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Guyver posted:I'm more disappointed because the first half was boring. I think the author might have speculated about doing it at one point, but it seems unlikely at this point. The author appears to be done with writing at this point. (He got really mad at people overseas pirating the Evileye book even though its basically impossible to obtain legitimately if you are not Japanese. He said its the reason he is wrapping up the series a bit earlier than what he was planning.) Who knows though. Maybe once he takes a break for a year or two, he'll realize that he misses writing (or the money).
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Jul 29, 2023 06:18
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Anyone have recommendations for a completed series with English translation? I’m open to a lot of genres including isekai.
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Aug 1, 2023 22:28
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So I'm a Spider just finished. Other ones are KonaSuba, Full metal Panic, The Gundam Novels, Log Horizon, Moribito, LoGH, Kara no Kyoukai, Accomplishments of a Duke's Daughter and Durarara are all translated. Though of those I've only read the first couple volumes of LoGH, Duke's Daughter and Log Horizon and Gundam. I plan on finishing them because I liked what I read but there's just so much coming out. FMP, KnK and Durarara I plan on starting sooner or later.
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Aug 2, 2023 20:32
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I'm in Love with the Villainess has a complete english translation. The Empty Box and Zeroth Maria finished a few years ago. The Qualia the Purple light novel got an official tl pretty recently. My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected is fully translated if you liked the anime, which understandably cut stuff for time.
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Aug 2, 2023 21:47
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S-rank daughter is getting an anime in october and the final english volume should be out around early January
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Aug 2, 2023 23:30
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Guyver posted:So I'm a Spider just finished. I should've added stuff I've read already oops. I've read Spider/KonoSuba/Log Horizon. Duke's Daughter seems interesting so I'll start that once I get the books, thanks! LibrarianCroaker posted:I'm in Love with the Villainess has a complete english translation. I've seen Zeroth Maria come up pretty often. I'll have to check it out!
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Aug 2, 2023 23:43
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does anyone have experience with this Conqueror from A Dying Kingdom ln? i hadn't considered it when it was just lns but started looking at the manga when j-novel started previewing it and it actually looks reasonably decent considering how relatively typical the setting and implied long run development are. i've developed a bit of distaste for trashy isekai after a couple years of overconsumption (might be a neurological covid symptom tho tbh) but a decent one with tolerable prose (anything that's not just the bare minimum ln style is fine) would slot in real well and the prepub release schedule for the ln works well for me too. so i am soliciting opinions
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Aug 3, 2023 00:23
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this allusion meant posted:does anyone have experience with this Conqueror from A Dying Kingdom ln? it's decent. I'd describe it as way more grounded than most isekai - 15th century-ish setting with light fantasy elements (reincarnated into a not-quite human race, knights ride either giant eagles or chocobos), but there's no magic, no superpowers, and the main character isn't a genius. he just has the advantage of an adult mind in a young body and knowledge of modern concepts. I guess, kind of like if ascendance of a bookworm had no magic and myne went to military officer's school. despite the title there are no actual battles until several volumes in and he isn't the one doing any conquering yet.
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Aug 3, 2023 02:01
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hell yeah. sounds like my poo poo. just upgraded to jnovel premium a couple weeks ago so i'll wait for my next batch of free coins i guess
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Aug 3, 2023 02:13
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got volume 1 with free coins and then bought volume 2, which i'm about halfway through. i'm p impressed. it makes use of of the pre-reincarnation life experiences to explain the motivations in less hackneyed ways than most, and while the exposition about their world and explanations of knowledge from our world give it a bit of that familiar amateur fantasy isekai feel, it's not too much and the exciting bits are indeed exciting and in good supply. the early characters are, uh, clearly designed around the role they're supposed to play to propel things forward at this early point and are not that interesting in themselves yet, but that's fine. this being reincarnation from birth he's a little too precocious for my taste in this volume but i think i like where this is going. for a light novel isekai i would describe this as a solid Good One. like i wouldn't be embarrassed to give this to a young nephew as just a fantasy adventure book for older boys the way i might, uh, almost any popular ln, most of which are clearly fantasy indulgence books for men of regrets
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Aug 6, 2023 20:07
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if you haven't tried it yet give the trpg isekai on j-novel a go as well. it's fantasy with magic and monsters, but in a dungeons and dragons setting so it's a different flavor from the usual videogame inspired stuff, and more restrained in terms of power levels. the main character's "power" is just that he gets to allocate where exactly his XP goes, so his goal is to eventually put together a broken character build in adulthood through careful skill synergy. the bulk of the series follows him through childhood, more or less covering a year per volume so it's a slower progression towards eventually becoming super strong by the end of the series. like, one volume he fights a wizard, then the next an ogre, then an undead knight. it's more normal d&d stuff, not saving the world from the demon lord.
