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Ytlaya posted:Wait, what, really? It seemed like they were only on chapter 20 something last I checked. RZ arc 4 is 130 chapters + a few interludes. Maybe the translations just haven't been posted on Novelupdates or something. Pretty impressive if they've made it through 3000 pages in six months, though.
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Apr 25, 2017 00:32
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The author has said she will start posting epilogue chapters about Hannelore on the 28th, I think. Series of 10 or so.
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Apr 26, 2017 05:17
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Hmm hmm, so I've practically run out of popular web novels to check out on Narou, and rather than scraping out the very bottom of the barrel, I reached for the porn pile over at Nocturne (Narou's R18 site), and I found there to be titles of surprisingly high quality. I'd go so far as to say that some are as good as anything you can read on the regular side. Not just in terms of prose, but plot planning and character depth also felt strangely out of place, given that I came in expecting nothing more than sordid sex scenes. Admittedly among the dozen or so works I've gone through, I've yet to find one that doesn't contain rape in some form, but I guess that's Japan for you! On a positive note, there seems to be a lot more variation in setting on Nocturne, whereas the regular Narou ranking only seems to feature isekai stuff. I was particularly impressed with Kyokuchi Renai (Romance in the Extreme?) about 5 youths who end up on an uninhabited tropical island after a shipwreck, and have to figure out how to find enough food and water to survive day to day. It quickly turns into human drama with romance and mystery and quite a bit of darkness. Kind of slides from comedy to thriller as they explore more of the island, and I'm not entirely sure what this thing is even doing on the R18 side of things, because I doubt the erotic bits even cover 10% of the content, and they're relatively mild. It was completed back in 2013 or so, eventually getting published on paper in 2015, but nobody seems to be bothering to translate it, unfortunately. In any case it's an interesting example of what Japanese web novels can be outside of the mainstream. Edit: The author is writing a new series now that has recently started getting translations, but I haven't read it yet myself. darkgray fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 01:44
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Are harems really that outrageously unbelievable? In the real world there seem to be women who are willing to be a married man's mistress, even if it means having to share him with his wife. Plus, the girls in R:Z aren't even human, so god knows how rigid their preferences are, given how many primates share mates. Not that I'm advocating polygamy, but there should be room in fiction for some kind of theory that says we are monogamous due to culture rather than biology. Either way, if you absolutely can't stand the idea, just stop reading web novels altogether right now. You can't avoid it anywhere.
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Apr 29, 2017 00:42
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sunken fleet posted:A man who has multiple partners is media shorthand for shitbag in like everything books, movies, tv shows, hell even harem anime usually have some foil character to the MC who actively pursues multiple women just to show off how much of a not-shitbag the MC is. Whether it's realistic or not is debatable and incidental imo. Being a macho-alpha male who women fawn on is generally portrayed as a positive character trait but at the end of the day there is an expectation of monogamy for a protagonist character. There's a reason the protagonists of harem media are always unrealistically dense - it's because if you have a character who is trying to seriously pursue a relationship with 5 different women he's the bad guy 99 times out of 100. Like with very very few exceptions that's not the guy the author wants you rooting for - that's the flaky loser the hero compares favorably to. Are we discussing the same thing here? My response was to Ytlaya crying about how girls can't possibly accept polygamy, and I tried to give some ways to suspend disbelief when reading fiction. And have you actually read a web novel? They're all (as in 95%) about guys transported into fantasy worlds. Fantasy world means nobility, and nobility means multiple wives. They all feature this poo poo. The Japanese web novel portal Narou is a new kind of in-bred culture wave all about giving no fucks about "media shorthand" and giving in to their deepest desires to gently caress all the cute little girls they could ever want forever and ever, and it's fine, because it's fantasy land. Light novels and their high school romances are a thing of the past. These new isekai web novels are flushing everything else out of the market. Enjoy!
