I'm a little worried..

I'd just frozen my Jailkeeper, and was preparing
to
combine him with another monster.

I'd selected them both in the lab, but once they
were selected, I wasn't able to pick my
combination
from the breeds, and the chemistry section
remained
blank.

Am I totally screwed? I'm really not wanting to
restart the game, but I'm worried that I'll have
to. On the bright side, I've only had it four
days, so it's not a HUGE loss. (Though it's
annoying, to say the least.)

So you mean you couldn't tab-and-drag, for example, the golem main into the main slot in the middle?

Exactly. It wouldn't let me highlight the monsters
at all to the main slot in the middle.

I already got ticked off and restarted, because I
realized I was screwed after three separate times
of saving and reloading with no change.

My working theory on what caused the glitch was
that I was messing with the magic spells. There's
a lot of talk on Gamefaqs about glitching
happening after people have messed with it
extensively, and I'm not talking about just the
kanji issue.

I'm honestly a little concerned with all of the
bug and glitch reports that are coming in with
early players of this game. It kind of reeks of a
sloppy or rushed job. Well..hopefully this is the
last time I'll be complaining about a game-killing
glitch.

To play it safe, I'm only going to be messing with
the incantation/magic field end of things.

Except that you cant shrine any of the real good monsters with those methods.

Please tell me you're kidding, Thorr. (Even though I
know you're not..)

Well, I'd guess that maybe there's a chance of doing
it the long way by combining...and failing that, I
suppose doing one magic incantation here, another
there..not doing it in lengthy bursts..that might be
safe. Apparently most of the complaints are that the
game glitches after using the magic spell component
ten or more times in a row.

The most important method of getting monsters is the Magic Spell. When you unlock letters, you unlock new available shrine breeds and new available Sub breeds. For example, the only way to shrine ANY Hengar is through the Magic Spell. Same for Gali.

You don't want to know the obscenities that just
came out of my mouth. Or possibly you do...but I'm
pretty sure that's a ToS violation.

Granted, I'm just operating on pure conjecture as to
what might have caused the glitch. It could have
been any one of a hundred things, or a combination
of them. Still, I'm VERY gun shy about doing much
with the magic spells.

The one time I got the glitch I tried coloring in the whole first slot, bad idea lol. so now I try small lines or dots. Havent frozen since.

It didn't lock up during the magic spells. I would
have preferred that, and losing a monster's breeding
potential to having to restart.