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Er. So I just noticed the latest translated Arifureta is "Volume 9 chapter 2", which confused me, because looking at the Japanese web novel page, the author just started publishing volume 7 chapters. On the translator's site, it seems they've arbitrarily decided to cut it up into volumes of 10 chapters each, so the original volume 1 ends in the middle of translated volume 3, kind of thing. Any idea why? I'm currently halfway into reading the original Japanese volume 3, which somehow puts me in the beginning of translated volume 7. Puzzling. Anyway, I'm pretty sure this is the worst thing ever written. That said, it's strangely fun to read, because I keep giggling to myself about how loving dumb everything is. It's just awful in every way imaginable. It's probably one of the few works that's likely improved by being translated, because no sane editor could ever leave so many repeated words in a paragraph.
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Feb 2, 2015 17:01
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Gearhead posted:I was talking with someone who does translation on the fly and was asking them about Arifureta. It seems the thing that is driving us ape about the way the story is framed is that it's not written in literary language at all, it's being written in CONVERSATIONAL Japanese. Teenaged male conversational Japanese. This is where all these drat sound effects are coming from in the text. No... Arifureta is no less literary than any other light novel I've come across. It's just poorly done, with weak vocabulary variation. It's not uncommon to find stupid sound effects in this medium. The author's biggest problem is that he can't write dialogue to save his life, so he's constantly trying to make up for it by injecting detailed explanatory paragraphs on what the characters are feeling while they talk to each other. Often using the exact same words the character just spoke. If anything is conversational, it's Mushoku Tensei, which reads like someone's chat log, casually explaining how loving awesome his life is lately.
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Feb 3, 2015 00:14
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To steer discussion away from reincarnation for a moment, I'd like to recommend Ame no Hi no Iris. It's a sad story about an android, which can cynically be dismissed as manipulative, but I enjoyed it all the same. It's a one-off, so pretty quick to read. No idea what the translation is like, but it's supposedly decent. Longer impressions below, but the text contains spoilers, so I'd suggest reading it after the book itself. darkgray a year ago on G+ posted:Finished reading Ame no Hi no Iris by Matsuyama Takeshi this morning. While I did buy it because it showed up on a list of tear-jerkers, I had no idea it would be so ridiculously effective.
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Feb 6, 2015 19:24
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HiveCommander posted:I just finished the second volume of Rokka no Yuusha and it didn't seem as interesting as the first one, probably because it was centered around a character I didn't really care about. Yeah, the first volume has a pretty exquisite mix between action and mystery, but the balance leans heavily toward action in later volumes. It's still a fun read, but as of vol 4 it hasn't lived up to the first book. Haven't gotten around to reading vol 5 yet, but it took forever to come out. Different label and everything.
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Mar 5, 2015 01:13
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http://www.kinokuniya.com/us/ http://www.yesasia.com/global/en/japanese-books.html http://www.amazon.co.jp/ http://honto.jp/ I prefer Honto, because they seem to have the cheapest shipping alternative (SAL) to Europe, but it's a bit of a hassle to get an account set up, and everything is in Japanese.
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Mar 23, 2015 15:28
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So I've been avoiding this thread like the plague while I was waiting for Mushoku Tensei to finish up, since the author always seems to fiddle with updates up to a month after publication. Now that I've read it to the end, I feel like I don't need to fear spoilers anymore. Except it turns out he's not quite done! He just decided to finish up the overarching plot for now, then there'll be a "superfluous version" coming out gradually that fills in the years he skipped, adding tons of side stories on other characters. So it goes. In other news, I bought Knights & Magic vol 1, and it's some of the worst poo poo I've ever read. Hated it so much that there has to be something deeply wrong with me, given how much praise it's getting everywhere. So bad. Also been trying to catch up with Overlord in preparation for the anime in July, but vol 7 crossed the line, and I'm kind of wary of continuing now. Still have vol 8 on the shelf, so I can't quite give up yet, though. It's too bad, because volumes 4 and 6 were kind of great.
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May 15, 2015 19:06
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Emalde posted:In what way, because Overlord has a lot of different lines it can cross for a lot of different people It can't be discussed without spoiling the ending of the book, unfortunately. Excerpt from my impressions elsewhere: (Overlord vol 7 spoilers) Book 7, however, is where the author finally crosses the line he's been walking so carefully throughout the series. Whereas earlier conflicts have seen the protagonist face decidedly malicious opponents, in this book he willingly kills or causes the death of undeniably good people. And then the author rubs the reader's face in it with the epilogue. It can be argued that this has been long coming, with a growing indifference toward humans from the protagonist's side, now that he's been transformed into an undead skeleton lich, but while watching evil get crushed by greater evil is gleeful fun, there's a bitter aftertaste having seen innocents suffer the same fate.