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Apr 29, 2017 04:03
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Ytlaya posted:And Subaru is a person from our own world, so he can't use that world's customs to justify him choosing to openly pursue both girls. Eh, this seems incredibly stiff. In R:Z arc 3 Rem outright tells Subaru "I'd be fine with being your secondary wife" and that she'll persuade Emilia about polygamy which is probably what planted the seed in Subaru's head in the first place. Note that this was somehow cut from the anime adaptation, so maybe your confusion stems from not actually bothering to read the novel. And this is kind of what I'm trying to explain. These stories are always constructed this way, for the reader's desires, by setting up a world where polygamy is something normal and decent. It means the girls all grow up with it as an acceptable alternative, and mostly end up being the ones to push it onto the poor protagonist, whatever his internal moral qualms may be. I don't really know where it started, but Narou is a very strange place, where authors practically cannibalize each other's stories in the hope that theirs will become popular too. It's exasperated when some authors seemingly have never read a novel outside of Narou, so the stories get conformed in the strangest ways. In the case of harems, some of it may root in the popularity of something like Mushoku Tensei (big title spoiler), where the author managed to manoeuvre his story into a place where polygamy was somehow inevitable, and it's convinced even female readers as being the best outcome (going by comments). Now clones spring up eternal. Even in female-oriented web novels like Honzuki no Gekokujou (another title spoiler), there are girl characters willingly entering into polygamy. Your rape analogy is pretty funny, because on the porn side of Narou, the most common way to initiate a romantic relationship seems to be to rape the girl first, and then she'll eventually just like it so much she'll fall in love with you. Wish fulfilment truly knows no bounds.
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Apr 29, 2017 14:52
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Autonomous Monster posted:I dropped Mushoku Tensei around the point the author decided it would be really cool to drop all the fantasy adventuring and political scheming and do a high school arc instead. Which is a distressingly common plot trend in this genre, to be frank. I'm starting to think that WN authors are, like, loving magnetically attracted to school life stories. And RPG mechanics. And goddamn adventurers' guilds. I might kill someone the next time I see a story with adventurers' guilds. Not a jury in the land would convict me. Well, there's a ubiquitous web novel template, see. It goes a little something like this: An unremarkable high school boy (that's you, reader!) is abruptly summoned into an old castle, where the beautiful young princess of the land tells him they need his help to save the world from being destroyed by the evil demon king. Her fat counsellors see how unremarkable he is and sneer, sending him out with no aid, to find his own way. He stumbles into town, happening upon the adventurers' guild, where he is informed that since he's a newcomer, he will have to start at rank F, hunting goblins or picking herbs, like the local children. Joined by a surprisingly pretty girl who luckily joined the guild the same day, the two set out on their very first quest, but are assailed by a mighty legendary dragon, which the boy manages to crush in one blow, to the utter shock of the pretty companion, who comments how impossible that feat was. The boy returns to the guild, where he is greeted by the guild master in a backroom, and is instantly ranked up to S status, only gained by the most epic of ancient heroes. The guild master, in his wisdom as a veteran, sends the boy and his now girlfriend to the national academy of magic, to hone their latent skills. At the academy, the boy must take an entry test, which results in all the mage elders being stunned as he scores an unheard of 200%, and is immediately placed in the special class. This class is otherwise filled with nothing but the noblest of noble heirs, who ridicule the boy for his shabby outfit and lack of manners, with the very highest ranking student deciding to make the boy the new bully victim for his posse. As the boy proves to be unusually skilled regardless of his hazy background, the pompous noble can no longer stand to let him impress the remaining students, and challenges him to a duel. A new pretty female student rushes to the scene, and angrily tells the pompous guy that as her fiancé he should show more grace than to pick on the weak, and she apologizes profusely to the boy, which only angers the pompous noble even more. The duel ends up taking place in an arena, with the entire student body and all teachers looking on with bated breath, as the boy seemingly invents entirely new magic to defeat the pompous noble, in spite of him having been top student all years prior. All of a sudden, gangs of masked men rush to the scene, attacking the school, grabbing the noble girls in an attempt to kidnap them! But our protagonist manages to fight them off, rescuing the pretty female student just as she's about to get raped by the now enraged pompous noble. In his fury, the pompous noble laughingly declares that the boy is doomed, for his father the powerful royal counsellor has set up a plot to overthrow the kingdom, killing the king and marrying the princess to take all power for himself, meaning the entire army will come after the boy. Flying off with a magic item the boy receives from the dying arch chancellor of the academy, he and his two girlfriends rush to the castle. They are too late to save the king, but come upon an ominous ceremony, where the boy manages to wrest the princess out of the fat counsellor's arms before he can kiss her and seal their marriage. Slightly dazed but overwhelmed by the courage and prowess the boy has displayed, the princess falls madly in love, and against the wishes of her kind uncle, she joins the boy's group on his quest to defeat the demon king. The troupe sets off in a magic wagon, fit with revolutionary suspension that makes it such a comfy ride, and they visit the elven forests for exquisite bows, the dwarven labyrinths for orihalcon swords, and some random village for