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Aug 6, 2023 22:57
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Stink Billyums posted:if you haven't tried it yet give the trpg isekai on j-novel a go as well. it's fantasy with magic and monsters, but in a dungeons and dragons setting so it's a different flavor from the usual videogame inspired stuff, and more restrained in terms of power levels. the main character's "power" is just that he gets to allocate where exactly his XP goes, so his goal is to eventually put together a broken character build in adulthood through careful skill synergy. the bulk of the series follows him through childhood, more or less covering a year per volume so it's a slower progression towards eventually becoming super strong by the end of the series. I started this last night and I like it. I think Tanya is the only isekai with more German in it though. Edit: The main character's reactions to the spider girl is pushing it though but I guess it's pretty standard for most isekai'd to a kid story childhood friend characters. Edit 2: Never mind its just being loving weird now. Guyver fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Aug 7, 2023 |
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Aug 7, 2023 11:28
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Guyver posted:I started this last night and I like it. I think Tanya is the only isekai with more German in it though. Yeah, what is it about japan light novel authors being borderline(?) pedo's? Like most of them can't seem to help themselves. Well the good news for this series is that he leaves his village and up to the current book, doesnt go back to the spider girl.
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Aug 7, 2023 19:46
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ianmacdo posted:Yeah, what is it about japan light novel authors being borderline(?) pedo's? Like most of them can't seem to help themselves. I believe you mean VITALITY GLORIFIERS
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Aug 7, 2023 20:00
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this allusion meant posted:got volume 1 with free coins and then bought volume 2, which i'm about halfway through. i'm p impressed. it makes use of of the pre-reincarnation life experiences to explain the motivations in less hackneyed ways than most, and while the exposition about their world and explanations of knowledge from our world give it a bit of that familiar amateur fantasy isekai feel, it's not too much and the exciting bits are indeed exciting and in good supply. the early characters are, uh, clearly designed around the role they're supposed to play to propel things forward at this early point and are not that interesting in themselves yet, but that's fine. this being reincarnation from birth he's a little too precocious for my taste in this volume but i think i like where this is going. for a light novel isekai i would describe this as a solid Good One. like i wouldn't be embarrassed to give this to a young nephew as just a fantasy adventure book for older boys the way i might, uh, almost any popular ln, most of which are clearly fantasy indulgence books for men of regrets lol okay things get a little too haremy (in the sense of peer characters being overwhelmingly female and into him) as the academy stuff progresses to not be embarrassed at all, but this is still good, if you like like artemis fowl type polite rich kid who cold rages when you touch his important people stuff (it's not bad! we all wrestle when we're young with however much privilege we have and wish we were clever and strong people who used it for justice; may as well go all the way with it)
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Aug 7, 2023 23:04
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volume 5 of Conqueror from a Dying Kingdom has finished pre-pub previewing on jnc. there's a volume 6 out in jp so probably in a few weeks they'll start that up, but the future looks kinda bleak after that; the author seems to be working on his other webnovel a lot and there's been a considerable gap since volume 6 came out. 6 looks like it wraps up loose ends from the current arc and starts a new one. around half of this one's webnovel has been covered in the first five volumes, so there's more material, but you know how these things go. not sure whether the webnovel is finished but i don't think so, and he hasn't written a new chapter of that for a while either. don't know if my throwing some coins at it might get his editor to encourage him to crank out some more of this but in any case at least once volume 5 comes out on full digital release i will consider there to be enough material closing out a sufficiently exciting arc that encouraging someone to start won't be a totally irresponsible thing to do. any visual adaptation making it to this point and stopping would probably be considered acceptable by fans of a hypothetical analogous series my overall impression of the literary qualities is that while the author is not a particularly original writer, he's chosen to write a somewhat different kind of story from most of what gets republished like this, and it's a pleasant change of pace. the tone becomes rather darker than the other similar strategy boy series (the subgenre doesn't deserve a more serious name) out there, and while he throws in a fair amount of what's more or less horny filler during the school parts, he at least keeps the tone serious when the action starts, including taking the romance more seriously, which maybe redeems that a bit (altho some of the specific horniness is somewhat weird, but