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May 16, 2015 00:39
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I just managed to waste a week reading what's available of Death Marching to the Parallel World Rhapsody (Death March Kara Hajimaru Isekai Kyousoukyoku), about a guy who finds himself in a fantasy world, armed with smart bombs from the game he was developing. Trying one, he manages to wipe out the entire region, which instantly gets him enough experience points to reach level 310. It's like a blend of Shield Hero, Only Sense Online and Arifureta, with a lot of time spent exploring newly gained skills, and maybe up to 25% of the text seems to focus on either planning food, cooking food, eating food, or discussing how tasty the food was. Might need a warning that you can get tired of the protagonist explaining to the reader that he isn't into little girls, but it calms down pretty quickly, and there's nothing particularly offensive that happens. Other than that it's an entertaining action adventure with a cute set of characters, as Satoo travels the land, ever climbing the social ladder and saving the world in his spare time Superman style. In Japanese it's got 12 volumes out, with the 13th still on-going, but there seems to be an English translation up to the middle of the 6th volume as well. It's probably fairly popular, because it got picked up by a publisher last year and is up to 4 paper volumes so far. There's even a manga adaptation.
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May 27, 2015 01:49
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I need to confess that I've been reading World Teacher (13 volumes) and Konjiki no Wordmaster (2 volumes), and they're pretty bad. A step up from Arifureta, but still hopelessly in the "Look at me, I'm so perfect and awesome that it hurts" swamp. Tragically, all three titles mentioned are also being published in a paper format. Maybe the editors can save them. What am I doing with my life? 
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Jun 12, 2015 16:59
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Thought I'd inform you that there's a new reincarnation web novel that's popular in town -- Tensei Shitara Slime datta Ken. It starts out with a man in his 30s getting stabbed, dying, and being reincarnated as a Slime in a fantasy world. The story progresses as he evolves into something more and more powerful, gaining skills and allies, and eventually building his own nation of monsters. Unusually mild for a Japanese web novel, but it has fun and excitement and provides a fairly fresh take on the genre without resorting to swelling harems. English translations are available from here and seem to be getting released at a ridiculous pace -- currently at chapter 77 of the completed 250 (+gaiden stuff). There's also a light novel version being published, so we might see an anime adaptation some day, since it doesn't have much in the way of sex (yet?).
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Aug 8, 2015 15:01
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ConanThe3rd posted:"What is Japanese Young Adult Novel Writing, Alex?" I'm not sure web novels count as "young adult". Slime is actually classified as R-15, so it's probably aimed more at adult otaku who never quite grew up on the inside.
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Aug 30, 2015 20:34
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Caught up with Kumoko (ch 196 as of today), and it really, really makes me itch to play a dungeon crawler with tons of evolution trees. The author posted a blog thing around ch 130, saying we'd reached the halfway point, and I guess with all the insane power inflation lately, this little series could be over by next month or so.  Kind of unusual in a scene where everything seems to go on forever.
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Aug 31, 2015 21:30
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The Lord of Hats posted:Now it just needs a manga or anime adaptation. If Re:Monster and Slime Tensei could get them, it'd be criminal if Kumoko couldn't. Kumoko started 3 months ago, so it's a bit early for it to get very far into adaptation talks, I'd imagine. That said, it only took half a year for Kenja no Mago to get picked up by a publisher, and Kumoko actually just passed it in the yearly ranking...
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Aug 31, 2015 22:47
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Cynic Jester posted:No tense errors. This is actually an unfortunate effect of a weird quirk in Japanese literary prose, where the tense flips between past and present from sentence to sentence within a single paragraph. I've tried to discuss it with some natives, but they never know why it's used or what it signifies. My guess is that it's considered stale to stick to the same tense too long, or something. In translation it's probably sane to reformat everything as past tense, though, since we're so used to it.
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Aug 31, 2015 23:57
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Feels like I'll need some popcorn for ch150 reactions.
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Sep 7, 2015 21:23
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Adelheid posted:well, if they continue at the "three chapters a day" rate, we'll be seeing that tomorrow, so...! Sry, misremembered, it was ch151. 
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Sep 7, 2015 21:43
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Desuwa posted:Huh, I did bit pick up on that either and it's still not completely clear to me what happened. Well, to spell it out, in Kumoko ch131 we learn that all the parallel minds are off somewhere doing Strange Things that is meeting with resistance for one mind and going well for the others, and then in ch135 Kumoko bumps into the Spider Death Squad, which was sent out by Mother, who has "finally" realized she is being devoured from the inside. Kumoko then contacts whichever mind is in charge of attacking Mother (meaning other minds are attacking targets somewhere else) to get a location report. In ch153 it's further discussed that the (ongoing) process of devouring Mother is having distorting effects on Kumoko's psyche. Ch149 discusses the method somewhat. darkgray fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Sep 9, 2015 |
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Sep 9, 2015 19:01
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Desuwa posted:Huh, when I read 131 I didn't pick up on the minds controlling physically separate bodies. I thought they were just deep in thought/mediation and not paying attention to what the body was doing. No no, in Kumoko ch149 D says this attack is "system external", so there's no reason to think it has to be physical as Algid mentions earlier in the thread.
