A Week of Shoddy Luck, and Eromanga Sensei

Hello blog,

You probably have forgotten me after my billionth two week hiatus. I am here to point out that I am alive, thought it may seem otherwise. Rather, this post serves to highlight the vitriol and pent-up frustration threatening to make me flame up.

This week has been filled with shoddy luck, where a variety of individually minor events have coalesced into something terrible. As much as they each call out for attention, they can't wait their turn, either.

I resent this week for happening and I'm only a few days into it. Glasses that are partially held together by tape -- that's how far metaphorically south this week has gone already. My least favorite part of this week is how so many things are quite frankly my damn fault. But then why do they feel irreversible?

Amidst this aggravating situation, I have leaped into reading Eromanga Sensei, another meta work by the Oreimo author that features light novels, imoutos, and kouhais -- you could call this work the one dangling thread connecting me vertically to sanity, else I shall fall into the abyss of madness. The main character, much like Kyousuke, is a passive person, who goes about his daily business - in this case, he writes LNs for a living while attending high school. But he is exceptionally talented at describing beautiful girls, even if they happen to be a year or few younger than him. But I wonder what happened in the author's life that gave him such a bad experience with sibling situations. This series, and Oreimo, both imagine a chilly brother-sister relationship where they go without speaking to each other for over a year. Despite seeing each other everyday, Izumi and Sagiri do not get along, until some magic event happens and makes them talk to each other.

Sagiri, at first glance, seems like an ice queen hikkikomori  but her frostiness has a warmer core, a core that reveals when around her Onii-san. Megumi, classmate of Sagiri, is indeed a much more terrifying character, capable of reducing Izumi MC-kun to self-defense mechanisms -- seemingly a kind-hearted, genki girl, Megumi is secretly conniving and manipulative.

One point of keen appreciation for the work so far: I enjoy how many characters exist beyond gender roles. In fact, two of the characters are thought to be boys because of their illustrating style and writing style respectively -- but in fact, they are girls! This reminds me of how CLAMP, a team of women mangaka, wrote the teenage-boy-oriented  sci-fi/romance Chobits. It's neat how Eromanga Sensei plays with typical gender roles in an amusing yet on-point manner.

And one point of concern: how will Elf Yamada-sensei play into the story? I hope she's not used simply to prop up Sagiri and Megumi but rather gets a life of her own. I say that because she's a rather amusing character.

So far, Eromanga Sensei is very good. Much better than this terrible week, at least.