that comes with the territory i guess). there isn't the sort of tone breaks in the serious parts that makes the reader feel foolish for having taken them seriously like some LNs. the action strikes a good balance of feeling believably tense and still hitting the hyper-competent triumphs at least as hard as anything more lazily wish-fulfilling. there's a good pace of worldbuilding too in addition to depth, the danger goes from abstract to concrete in such a way that you sorta feel like the frog realizing actually yeah this water temperature has been approaching boiling the whole time i've been here huh. definitely my favorite find this year, and the main downside is my bitterness at finding it's soon going to be a long time before i get any more. jnc has just announced they're starting on a new strategy boy title soon but it looks super generic based on the description and i'm not expecting much i'm assuming volume 6 won't contain anything that fills me with the urge to post about it here, so a final comment on the series unless it looks like the content adaptation human centipede has started up again: long live chairman ho, the shiyaltan people will stand up, fight for the rejuvenation of shantila
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Aug 23, 2023 00:39
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finished vol1 of The Alchemist Who Survived Now Dreams of a Quiet City Life. pretty decent read. I know it does say Quiet Life, and it makes sense in the story, but the regular me that wishes there was a bit more action wishes she just lets the secret out how she can make great potions, even if as presented, she is just a little girl that can be taken advantage of by higher forces. Only complaint is that the slave she buys is soo boring. He doesn't bring anything to the story, even if he just entered the story as a regular person she met and saved on the road, and not a slave. The book has a good portion of it from his PoV and I don't particularly care for his backstory. He might be better after he gets fully healed, but atm, he doesn't even serve as a decent bodyguard. The alchemist jargon is decent. Dew of Life is OP, and the base ingredient for any and everything to do with alchemy. And the only ones that can draw upon it from the leyline are ones that forms a contract with the land. But since everyone else has died, the connection to the original inhabitants are gone and no one to pass it down. I do like the few older people in the town that totally realize just how valuable the girl is. (she's very bad at hiding it since she lacks modern common sense of the era) And luckily its nicer people that look out for her. The volume ends with her finally opening her own shop. So looking forward to that in the next volume, since retail isekai stories can be pretty nice. The end of the book has a few interesting things to explore. At first, you think she's just a basic alchemist and she's just really valuable because of the time she woke up in, and the current state in the region has degraded. But you see hints that she actually was a good alchemist during her own time. You kind of get tricked in the beginning about how she was only ever able to sell basic potions. You end up seeing she is a little girl that has no street smarts at all on business and she was most likely taken advantage of. She even casually mentions that she tried to sell high or special grade potions to shops. But the shops didn't believe her, that a girl of her age was able to make those kinds of potions Add to that her master was a bit eecentric herself. She has the standard traits of a secretly OP, but doesn't know it dense character.
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Aug 23, 2023 23:02
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I've started plugging away at Dahlia in Bloom. I'm really enjoying it. It's a little fantasy isekai romance about a magical toolmaker woman whose scumbag of a betrothed dumps her on the eve of their wedding for another woman (she actually dodged a bullet on this one). She'd spent the last 2 years trying to be the perfect wife for him, acquiescing to pretty much every ask of his about her appearance, work, etc and decides to live her life to the fullest now that she's free of that. Meets a knight, and they hit it off over his love of magical swords. The whole isekai element doesn't come in too strongly here other than just being springboards for some of her magical inventions to recreate stuff from Earth. Overall I really like the chemistry between Volf and Dahlia. The stakes aren't particularly high as of vol 3, but I'm enjoying it for the character slice-of-life and workplace antics here. A funny tidbit. "Athletes foot" is said 41 times in volume 2.
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Aug 23, 2023 23:50
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Nitrousoxide posted:I've started plugging away at Dahlia in Bloom. I'm really enjoying it. It's a little fantasy isekai romance about a magical toolmaker woman whose scumbag of a betrothed dumps her on the eve of their wedding for another woman (she actually dodged a bullet on this one). You should read Lucia and the loom too. Maybe after getting to like vol4 or so though because they don't start at the same time.
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Aug 24, 2023 11:45
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gwrtheyrn posted:You should read Lucia and the loom too. Maybe after getting to like vol4 or so though because they don't start at the same time. Oh neat, Vol 1 is still available in pre-pub so I can read it for free since I'm subbed to J-novel.