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Sep 9, 2015 19:13
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Algid posted:You assume that she would bother talking to people even if that happens. I haven't read past ch200 yet, but it seems pretty certain that Kumoko is the thin, creepy girl "Rihoko" sleeping in front of Shun in S1. Maybe you mean her real name, though. D seems most likely to be Sasajima Kyouya by process of elimination, but there's a gender issue there, I guess. Unless I missed him being reported dead.
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Sep 13, 2015 02:56
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Algid posted:There is another candidate aside from Rihoko, read the description of Wakaba Hiiro in S22. Er? Isn't she confirmed dead through sensei's weird magical list? Thought that was why her name came up in the first place.
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Sep 13, 2015 04:11
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I spent a couple of days reading the first five "volumes" of The New Gate, and it's not terrible. In fact, in terms of prose quality, it's probably in the upper echelon among web novels (which is not amazing praise, sadly). Storywise, it's a weird hybrid of Sword Art Online's (initial) "death game" and Overlord's "game turns into reality and all my NPCs want to gently caress me", where the prologue has the protagonist defeat the final boss and save everyone from a VR game, only for him to be stuck by himself in the game now transformed into true reality. It's unusually safe, even milder than Slime-thingie, without slavery for once, and no slobby sex anywhere (yet), so I can see it being easy to adapt into anime eventually. Sales for the light novel edition seem pretty decent as well. The only problem is that it can get kind of dull at times, because the protagonist is so ridiculously overpowered that tension is hard to build. Someone's translating it too: http://shintranslations.com/the-new-gate-toc/
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Sep 15, 2015 23:58
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Cipher Pol 9 posted:Jesus. Five new Kumokos today. I'm glad we got some answers but I did not see the rest of that coming. I wish my Japanese was better, but at the same time I'm glad I have more to look forward to each day. You still end up having to wait, though. Although at this rate, the translations should catch up with the original publication within two weeks.
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Sep 16, 2015 17:50
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Fleve posted:Does the Kumo author assume that we already know or understand what the hell is exactly going on with the take-over/eating mother thing? I feel like I missed a chapter or two somewhere, but as far as I remember the whole eating-thing was mentioned only twice and in passing. Hopefully the sidestory Remnants of the Nightmare will offer some more info. It seemed reasonably clear in the original text, so maybe the translation is muddling it up. Japanese happily omits the subject all the time, making it weird if you're not careful.
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Sep 17, 2015 20:44
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How's about you give us a hint about what you're spoiling?
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Sep 28, 2015 18:37
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I might have found a new favourite web novel! It's called Honzuki no Gekokujou and is the story of a 22-year-old librarian who literally drowns in books during an earthquake, but laments so not having read enough books in her lifetime that the gods (?) take pity on her and she's transplanted into the body of a sickly 5-year-old girl in a medieval fantasy world. Unfortunately her new family is poor townsfolk, and there are no books in sight, so she struggles long and hard to reinvent paper, ink and eventually the printing press, so she can fulfil her dream of surrounding herself with books again. Along the way her otherworldly innovation gradually raises her from rags to riches, as she climbs the social ladder and discovers at long last that there is in fact magic in this world. Unlike other reincarnation stories, this barely features any monsters or magic early on, and focuses instead on social aspects and economic development, with far more political tea parties than action-filled battles. It's been going since late 2013, gaining enough popularity to warrant the release of paper novels last year, and they have the most adorable covers:   As of today it's about 4 million Japanese characters long, clocking in at 8300 pages. When the 5th arc started last month, the author announced that it would be the final part of the series, but she expects it to be as long as the 4th arc, which was around 3000 pages long, so there's a fair bit to go. For comparison, Kumoko is currently at 750k characters and 2000 pages. A manga adaptation is in development as well, apparently. I don't know if there are translations of this yet, but I hope someone out there will get sick of the MMO stuff and take a look at this instead. Being written by a (married) woman and featuring a female protagonist makes it pretty refreshing after all the boyish action harem stuff.
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Oct 14, 2015 18:44
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In unsurprising news, Kumoko is the meanest drunk.
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Oct 14, 2015 19:38
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Adelheid posted:I cannot wait It's mostly Blood 21 where it gets proper crazy, so slightly longer wait.
