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HiveCommander posted:This sounds like it has a lot of similarities with The Realist Hero's Kingdom Restoration Chronicles, in a way, I'll have to check it out. Whoa, back from the dead!
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Oct 7, 2016 15:40
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Hmm, Re:Zero just passed Kumoko on Narou's overall ranking, reaching #8. The anime has had quite the positive impact on its popularity there. Wonder if it can maintain it, given the complete lack of updates for over half a year. In the meantime, Tondemo Skill also managed to kick Shield Hero out of the top ten. Hard to see what makes it good from the 1.5 chapters I read, but it's getting a paper release soon, at least.
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Oct 30, 2016 23:09
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So, good news, bad news, and worse news! The good news is that I've found a nice Japanese web novel called Lapis no Shinzou, with perhaps the best writing I've seen on Narou so far. It's a "rising through the ranks" story in a fairly orthodox fantasy setting, devoid of summoning or game elements. Summarized, it's about an orphan boy with one eye who gets adopted by an assassin and raised in a remote forest, where she teaches him some ancient martial art that sounds like aikido or whatever. Once grown up he goes out into the world and joins the army, where heroic things happen, and women fall for him, that kind of thing. The tempo is unusually good, with nice balance between characterization, dialogue and combat, never lingering too long on one thing. It's somehow managed to get published on paper without even making the Narou top 300. Very enjoyable read at just over 1700 pages currently. The bad news is that there's no rape or slavery, so it's unlikely to be translated in the current web novel fan climate! At least I haven't found anyone bothering with it yet. And then the worse news is that the author got pneumonia or something, so he went on an extended hiatus, with the latest chapter having come out 1½ years ago, while the author himself hasn't made a peep in nearly a year. In short, it's about halfway through its story, and it might never be finished. Still worth it. Er, and in other news, Live Dungeon! is getting paper published, yay: http://kadokawabooks.jp/product/102/
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Nov 8, 2016 02:36
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I've read through what's out of Seirei Gensouki the past week, and feel like I enjoyed it enough to give it a mild recommendation, which is hard to reach in this day and age. It starts out with the standard reincarnation template, where the protagonist dies in a traffic accident and finds himself in a fantasy world inhabiting the body of a young orphan, where he's regained the memories of his former Japanese life. As par for the course, he discovers he has magical powers and is super amazing, saving royalty and going through magic school and befriending elves and finding soy sauce and all that, which is ... decent enough, I guess. But in the fourth arc, the author suddenly slams down another web novel template, creating a curious blend, that finally turns the title into something pretty good. It's also the beginning of a series of events that makes it impossible to think you're reading anything other than a ridiculous shoujo romance manga, with all the horrible clichés that come with it. It all culminates in a horrifyingly frustrating climax at the end of arc five, but while I use a lot of negative adjectives to describe it, the result is still unique enough in the web novel genre to make it stand out and keep you turning pages at a blazing rate, so it's a peculiar experience. Luckily it also has its share of rape and slavery, so someone's naturally deemed it worthy of translation: http://www.novelupdates.com/series/seirei-gensouki-konna-sekai-de-deaeta-kimi-ni/ As far as I can tell, the translations are coming out at a fair pace, and currently cover about 25% of the original material, which itself is still ongoing. At this rate, the fourth arc (where Things Happen) should appear pretty soon.
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Nov 29, 2016 03:48
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:just say what the big twist is. you and i have very different tastes in garbage fiction and i'm not gonna read that. Eh, if you won't read it, I don't quite see the point in spoiling it, but oh well. Spoilers for Seirei Gensouki arc 4: The gods summon 6 Heroes from another world -- obviously Japanese teenagers -- who are granted divine weapons. By accident, powerless "civilians" in their vicinity also got dragged along, one of whom turns out to be the protagonist's childhood crush. The interactions generated by the differences of growing up in that world and just warping in are interesting. Plus convoluted romantic developments.
