The speed of dust

Very busy weekend with little dude's birthday party and also Mother's Day (Mum's Day) which I will never get used to being in March rather than May. Sunday was actually quite relaxing though as little dude and I binge watched about 7 episodes of School Babysitters, which gives How to Keep a Mummy a serious run for kawaii-ness.

So nice to find another anime that's totally okay to watch with the little man. It's very sweet, though it has a bit of angst (the main character is, after all, an orphan and is taking care of his teensy little brother by himself when he gets taken in by possibly the strangest benefactor of all time -- the shaggy headmistress -- and has to work in the school's daycare to pay for his keep).

Seriously. It's cute. So cute. And little dude does love his cute stuff. So do I. Sometimes you need a palate cleanser. Something nice where no one is dying or desperate or horrible or whatever. It's a show that's mostly about adorable little toddlers interacting with high schoolers. It's about some orphan kids finding family and friends. About that little tiny dude taking his first errand super seriously. Love it. And it was a great Mother's Day thing for us to do together.

He's also reading a new manga that a friend of mine started him on called Re: Monsters, which is kind of the direct opposite. Jelly always spoils him and gave him three different manga first volumes for his birthday (and some treats from the Japan Centre). He started with the Re:Monsters one where a dude is killed in a world similar to ours (or maybe the same, not sure) and then is re-born into a fantasy world as a goblin.

So, an isekai kind of story, which is one of his favourites -- but also a genre that tends to have a lot of...issues...as far as being appropriate. So far this one seems pretty good -- there's definitely death & violence, but that's all I've noticed so far. And he liked the first volume so much that he spent some of his birthday money getting the next two books. And then proceeded to read them the same day. (Go, Amazon Prime! -- they delivered the books literally about 6 hours after we ordered them)

In other manga news...I'd signed up a while back for the Anime / Manga exchange over on Reddit. I thought it would be fun to try. I wound up getting the person I was assigned some Attack on Titan stuff. The person who got me sent The Wind Rises (a Studio Ghibli movie I didn't have yet!) Have to watch that soon! And the two volumes of SP Baby by the same mangaka that did Happy Marriage (which I'd read ages ago).

It's not a deep story by any means, but it was fun and the art was good. Here we've got a sort of ne'er do well lady who, through kind of an accident, becomes the bodyguard of the Prime Minister's nephew but he treats her more like a girlfriend than a bodyguard because, and this is the trope-y bit I could have done without, he had met her once years ago when they were in high school or middle school and has been thinking about her ever since. I like that she's pretty tough but vulnerable at the same time. I like that he's handsome but also kind of a clueless puppy dog. I'd rather they hadn't done the whole "I knew you when and I've been searching for you since then" thing but I think it was a shorthand method of explaining the immediate love & attraction he had for her as there are only two volumes total. So I kind of get it. There wasn't really room to develop the love more normally. And I was glad that the childhood friend that she was in love with to start off with was actually a nice guy, just not interested in her, rather than turning out to be a raging jerk, which often seems to be the case if they aren't the intended love interest. Anyway, I enjoyed it and read them both this weekend.

And...I feel like I'm going through Mystic Messenger withdrawal. Ha. I did two rounds of the Christmas DLC (first, that purposeful route through Zen...ah, still love him...and then a route where it was first 707 and then switched halfway through to Jumin, so kind of confusing, as I didn't realise it would do that). But then I knew the weekend was packed and I've got my driving test tomorrow and had my last lesson today (ack!) and I've got to actually get a good night's sleep. So I haven't started another run of the Christmas DLC and...I feel lonely. Which is kinda sad.

But...I gotta get through that test. Please, please, O gods of driving on the wrong side of the road and roundabouts from hell, O please let me pass the first time.