniently dense.
  • The world-building gets a bit too much sometimes. Half of the chapters are devoted to long treatises on how the city works, politics work, business work, etc. It’s interesting at first but later on it gets in the way of plot progression.
  • There’s a long slowdown between Main being diagnosed with consumption and any further advancement being made in her treatment. Then another long break before a more permanent solution (joining the church) comes along. Some of that time is taken up by the paper-making process, but there’s still a lot of dead time spent on stuff. I know it’s a slice of life kind of show but it gets a bit tiring anyway.

TL;DR

Ascendance of the Bookworm is good and I want more!

Finished Lingodeer Korean. I learned nothing!

I mentioned aaaages ago that I was learning Korean on and off with Talk to me in Korean. Yeahhh, that didn’t go so well. I got bored around level 2 and stopped doing it. Yah… We’ll talk about that some other time. I’m still trying to get back in the saddle with that. Thanks to Memrise my retention of the little I learned is extremely good so it’s worth pursuing but…. it’s boring… Anyway, it’s a topic for another day.

After quitting-ish TTMIK I heard about both Duolingo Korean and Lingodeer. I don’t have a good experience with Duolingo for other languages, but Lingodeer got great reviews from people who tried it so I thought I would give it a go. The best part is that you can download the whole course and use it offline for free, which you can’t do with Duolingo or Memrise without paying. This came in super handy because I can learn new things while I’m on the go or waiting in the doctor’s office and stuff.

That’s the main good point about Lingodeer. I guess the other good thing is that the deer mascot is cute <3. They should sell plushies.

So I did do the whole 100% of the Lingodeer Korean course. I said “I learned nothing!” in the topic title, but it’s more accurate to say “I retained nothing!” I know in my head that I learned a lot of different grammar points and some new vocabulary, but I don’t remember most of them.

This isn’t all Lingodeer’s fault. They introduce concepts gradually and clearly and I didn’t have a hard time learning those things in the first place. But their revision system is extremely weak and boring – and completely optional too, so the info is all in one year and out another. You learn something once, revise it once and then you don’t see it again.

What they could have done is to include the revision as a mandatory part of the program. You don’t pass regular reviews, you don’t go on to the next section. Furthermore, they could have done a better job of integrating past grammar points into future sentences. Sentences should have gotten longer and more complex with time.

Anyway, the TL;DR is that Lingodeer teaches a lot of new stuff and is easy to follow so it’s a good start for low-intermediate learners. But you might want to jot things down in a notebook or a flashcard system like Anki so what you learn might actually stick. For me I think I was better off with TTMIK and Memrise and really should push myself to get back into that. If I ever do… before the apocalypse, I will tell you guys about it.

Oh yeah, I did all this Lingodeer stuff around the end of 2017 – beginning of 2018. Recently I opened the app again and noticed they had added video lessons and speaking practice. That’s a great idea, but TBH it sounds like work so I don’t know if I will go through all that. If I do… before the end of the world… I will write a followup post to this one. ¡Adiós!

Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody anime review

Just when I was starting to get back in the saddle of anime-watching, I had the misfortune to come across trash like Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody. I watched the whole thing expecting it to get interesting at some point, or at least to take full advantage of its schlockiness like In Another World with my Smartphone did. But no, it was just a mediocre waste of time that has severely dented my desire to read or watch any more isekai series.

Summary, for what its worth

Ichiro Suzuki is a programmer who was tasked with fixing several bugs in two MMORPGs his company is preparing . While taking a nap, he somehow wakes up in another world as Satoo Pendragon. Suddenly, a group of high-level lizardmen attack him, and in order to survive, Satoo desperately uses a special mass attack. As a result, his level jumps to 310 and he becomes extremely wealthy.

Satoo decides to hide his level, and plans to live peacefully and meet new people. However, developments in the game’s story may cause a nuisance to Satoo’s plans. [adapted from Wikipedia]

Why I call it trash

On the face of it,  Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody doesn’t do anything too different from the masses of isekai manga I’ve been reading recently. Satoo suddenly becomes overpowered, he goes around saving girls left and right, all the girls fall madly in love with him and he solves every problem the show can throw at him without suffering too much.

Problem 1 – Unnecessary sexual content. I’m not interested in a show where the hero has sex with prostitutes just to convince viewers that he’s a man. Or just to set itself apart from other shows. Death March is really just a slice of life show so maybe they included such scenes to show that they’re not so wholesome after all. Like how teenybopper stars go after risque roles to distance themselves from their former images. Whatever I don’t care.