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Nov 29, 2016 04:11
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Jackard posted:Dude between your avatar and this thread in general, nobody gonna read four-five arcs of trash for some nebulous payoff What's the avatar got to do with anything? Someone anonymous (?) randomly bought it for me, along with a dozen other people. And why are you even visiting this thread if not to dive into the garbage heap?
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Nov 29, 2016 17:54
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Oh my loving god. https://myanimelist.net/news/48858757
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Dec 7, 2016 13:49
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Death March was very low on my list of probable anime adaptations, what with all the brothel visits. TenSlime seemed a more likely candidate, given the sales it's been getting. Suddenly even an Arifureta anime seems possible, in spite of the endless loli sex. Dark times await us.
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Dec 7, 2016 14:51
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:uh, where did you get that that person, later on... is being animated? If you use bold or a link to the novelupdates page, it's easier to figure out that you're talking about an entirely different title, rather than just commenting on the post above yours.
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Dec 8, 2016 23:59
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:fair enough, but Never having heard of "that person, later on...", I assumed you were talking about the main character of Death March, which is being animated. So maybe that.
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Dec 9, 2016 00:19
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Zwingley posted:Got a question for folks who have actually done fan-translations or edited them. It does happen that the narration will include (?) to show that there's a general doubt whether the thing in question is worthy of the name, kind of thing. As an imaginary clichéd example, let's say a girl makes lunch for her boyfriend, but she's oh-so-terrible at cooking, and what is handed over is more like a piece of goo, then the narrator may call it a "lunchbox (?)" in order to show that maybe it doesn't really qualify, even if the girl insists that's totally what it is. In the case of Mahouka, I can try to look at the original Japanese text to see if it was introduced in the translation or not, but I'll need a page number and some surrounding context / sentences to figure out where it's from. Note that page 123 in the English version won't be page 123 in the Japanese, so it's not enough with a number on its own.
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Dec 23, 2016 22:34
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Maybe it helps to know that Mahouka was originally a web novel published for free on Narou, and some of the quirks rampant there probably remain in the paper edition.
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Dec 23, 2016 22:56
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Speaking of former Narou web novels, has anyone heard something about a title called Kimi no Suizou wo Tabetai (君の膵臓をたべたい == I'd like to eat your pancreas) ? I've seen it top the sales charts for a year now, and it's apparently sold nearly 700 000 copies, which is absurd. Looks like there'll be a movie adaptation next year as well. Was surprised to see on Wikipedia that it started out on Narou, until some author discovered it and pulled strings at a publisher or whatever. Edit: Oh, looks like there's some sort of translation on-going, http://www.novelupdates.com/series/i-want-to-eat-your-pancreas/
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Dec 24, 2016 00:49
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The Sandman posted:So, the list of the top ten LNs in Japan last year was interesting: From what I understand, this is just a single Akihabara bookstore's sales ranking, so it's not quite "in Japan". The data from Oricon is probably more universal: Light Novel Sales by Series *1. *1,417,661 Kimi no Na wa. *2. *1,174,562 Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! *3. *1,020,673 Sword Art Online *4. *1,007,381 Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu *5. **,711,154 Overlord *6. **,602,256 Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei *7. **,562,187 No Game No Life *8. **,450,791 Monogatari Series *9. **,449,192 Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka 10. **,435,482 Kokuhaku Yokou Renshuu Series 11. **,422,569 Boukyaku Tantei Series 12. **,380,144 Hai to Gensou no Grimgar 13. **,361,088 Sword Art Online: Progressive 14. **,294,478 Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken 15. **,292,746 Bungou Stray Dogs "Dazai Osamu no Nyuusha Shiken" 16. **,287,728 Saijaku Muhai no Bahamut 17. **,282,826 Kimi no Na wa. Another Side: Earthbound 18. **,282,077 Netgame no Yome wa Onna no Ko ja Nai to Omotta? 19. **,281,195 Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index 20. **,256,782 Haikyuu!! Shousetsu-ban!! 21. **,236,127 Kagerou Daze 22. **,225,229 Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! Spin-off 23. **,195,199 Ansatsu Kyoushitsu 24. **,185,710 Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru. 25. **,181,314 Ensemble Stars! 26. **,180,275 Imouto sae Ireba Ii. 27. **,174,175 Orange 28. **,168,542 Gakusen Toshi Asterisk 29. **,163,829 Rokudenashi Majutsu Koushi to Akashic Records 30. **,162,562 Date A Live
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Jan 6, 2017 14:32
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11. *9,297 *,*34,026 Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou Vol.5 We are so doomed.