rice. At some point, the boy invents this crazy dish called sushi, and his by now five girlfriends exclaim wild praise, in spite of having to eat raw fish. Showing extreme kindness and completely new approaches to magical thinking, the boy eventually succeeds in uncovering dormant powers within all the girls, boosting their combined party level to unthinkable heights. Once they reach the demon king's fortress, they are faced with his four greatest lords, and forced to fight them one by one in incredible battles that no mere mortal from home could have even imagined. Finally at the gates of the demon king's throne room, the doors open to a tiny girl, who looks up at him incredulously, and introduces herself as the ancient demon king, but all she ever wanted was the boy's love, which is why she set this entire plan in motion. The other girls are so moved by her story, that they embrace her as a sister, and scold the boy for even hesitating, and demand that he lets the demon king join his harem, and they all live happily ever after. Er, that went on a bit longer than I'd planned. In any case, all the Japanese web novels seem to follow this pattern in some manner. Not sure where it originated, though. darkgray fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2017 00:10
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UberJew posted:the weird thing for me with the isekai stuff is i've seen avogadro's number of wns about 'summoned hero to defeat the dark lord, except with a twist~' I can't think of a title I've read that follows the "traditional" template route ending with an ultimate demon king battle, although there are some that start in the post-final battle world, kind of like an epilogue story. The title that pops up in my head when I think of ticking the most template boxes is probably World Teacher, but it isn't very good. Might be a fun introduction tour, though. It has reincarnation and exotic cooking and guild quests and "original" spells and magic academy and dungeons and inventions and travelling and arena tournament and a harem with elves and princesses and slaves, at the very least.
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Apr 30, 2017 03:04
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The anime for In Another World With My Smartphone sure looks exciting and hot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6APaRV_mXgg
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May 3, 2017 16:34
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The Sandman posted:The best isekai story is KonoSuba. I dare you to prove me wrong. I must have read about three dozen of the things by now, and I still think Mushoku Tensei does it best. Only seen KonoSuba animated, though.
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May 4, 2017 21:03
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Ytlaya posted:Mushoku Tensei is not good. Like, I guess you could say it's good within the sub-genre of "bad isekai web novels with harems and OP protagonists", but that's not exactly glowing praise. I don't really think you're qualified to criticize the quality of the writing when you've been reading machine-translated summaries or whatever it is.
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May 4, 2017 22:28
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Ytlaya posted:I'm talking about writing more in terms of plot, characterization, etc (and you can also sometimes get some sense of quality of prose even if the translation is poor). Also, if you're referring to the Re:Zero quick translations posted earlier, those are actually surprisingly good. I would put them in probably the top 5-10% of WN translations I've read, simply by virtue of the fact that the translator is obviously a fluent English speaker (which is more than I can say for a lot of WN translations, which I have a hunch are translated by ESL people). It goes both ways, though. People here tend to praise Honzuki as good, but blastron is making significant changes when he's translating. The writing of the original, as prose goes, is pretty second rate for Narou. MT doesn't exactly have strong prose, but it's clear and concise, and very engaging. It also has some of the most distinctly unique character voices I've found in web novels, even if most of that probably gets scraped off in translation. Plotwise it might come a step under Re:Zero, but then it doesn't get dragged out to all hell as much, plus Re:Zero suffers from a weak 5th arc (which I'm guessing you've yet to read) and extremely poorly written battle sequences that are just painful to read. MT also manages to develop a vivid world with very little blatant exposition, which happens to be one of Honzuki's strengths as well.
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May 4, 2017 23:27
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I guess it depends on how many rates you divide it into. I've read stuff I'd class as fourth rate.  http://ncode.syosetu.com/n5115cq/ and http://ncode.syosetu.com/n4006r/ both read significantly better in my opinion. Much closer to what I expect from a regularly published novel. The first one is being translated by j-novel club while the second seems to be going unnoticed still.
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May 5, 2017 05:56
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The MT ED arc is ~500 pages, and R:Z's 4th arc is 3500 pages, so...
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May 5, 2017 15:14
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The author released the cast list for the upcoming Honzuki drama CD, and Miyuki Sawashiro is to play Maine. Other actors include Takahiro Sakurai, Mai Nakahara, Masumi Asano, etc. Now give me an anime, pls.
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May 10, 2017 15:02
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jon joe posted:I've already read it, but I don't think it meets my criteria (not to say it isn't a good story, though). Her "power" is her earth knowledge, which is unique and overpowered in the context of the story, and is pretty clearly THE reason she's successful in any way. The reason it's a good story anyway is the knowledge being incomplete causes her as many problems as it solves. It's just not the story I'm looking for. Does Kenkyo Kenjitsu count? She has no powers or anything, since it's just the regular world. Not much of an adventure as such, mind.