Problem 2 – The bigger problem. Satoo is level 310. He should act like he’s level 310! But he doesn’t. He always looks like he’s struggling against even the weakest of enemies when he should be clearing them out with a single yawn. Part of that is understandable, like when he’s trying to level up his party members so they can defend themselves. Or when he’s trying to stay under the radar in the city. But even in far off places with no other witnesses he’s still struggling against weakling homunculi or a level 75 wizard. I hate to bring this up again but… HE’S LEVEL 310. So the show should give us the catharsis that comes from the hero being hundreds of levels above everyone else.

He’s so terrible at playing the game it’s hard to believe he’s really a programmer. He doesn’t learn skills when he should, he doesn’t explore the limits of his abilities, he doesn’t try to learn useful resistances in advance, nothing. Like there’s a part where he’s hit by Dark Magic. He gets a Dark Magic resistance skill. Instead of maxing it out, he just kind of leaves it there. In fact he just kind of leaves a lot of stuff in his menu to look at “Later” when the viewer is screaming “No! Look at it now!” It’s just a very annoying show all around.

Problem 3 – Boring characters and world. Death March is so short we didn’t get to see much of the world. The little we see is just one generic fantasy city, nothing interesting or exciting about it at all. The food doesn’t even look good despite their best efforts. The harem characters are so many that they all blur into one. Couple of lolis, couple of older girls, either way Satoo ignores them in favor of prostititues – plus he’s level 310 and doesn’t really need hangers on. I don’t even know what they’re doing in this how. What were their names again?

TL;DR

Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody is an isekai show with very little isekai-ness, just one tiny city. It’s a harem show with no appealing girls. It’s a game-world show with a hero who evidently doesn’t care much for video games. Long story short, it has very little to offer fans of any of these genres. There are so many other isekai shows out there that you don’t need to waste time with this one. Avoid.

Tian Jiang Xian Shu Nan manga review (spoilers)

Tian Jiang Xian Shu Nan (天降贤淑男) is a manhua title I randomly picked up to read when I was looking for completed series to read. I haven’t read too many manhua (and TBH if it’s a Chinese comic then I would rather read a wuxia title) but it was complete and I was bored so I gave it a try. The title Tian Jiang Xian Shu Nan literally means “Goddess of Mercy” according to Google Translate. Yeah… that doesn’t help but thanks anyway.

Story: It’s the story of a love triangle between tomboy martial artist Su Jia Ao, her ultra-submissive fiance Ji Chun Qing and wild guy Xiao Yao Jing. You see, Su Jia Ao is from a tribe where women are expected to be rough and tough while the men passively obey. Having been brought up in the city, Su prefers macho bad boys like Xiao Yao Jing. And yet there’s something about that Ji Chun Qing…

…and that something is an almost-stalkerish level of persistence. Talk about Dogged Nice Guys. From start to finish it’s never clear what he sees in Su Jia Ao besides tradition demanding that he marry her, but that doesn’t stop him from hanging in there anyway. In the real world the police would have to get involved, but in Tian Jiang Xian Shu Nan it’s almost funny after a while. 

This could have been a good, funny love triangle series. Could have been, and almost was. I read up to chapter 95 out of 129, skipped to 120 and read to the end. Even that required me to force myself at several points.

The problem? Su Jia Ao herself. A love triangle series only works as long as the feelings of the key players are clear to the audience but not clear to the persons concerned. There should be room for doubt if not wholesale denseness. If Girl likes Boy A but isn’t sure how he feels about her and Boy B likes her but isn’t sure how she feels, that can work. But when the feelings of all parties are clear and Girl likes A but keeps stringing B along and pulling him back whenever he tries to pull away… Su Jia Ao, die in a fire.

What happens is that Su has a huge and obvious crush on Xiao – and he likes her back – and she knows it – and they’ve even dated and almost kissed. But Ji Chun Qing and her family keep putting pressure on her. That’s hard for a teen to deal with, so I was sympathetic up to that point.

Then Su got the chance to break the engagement with Ji off cleanly, no hard feelings. But noooo, for the sake of her pride she decided to fight for Chun Qing’s hand. And she won. That means she likes him, right? Nnnnot quite. When Xiao’s parents arrange a fiancee for him, Su goes crazy and does everything in her power to interrupt that deal as well. Then right after that Chun Qing gets kidnapped. And of course she runs after him again. I’d had enough of her fickleness by then and skipped to the end to find out which guy she ends up with… But I won’t tell you to avoid spoilers.

The good thing about Tian Jiang Xian Shu Nan is that it’s short, colorful and action-packed with pretty nice character designs and a likeable cast. Yes, even Su when she’s not being a horrible two-timer. The bad side is how frustrating it is to see a main character cruelly toying with people’s emotions. She’s a prime dog in a manger – doesn’t want him, but doesn’t want to see him date someone else. What do you want? Luckily the situation doesn’t drag on too long before the series ends so it’s worth the read if you’re looking for something short, light and romantic – for a given definition of romantic.