Reading List September-October 2020

Brief updates on what I’ve been up to, review of Spring/Summer 2020 anime, as well as an early review of the current season.

For the past two months, I’ve been focusing on my lab work - trying to get experiments working, collecting data, troubleshooting various things, etc. etc. The grind truly never ends, and working in a COVID-safe manner also comes with a learning curve of its own. I have been fortunate enough to have had some occasions of success in data collection and other experimental pursuits, most of which I am presently continuing. On the other hand, I am also busy coding and writing. In particular, I spent some part of the last while studying ‘basic maths’ by reading classic texts, such as Stewart’s Single- and Multivariable-Calculus (neither which have seemed to stick, unfortunately), Lay et al.’s Linear Algebra, and most recently, Paul’s Online Notes for Differential Equations, although even this has been on hold due to other, more urgent, tasks.

I’d like to briefly go over my thoughts on the texts I mentioned above, both as a form of self-satisfaction as well as compensation for not delivering on my public health/epidemiology progress, which, by the way, provided the initial impetus for the math reading. In fact, I was reading through a epidemiology modelling text, but realized I couldn’t follow some of the derivations therein, and decided to revisit my old calculus texts. I skimmed through Single-Variable in a day or two, but spent a couple more days on Multivariable. As a sophomore, I remember spending several nights working through trigonometric substitution problems and such, and put a lot of effort in cramming the content hours before a quiz or exam (I never attended my calculus classes in-person…). However, as a juniour and after graduating college, I read Multivariable to varying depths, and have repeatedly noticed that I quite enjoy the topics. In particular, I liked how each chapter intuitively built upon its predecessors, e.g. in 2D, vectors and planes to line and surface integrals, then vector calculus; followed by the equivalent concepts in 3D. Most of all, I enjoyed the spirit of puzzle-solving involved in some of the problems later in the text. Unfortunately, even after my 3rd/4th time reading Multivariable, I still have a hard time recalling the concepts… On the other hand, my recent read-through of Linear Algebra was fantastic. I found the concepts intuitive, and was able to grasp ideas that I struggled with during my first reading 1-2y ago. These included everything from change-of-bases and diagonlization to the later extensions of the Invertible Matrix Theorem (which seemed neverending at some point). I really enjoyed Linear Algebra recently, and feel much more comfortable with applied techniques such as SVD. Up next, as I mentioned above, is differential equations, but after that, I am hoping to tackle more linear algebra/statistics-related concepts, perhaps related to Bayesian methods or machine learning. I am currently interested in Gilbert Strang’s Applied Linear Algebra text, since I have been looking into implementing MCMC with gradients for several months, with limited success…

So what about Spring/Summer 2020 anime? The only series I ended up finishing from Spring 2020 was Nami yo, kiitekure!, which is about a young, relatively eccentric woman who stumbles into a position as a radio talkshow host. There are several interesting subplots, such as the origins of the protagonist’s name (derived from the Ainu language), and the mysterious romance of her former neighbour, but these are left unexplored. The characters were quite interesting, but the protagonist’s voice-acting and personality had me from the get-go. It wasn’t very popular, but I would definitely watch again. The ED is also a banger, in my opinion. Summer 2020 was decent, but Futekigousha stood out to me as prime comedic material, satirizing the swords & fantasy isekai genre as a whole. The true star of the season, however, was Deca-dence, which is about an uprising against a futuristic dystopian society. Well-animated, voice-acted, etc. I think there are a lot of compelling messages in this series that would make it appeal to a general audience.

Fall 2020 started recently, and there are a lot of series that I’m intending to follow:

1. The Inuyasha sequel, Hanyou no yashahime,
2. The adaptation of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes from the perspective of Dr. Moriarty, Yukoku no Moriarty,
3. Jujutsu Kaisen (the ED is an absolute banger, Ali does it again!),
4. Tonikaku Kawaii (diabetes-inducing story, designs are true to the original work),
5. Majo no tabitabi (great character design and animation, but slightly lacking in terms of plot),
6. Kamisama ni natta hi (possibly the best-looking anime I have seen in a long, long time. Comedic devices are brilliant, but also remind me of a previous generation of anime, unsurprising since it’s an original by Jun Maeda.)
7. 100-man no inochi no ue ni ore wa tatteiru (very interesting premise, although the pacing gets rather slow later on in the manga. I’m hoping for the anime to turn out better.)
8. Akudama drive (beautiful character design and animation, created by author of Danganronpa. Interesting premise, and will hopefully turn out well)
9. Taisou Samurai (beautiful character design and animation, interesting/colorful and very likable character cast, and a plot that looks to deliver huge feels, either positive or negative)

As for the isekais, I’m following Kuma kuma kuma bear as well as Kamitachi ni hirowareta otoko, but neither are overly compelling nor entertaining, especially the latter - so I will likely drop these if I get busy.