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Jan 6, 2017 22:25
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Namtab posted:There's 18 volumes?! 18 isn't so bad. Both Bookworm and Re:Zero are over 10000 pages, which would fill 30+ volumes at the usual size. Although they're admittedly more pleasant to read.
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Jan 13, 2017 21:52
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:well, it has the slaves tag so it is almost certainly bad Practically any story that takes place in an extensive medieval world will have slavery, so that seems a bit unfair.
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Jan 30, 2017 00:15
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Law Cheetah posted:ironically, i'm reading 1633 now as well and i'm pretty sure it actually takes place in 1634 It's like how the 20th century actually takes place in the 1900s.
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Feb 10, 2017 22:26
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Errrr, somehow they went and released Saihate no Paladin in English all of a sudden. The first volume was unusually well written for a web novel, so it could be worth checking out the translation.
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Feb 16, 2017 23:18
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Most of the annoying parts of Subaru's personality slip away after about 3000 pages, so just hang in there. It gets better. Eventually.
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Feb 17, 2017 16:24
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Earlier this week, the author of Honzuki (Bookworm) announced that they were in the planning stages for a drama CD, and today she announced that Maine's story was finally -- after 3½ years of writing -- complete, although there's still some epilogue stuff to come. Checking the PDF version, it clocked in at 11389 pages. Might pass over 12k if you include the side story chapters she moved off to another page. Wonder if we'll ever see it animated.
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Mar 10, 2017 13:01
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I think in part it's just the pendulum swinging back from a decade of light novel protagonists who were silent and took it, or something. People are probably just tired of the frustrating waiting part until the protagonist finally overcomes his internal issues or whatever.
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Mar 11, 2017 00:58
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Arkeus posted:But they didn't? Like, this is a big myth, but LN protagonists always were wish fulfilment in big measures. "Silent and Took it" usually ended up meaning "had girls falling over him", and half of them actually had pro-active protagonists, though some of them arguably didn't. But even then, it was "I want girls to love nice guys (tip fedora)". Eh, I was talking about power levels, not romance. Pretty sure most battle LNs were about underdogs overcoming the odds, and so on, and if they did have immense powers, it'd take some kind of struggle to discover new facets to defeat the opponent. Romantically, many of the web novel writers seemingly realized that they could have their cake and eat it too by setting the harem in a fantasy world, so now all their readers can "get with" their favourite girl and not feel slighted. It causes some kind of inflation, though, because in order to keep up a semblance of "will-they-won't-they" tension, the author has to introduce more and more girls for the hero to dazzle, and the harem just grows unrestricted in some cases.
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Mar 11, 2017 16:04
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Knight's & Magic trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFdtq1FjE4s Airs this summer, apparently. Bit peculiar that Rie Takahashi is a primary character in KonoSuba, Re:Zero, and this, with them all being Narou web novels.