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Aug 24, 2023 12:23
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figures jnc would put Tearmoon Empire lns on catchup immediately after i finish reading them the month before. oh well, i recommend vols 1, 2, and 6+. also got up to date on Magician Who Rose From Failure, which is okay but i can't particularly say much of interest about it besides that i wonder what the spell wording is like in japanese. tried reading some Private Tutor to a Duke's Daughter, which was just not good imo. i think Moon Blossom Asura has something going for it, but the style is really grating on me. Villainess Level 99 actually gets significantly more fun in the third volume. Crown of Rutile Quartz was slightly repetitive until it got to the action, but it's a promising enough start. a handful of forgettable aristocrat world conquest isekais passed through my consciousness without leaving any impressions. tragically Ideal Sponger Life apparently ran out of untranslated volumes (just as it was getting really interesting too) and the future is unclear. fortunately for me Conqueror from a Dying Kingdom released a new japanese volume so there's at least that much future ahead. on a related note, the fact that there is now a finite amount of Bookworm ahead means i will have to ponder mortality and the finitude of earthly things for a bit, probably going forward i'm going to start down Apothecary Diaries once the anime wraps (arbitrary time offset into future so i get some stuff done at work before going back to wasting time reading kids books). this concludes my brief update on j-novel club titles i've read recently
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Nov 8, 2023 04:42
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apothecary diaries owns. I agree that vol 3 of villainess lv99 is funnier than vol 2. an underrated villainess comedy is slow prison life; a few of the jokes are genuinely kind of offensive but most I enjoyed. fake saint is better than it sounds but still not good
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Nov 8, 2023 05:09
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this allusion meant posted:Conqueror from a Dying Kingdom released a new japanese volume
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Dec 9, 2023 07:39
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I started reading the most unbelievable fantasy LN recently. My Magical Career at Court Its got some Delilah in Bloom or Silent Witch vibes and is about the incredible escapist fantasy of a workplace that enforces a good work/life balance. Has promotion and pay raise prospects and coworkers that don't suck poo poo. Easily the most unbelievable story I've ever read.
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Mar 16, 2024 20:31
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Nitrousoxide posted:I started reading the most unbelievable fantasy LN recently. My Magical Career at Court It's a fun story. Especially every time someone offers a free meal
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Mar 16, 2024 21:31
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I couldn't get into My Magical Career at Court; it was just way too pat and straightforward. There was no tension in any of the relationships. This wouldn't matter if it were funny, but unfortunately there is not really that much humor in it either. I much preferred The Sorcerer's Receptionist, which is in many ways a similar story (powerful main character; workplace setting; romantic comedy).
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Mar 23, 2024 13:55
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Yeah, it kinda ran its course after a couple of vols. I got up to date with the current prepub on J-novel since I have a sub there, but I don't really feel compelled to follow it terribly much. In terms of other stuff I'm following: Nia Liston: The Merciless Maiden (Martial arts master's soul just vibing in the afterlife gets ripped out of the ether to take the place of a young girl's who was on death's door by an unscrupulous mage. MC doesn't remember any of her previous life, but generally retains her martial skills, so you get the wacky overpowered 5 year old breaking boulders with a wooden sword. Funnily enough, the series is actually mainly focused on her being a child film star rather than going from place to place fighting people) The Apothecary Diaries (Sherlock Holmes meets House. Later volumes have somewhat of a more wacky vibe than the earlier stuff) The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects (Strong and good-natured soldier with extreme HIMBO energy gets granted some land in the steppe of the kingdom with no inhabitants, that they knew of. Guy's a real sweetheart and the story is about him gathering a cast of characters who want to live in his new domain.) The Otome Heroine's Fight for Survival (An otome iskeai, though the POV heroine herself isn't an isekai'd Japanese girl, but rather some background character, and a few others, are isekai'd instead and they screw up the plot that was supposed to happen, leading to the heroine becoming an assassin. I believe there's an upcoming anime for this too.) Spice & Wolf (Sweet romance/drama about a traveling merchant and a lonely wolf spirit. Upcoming anime reboot of this.) (Yen Press, so get it at whichever book retailer you like) Wolf & Parchment (spinoff of Spice & Wolf that takes place after the conclusion of the original arc.) (Yen Press, so get it at whichever book retailer you like)
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Mar 23, 2024 18:33
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