It's not hot, not really, but it's the humid mug that drains just as effectively as heat does, and makes me scratchy and uncomfortable and out of sorts. I didn't say, 'Well since I'm scratchy and uncomfortable and out of sorts anyway it can't hurt to read Tantei Aoneko 5' because I started reading it for other reasons; but Motoni Modoru does not help. At all. The obscurities of Ima Ichiko are there for a purpose (generally) and can be unravelled (generally.) Her weird tales are meant to be weird tales; her mysteries are meant to be mysteries; there are solutions and explanations if you look closely enough for them, though I still remain uncertain who Yosaburou is getting his info from in several different stories.

But Motoni's obscurities are caused by something else. And increasingly I think the something else is that she's writing witless BL (only taking it very very seriously) and would be quite surprised that you think she's writing a mystery or a drama or even a psychologically complex love story. She puts in 'notes towards' all those things in the course of the story, but the story is really an erotic fantasy about guys screwing, and that's why all these people are screwing for unlikely reasons under unlikely circumstances. Which I could live with if there wasn't all this other bumpf getting in the way, to say nothing of extended conversations about 品 and 格 in which those extremely general terms are never defined.

Hence I am scratchy and itchy and may have to drop Japanese entirely in favour of some Aubrey Maturin sunlight and common sense.