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Mar 16, 2017 12:38
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Ytlaya posted:Is there any place I can find the LN character drawings (or any sort of official character art) for Kumoko? Google image searches aren't helping me much. I found one picture with images of Shun, Sue, Julius, and the elf teacher, but it would be nice to have an image of some of these other characters like the Sword Emperor guy or Saint girl (I'm at the part where they were just introduced). There are scans of the novels on Nyaa that probably include illustrations, if you can be bothered to look through them. The official book website also has some character headshots: http://kadokawabooks.jp/feature/kumo/
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Mar 20, 2017 23:21
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Er, this feels incredibly sudden, but that smartphone thing is getting an anime in July: http://isesuma-anime.jp/
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Mar 21, 2017 12:55
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Well, I just finished reading Honzuki no Gekokujou (Ascendance of a Bookworm) and can report that it was extremely good, so you can feel secure in enjoying the next 650 chapters or so. Admittedly I kept way too high a reading pace on the home stretch, nearly burning myself out on it, so the finale felt somewhat stretched, being nearly as long as the entire first arc (70ish chapters), but it all wrapped up well. The author has also promised to write more side story stuff eventually, so who knows long it'll truly end up being, though.
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Mar 25, 2017 01:06
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How are you translating うふふん anyway? It's pretty much her iconic thing. It's also a thing that made it super weird reading the author's account of her dinner date with the manga artist, because it was written exactly like a Bookworm chapter, making it extremely obvious how much of an author insert Maine is, thus explaining why she's such an ultra Mary Sue.
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Mar 29, 2017 20:50
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Meme Emulator posted:Yea, that works 90% of the time but I dont know how you avoid translation notes when the story needs to make a point of the specifics of junior/senior relationship between the characters. Its just not a relationship that exists in any great capacity anymore in the west, especially now that apprenticeships are all but dead. You just rewrite it cleverly to make all the senpai bullies, and the kouhai their victims.
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Mar 29, 2017 23:33
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Bakanogami posted:Starting part 3 of Ascendance of a Bookworm and it's starting to look like this is going to need a big chart of all the character's family trees and relationships like Game of Thrones needed. The list of characters expands pretty dramatically as the story goes on. The finale of arc 2 is amazing. I was a wreck, though. Edit: Btw, there is a huge and complicated relationship chart out there. Pretty rabid fans for this series. Not to mention the big wiki with 314 characters and their affiliations listed. Includes spoilers, though. Edit 2: Don't miss that she started posting side stories on a different page once part IV began: http://ncode.syosetu.com/n7835cj/ darkgray fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Apr 2, 2017 |
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Apr 2, 2017 17:43
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Bakanogami posted:I know, right? The last bit of part 2 utterly destroyed me. I meant this monster: http://goo.gl/Fx7BzV Or this: http://i.imgur.com/ZKI7dIT.gif But since they were updated as the story progressed, they spoil a bit. Edit: This is the wiki, for future reference. darkgray fucked around with this message at 13:17 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 13:02
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Bakanogami posted:This series is seriously so good. I'd been planning to spend the weekend playing Nier or Breath of the Wild but I just can't put Bookworm down. Hmm, I actually think it takes a big step up in part 4, but it's also reminiscent of some other big fantasy series, so I've seen complaints about it as well. It seems to be where it started becoming really popular, at least. Edit: Oh yeah, they're doing some campaign thing this week where they let you read the entire manga for free: http://seiga.nicovideo.jp/comic/18228 Just make sure you turn off the comments, to avoid massive ending spoilers by idiots. Kind of fun to see what the world looks like. darkgray fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 15:02