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Oct 14, 2015 19:52
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Tamba posted:Thanks for the recommendation. If you have a Kindle, you can use Aozora Epub to drag Narou links straight into the application window and it will poop out a combined Kindle book file. Really handy for long reads. Just wish the Kindle's word highlighting software wasn't so insanely bad. Also, Honzuki can be pretty slow, spending hundreds of pages describing paper refining processes, so a spoon of patience is helpful. Still love it, though.
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Oct 14, 2015 20:09
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Tamba posted:I have one. The problem can be "solved" by sending the files to that amazon address that syncs them to your kindle. If you do that, it adds whatever is necessary for the kindle to know where the words end instead of always selecting the whole line. Uuuuh, sure wish I knew about this months ago. So much time spent trying to move those goddamn highlight edges. Doesn't seem entirely smooth to mail myself the same 21MB book every day when there's a chapter update, however.
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Oct 14, 2015 20:34
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I found a thing, but I guess they gave up immediately?
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Oct 14, 2015 20:41
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You assholes! Who the hell mentioned Kenkyo, Kenjitsu wo Motto ni Ikiteorimasu? Plodded through the entire thing, and it's wonderfully wonderful, hilarious and charming and cozy. Like the best shoujo manga turned inside out. It's just that when it started in mid-2013, the author posted 225 chapters on a daily basis over the first six months, yet since April of 2014, the remaining 20 chapters have randomly appeared with 1-2 month breaks. The very latest chapter 244 came out in July 2015, and there's seemingly been no sign of life from the author ever since. And the story has a bunch of miles left in it. This is as bad as getting addicted to HxH! Someone on 2ch mentioned that Kenkyo was even more of a popularity tornado than Kumoko is these days, in spite of the site having way less visitors back then. Still #2 on the all-time ranking for Narou. So good.
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Oct 20, 2015 18:22
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The Honzuki no Gekokujou manga adaptation started today, and the first chapter is up for reading on Nicovideo if anyone's interested. Might be more convenient to translate.
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Oct 30, 2015 20:17
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Second chapter of the Honzuki manga is out now. Wonder if they'll keep up a weekly pace. No translations yet?
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Nov 6, 2015 19:58
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jwang posted:Urrrrgh, the new translators for Knights & Magic are terrible. It seems like they're dumping it into Google Translate and posting whatever comes out. The original Japanese is really terrible, so maybe they just made it more accurate than previously.
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Nov 14, 2015 20:54
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Tamba posted:I've started reading Honzuki no Gekokujou now, and so far (up to ch 16) it actually seems to be easier than Kumoko. The writing is more novel-like instead of Kumoko's stream-of-consciousness, and there's no net/gaming slang. There's some uncommon vocab, but Kumoko also has a ton of that. Don't miss the side stories! Bit tiresome to keep track of when you're supposed to read them, though. Not sure you can do better than to keep an eye on the date they were posted.
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Dec 18, 2015 03:26
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Kumoko broke into the top 10 on Narou today. ._.
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Dec 21, 2015 17:41
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And now Kumoko got herself a manga as well.
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Dec 22, 2015 17:01
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jwang posted:Wow, that was quick. Kumo-chan manga is now being translated. I think anime for fall 2016 isn't too far off. We've already got Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! and Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu adaptations for next year, so I think the quota of Narou titles has been filled. Sorry.
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Dec 23, 2015 04:15
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Tamba posted:Still reading Honzuki no Gekokujou. While the details of the paper-making-process are probably accurate, the money system they have sure doesn't make any sense for a medieval world. I think it makes sense, given the circumstances. Lowly commoners don't really learn to count, so they'll inevitably use the simpler "3 of this type, 2 of that one" system, while the more lofty echelons of society have access to education and magic items, letting them get more, uh, theoretical in their monetary exchange. I can't tell how far you've got, but the disconnect between top and bottom rungs is kind of a Thing in this series. I demand that you like it more.
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Dec 24, 2015 15:01
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Tamba posted:I finished chapter 41, so she hasn't met any nobles so far, only the rich merchants. It's not bad, I'm just not impressed by the economic stuff so far, especially if you compare it to Spice and Wolf or Log Horizon. I only ever made it through the first volume of Spice & Wolf, because I thought it was some of the worst drivel ever, but it had more of a textbooky omniscient narrator regurgitating economic facts at the reader, while Honzuki gradually uncovers details about the world as Mein (sp?) climbs the social ladder and starts seeing things from a new perspective. This kind of "discovery exposition" appeals a lot more to me, and might be why I'm so fond of all these stupid reincarnation stories. IIRC, in Log Horizon, the protagonist basically starts out at the global level, so the economic zone of influence doesn't change all that much? Only vaguely remember it from the anime, though. Don't miss out on Kenkyo, btw.
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Dec 24, 2015 22:42
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