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May 15, 2017 19:26
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jon joe posted:Then I'm thinking action stories are probably a no-go. People don't seem all that excited about drama when it comes to web novels. Not sure why exactly, but maybe it's difficult to write a longrunning drama story, and if they're short nobody has time to take notice. On top of that it's just hard to find translators for things, more so when they're not popular to begin with. The closest Japanese web novel I can think of is Nikubenki, which is probably a human drama at heart, but it's also highly pornographic. Then again, almost all the dramas set in the real world seem to be posted on the adult site. You're probably better off looking for light novel translations instead, since the genres are a bit more varied there. Stuff like Golden Time, Toradora, or Oregairu?
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May 15, 2017 22:04
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New trailer for Knight's & Magic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4gSzsfTsFA Looks like they're spending money on the visuals, at least. Rie Takahashi has managed to be the main character in 3 WN adaptations already, and the boom has barely started yet.
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May 25, 2017 16:32
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Someone finally started translating one of my favourite web novels, yay: Lapis no Shinzou
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Jun 2, 2017 14:08
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New trailer for Isekai Shokudou, which apparently starts in about two weeks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7DuhSollYQ Currently ranked #13 on Narou.
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Jun 17, 2017 14:57
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Getsuya posted:Edit: and actually it looks like part 3 will have a 5th LN. And after that there's still parts 5 and 6. It's a good thing they're coming out pretty steadily because it's looking like a few years before this ends. You mean parts 4 and 5? The web version is completed at 5 arcs. For what it's worth, arcs 1-3 combined cover 41% of the content (ignoring side stories), so she's not even halfway through the paper publication yet. Might end up around 30 volumes by the time it's all over. She's currently writing spin-off/gaiden chapters about other characters. If it helps, I think it keeps getting better, and arc 4 was probably my favourite. Hopefully she'll have time to rewrite the rushed finale for the LN edition.
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Jun 21, 2017 16:10
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nielsm posted:I was going to make a comment about there being no arc 5, but it appears arc 4 of the WN just recently was split into approximately half. Previously arc 4 counted chapters 278 to 677, now it's arc 4 as 278 to 460, and arc 5 as 461 to 677. Er? Where are you getting this info? It's always been 5 arcs when I've checked, and going back with Archive.org it seems to have been 5 arcs as far back as 2015 when those chapters first started coming out.
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Jun 21, 2017 16:16
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blastron posted:I'm planning on translating all the WN material I can find in the order that it came out. I know there's a spinoff page on shosetsu for side stories that gets started in Arc 2; is there anything else? The author has a bunch of setting / jargon explanations at http://ncode.syosetu.com/n4099cd/ As for her name, I tried looking through German pages of babynames, but nothing seemed to fit "Mein" or (arc 3) "Rosemein", so I never reached a conclusion.
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Jun 21, 2017 16:45
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nielsm posted:Main's family: Eva (mother), Günther (father), Tuhri (elder sister, this one's hard since it doesn't really match any of my experience with Germanic or Nordic names) There's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuuli_(name) which sounds extremely similar, but might be too far from Germany. Argue posted:Wouldn't those be Delia and Hugo? Yeah, in my mind, at least.
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Jun 21, 2017 17:28
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nielsm posted:Second you're entirely right on... first I think either can work. I don't think I've heard anything quite similar IRL. Um, it's not that unusual, surely? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delia
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Jun 21, 2017 17:46
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I know we've all been waiting for this to happen, but here it finally is: Shield Hero anime announcement, wup-wup!! Trailer to show up in July.
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Jun 22, 2017 14:00
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For those of you who have been reading ahead on Honzuki, the author has written a three part report from her experience with the drama CD recording session: http://www.tobooks.jp/booklove_dramacd/ Contains mild spoilers for arc 3, though.
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Jun 22, 2017 16:23
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Bookworm continues to take over the world, now announcing that there'll be a Taiwan published edition: https://twitter.com/TOBOOKS/status/879512848673587202 Might be useful for some of you.