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Ytlaya posted:I will never stop being confused that no one other than blastron has translated Honzuki. It is one of the top ranked web novels and dramatically superior to most of its peers, yet somehow it goes relatively unnoticed despite 37 different slave harem titles being translated. Like, what kind of trash taste does a person have to have to see something like Shield Hero and think "mm yes, good stuff" and then see Honzuki and go "ehhh." First of all, Honzuki is basically a shoujo title. It's got a female protagonist, is written by a woman, and even got the shoujo manga label stamped on it on the manga site where it's published online. Narou is primarily a male-targeted site, so it's pretty natural that it gets buried under all the slave harem there, at least. Consequently, it was hovering around #50 on the ranking until it finally completed, which put it high on the "completed works" tab on the ranking page, and it's shot up to #24 now, but it's still relatively minor compared to many other titles. This isn't directly tied to why nobody translated it, but it explains why it was fairly obscure, at least. Second, you have to realize that translating is Really Hard Work, unless you just dump it into a machine translation gizmo and pretend it's done. It takes balls to pick up a title that's 12000 pages long, and each chapter is nearly 4x the content of, say, Kumoko's. It means that even if you just nibble through one chapter at a time, it's still a heavy time investment to get something out there. Not everyone is excited about that kind of commitment. Third, a lot of people who tried reading Honzuki probably gave up within the first few chapters, because the protagonist is undeniably unpleasant and selfish in the beginning. Once you get past that, it makes her growth as a character that much more impactful, but you can't really blame people for moving on to the next thing instead. Supposedly this is why the author decided to run a campaign opening up the manga freely for a week, since it's easier to forgive Maine when she's so adorably drawn. Anyway, in regards to writing so much, the Honzuki author actually developed RSI and had to take a long break over the summer on orders from the doctor to let her arms heal. It's also pretty common for people to write a bunch of stuff as a buffer, then release the piled up chapters daily over a period, because it seems to boost the rank better, as it climbs up on the daily and weekly charts, catching more eyes. Then they take a longer break to repeat the process. Readers can only rate the very latest chapter posted, so many authors go for shorter but more frequent updates to boost the total points that way. Partly explains why Kumoko was so successful.
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Apr 8, 2017 00:21
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LibrarianCroaker posted:I'm surprised to see Kenkyo so high. Different tastes and all that, but I personally think it's better than Honzuki. Perfectly executed.
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Apr 9, 2017 17:22
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Ytlaya posted:Is there anything else that fits into the same "shoujo version of an isekai story" genre (edit: and is good)? I also enjoy Kenkyo (one of literally a handful of Japanese WNs I like), though not quite as much as Honzuki (I think because Kenkyo priorities humor over plot, which is fine but I tend to enjoy more plot-focused things). As mentioned, there are so few foreign female fans of the genre that nobody seems to bother translating, I guess? One of the better ones is Kita no Toride nite, about a fluffy little fox girl, but the English release pace is fairly hopeless. On the other hand you also have stuff like Heikinchi, which is ridiculously popular, already up to #13 on Narou's ranking. It's pretty much a blatant take on the "omg im so stronk" genre, except done by a woman. Probably. Didn't excite me much personally, but might be worth having a look at to see the other side. I think one issue might be that the female-targeted stuff often tends to be short stories, and as such they don't get the time/views necessary to build up the points to hit the ranking like the long-running serialized titles. There's still tons and tons of it, plus an entire sister-site dedicated to just lady porn (mostly BL and whatever).
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Apr 9, 2017 20:40
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Uhoh, blastron, guess all that work was for nothing.
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Apr 15, 2017 19:59
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Tamba posted:But that's the LN, blastron is translating the web novel version. Er, that doesn't seem entirely important to me. Anyway: https://twitter.com/Hello_itsWendy/status/853285847327686656 https://twitter.com/Hello_itsWendy/status/853288376736206849 https://twitter.com/Hello_itsWendy/status/853289013481885696
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Apr 15, 2017 20:04
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Tamba posted:It means that Yen press probably won't be able to send a C&D to blastron, because they don't have the rights to the web novel version. It seems reasonable that they could at least nudge the original author to complain, though. Or something about trademarks. In the end it's more about how blastron would feel about clearly undermining the author's economical situation, I guess.
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Apr 15, 2017 20:15
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Argas posted:Man, there's nothing else that can help me with my Bookworm fix is there? If you can read Korean (I'm sure some people here do), there should be an official translation out for early Honzuki volumes.
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Apr 16, 2017 20:16
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