At some point in September I bought a PSP so I can play a couple games that I wanted to see. It turns out that on average it takes more than just a few hours to finish a game like Valkyria Chronicles 2. It’s too bad, because I haven’t finish a book on my backlog as a result of this.
Until that point, I was struggling with going through Haikasoru’s lineup. In fact right now I have two books (three if you count Loups-Gaoru) lined up, plus a couple other non-Viz titles. If I wasn’t playing VC2 and was reading instead, it would have taken me about a month or two to finish all that. Which is about the right speed, since it is about as fast as they publish those things.
However, I can’t say I’m really missing out. In the 12+ months before I got stuck in VC2, the hit and miss ratio is not exactly flattering. The Haruhi books, for example, were kind of horrible until you get to Disappearence. Unless you are a really forgiving reader of SF, Haikasoru’s offerings were often either too weak or too mundane, and while they’re usually interestingly flavored, they are not always something you enjoy the aftertaste of. And not to mention all the non-SF pieces that I avoid on genre grounds. (Well, I did read a few non-SF this year.)
Still, because the turnaround speed for a book is much faster than some 40-hr video game, I was able to read a lot of them, and as a result, hit some interesting titles. I guess that’s also because Japanese SF is this fairly big genre after all. Going into it blind is not exactly the best strategy, kind of like going into Japanese animation blind, etc. I was glad to read Harmony and Yukikaze this year, as I really enjoyed those two.
I hope I can finish VC2 and get back to books soon, because like books, 40 hours is a long time spent on a single thing.
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