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Jun 27, 2017 17:55
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Getsuya posted:Hopefully it's okay to plug my own translation here. I'm translating a short (2 volumes) hard(ish) SF LN series called The Cat's Globe. It is about cats and robots and reads like Watership Down meets golden-age English SF. It's written by the dude who did Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu. I read that ~3 years ago, and wrote this "review", if anyone wants more details: --- Finished reading Neko no Chikyuugi by Akiyama Mizuhito last night. It's a two-part sci-fi light novel taking place many hundreds of years in the future on a space station orbiting the earth, inhabited by a society of (genetically?) evolved cats with a special whisker antenna that enables them to communicate via radio waves. It also allows them to control the ancient robots left behind by the original human population, now only vaguely remembered as "angels", since they all perished in some cataclysmic event. And so what makes this unique is that all the characters are cats. Well, and robots, to some degree. The author explains that he was inspired by Galileo and his dispute with the Church, which is reflected in the station being ruled by religion. Its beliefs state that the soul of a good cat will ascend to the Earth Globe, purified by sacred flames. Standing up against this is the secret order of the Skywalkers, who instead carry the conviction that you can reach the Earth Globe without dying, and have performed scientific experiments alone for generations, while struggling to evade persecution. Before eventually getting killed, they always entrust this accumulated wisdom with a retarded android girl, who is told to hide in an unfindable place, until the next brave cat is ready to take up the mantle. This is obviously where our main character comes in, a young black cat armed with the supremest intellect of all time, with a burning desire to build himself a rocket that can take him to the promised land. The story also revolves around a white cat, the greatest of all Spiral Divers, who's obsessed with fighting the ultimate cat, in this gladiatorial sport of zero-gravity duels, fought alongside mind-controlled robot partners. The two inevitably become rivals, of sorts, linked together by an excited brown kitten, who worships the Diver as a hero, but is drawn to the curious new ideas of the Skywalker. So, well, that's the setup! Probably the longest I've described so far, but it's sort of amusing with them all being cats, and having such an upside-down view of space. I actually bought the books many years ago, but always hesitated to read them, as the language is littered with technological, biological and physics terms. Even now, after 10 years of Japanese, it's still a struggle to get through, since the prose is very heavy on details. Guess I should challenge myself more. It's an interesting read that tries not to take sides, about characters who can't give up their dreams, and the consequences it brings. Mostly it's just very unusual to find a light novel (or anime even) that isn't about humans, which by itself almost makes it worth picking up. However, weighing in general enjoyment, I must confess I appreciate the effort more than the experience. There are too many parts where it gets bogged down in details, and while I'm sure the (quite brutal) battles are exciting, it's very hard to visualize them, making it all a bit murky. Maybe if I revisit it another 10 years from now. Akiyama's highly regarded Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu has been animated, by the way. --- Hopefully not too spoilery.
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Jun 29, 2017 15:01
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What about just getting one of those free (?) Wordpress blogs at https://wordpress.com/start/delta-blog ? Or do they have annoying ads if you don't pay.
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Jun 29, 2017 21:52
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Feels like we've reached maximum web novel penetration now that an episode of anime showed the Narou ranking page (and posting stories):
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Jun 30, 2017 04:55
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjezREyZI2U
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Jul 3, 2017 17:05
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There are samples of the Honzuki drama CD on Youtube now, although the illustration is kind of spoilery (late arc 3), and technically the spoken lines spoil some stuff as well, but still! http://www.tobooks.jp/booklove_dramacd/contents_07.html
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Aug 5, 2017 01:29
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Getsuya posted:I'm a little burnt out on Honzuki (I love it but man it's a slow slow burn sometimes) so I've been looking around for other series with a good level of adorable and world building. I just started up Death March Kara Hajimaru something-or-other which appears to have a pretty cute cast. Kita no Toride nite fits adorable, at least. Maybe world building too. Kenkyo Kenjitsu is adorable, but not fantasy, so there's no particular world building. Mushoku Tensei and Lapis no Shinzou have good world building, but are not all that adorable.
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Aug 18, 2017 18:37
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Great news, everybody: Arifureta has overtaken Kenkyo on the Narou ranking as all-time #2 and is now objectively better!
darkgray fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 22:57
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I'd completely missed there was already a trailer for the January anime of Death March: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NzZvYIyb0c Sure looks, uh, pretty. Oh yes. (yes, Rie Takahashi is in the cast)
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Oct 15, 2017 14:56
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Yay, Bookworm is #1.
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Nov 25, 2017 13:08
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I would appreciate if people were kind enough to use spoiler tags for massively huge plot reveals like that. Please? I can't really keep up with every web novel in existence.
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Nov 26, 2017 11:47
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Oh dear. The world must be ending.
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Dec 2, 2017 16:17
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