On Light Novels
Aug. 8th, 2018 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tbutlerThe topic came up in a comment thread on yhlee's blog, and rather than hijack her thread, I thought I'd get into it more here.
Light novels are another form of Japanese storytelling, closely related to (and often spawning) anime and manga. But just like anime based on manga is often missing large swaths of the original manga story, light novels usually cover a lot more plot than their related adaptations. For example, one of my favorite light novel series - Invaders of the Rokujouma - had an anime adaptation that ended at about volume 7 of the light novels... out of a total of 29 so far, with the main story looking like it'll end around volume 30. Or in other words, the anime ends right as the story is kicking into high gear. :)
(TVTropes has a fuller definition and a pretty long list of examples at https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LightNovels )
As literature... they're a mixed bag. While quite a few have now received official English translations, the translation quality ranges from 'quite good' to 'bad 70s kung-fu movie dub'. That can make it hard sometimes to judge the literary quality; some (like Log Horizon, another of my favorites) have lots of ideas, pretty good characters, and a pretty good plot... but the prose is pretty poor, and it's hard for me to tell if it's translation issues or just mediocre in the original. Others are quite readable, but have the depth of a pulp adventure story.* And then you've got the obvious wish-fulfillment drek - gamer gets summoned to another world by a pair of magicians with a control spell, but something goes wrong and they end up as his slaves themselves - and of course they're beautiful women in skimpy outfits. :p
*(Which brings up another point... while 'light novels' are often on about the level of YA fiction, for good or bad, 'light' doesn't actually refer to the depth of the writing; instead, it means the original Japanese text stuck to a relatively common and easy-to-read set of kanji and left out more obscure characters.)
A very popular genre right now, verging on glut, is isekai - literally 'another world', referring to stories where the main character(s) get transported to a different world, usually some kind of heroic fantasy pastiche. It's been done so often by now that they often feel quite generic, particularly the ones along the lines of 'we brought you here to fight a newly-arisen demon lord.' It's still possible to find interesting variations, though - How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom is a good example, where the summoned hero turns out to be a college student working to become a government bureaucrat, and his heroism is in figuring out how to prevent an oncoming famine.
Yen Press and J-Novel Club are the two U.S. translation publishers that I'm most familiar with; J-Novel has a pretty nice membership option, where subscribers can read new titles as they're being translated; and does monthly 'catchups' on series, where you can read all the published volumes online.
I first got hooked on LN's through a friend's manga/LN review blog, A Case Suitable for Treatment; I don't always agree with his reviews, but I enjoy them.
A few of my own favorite LN's:
Log Horizon: An entry in the 'fantasy MMORPG world becomes real' genre, Log Horizon was interesting for me because instead of telling your usual quest or fighting story, they focus on society-building - 30,000 people get dumped into a fantasy city where the only laws are a few game rules, and they have to work out how to actually live in a world where they can't just log out at the end of the day. Also notable for doing a good enough job of explaining MMORPG mechanics and tropes that I (who knew nothing about them) could finally understand a lot of my MMO-playing friends' discussions. :) As noted above, the translation quality is questionable; the anime version is two full 20+ episode seasons, which is actually long enough to give the story justice, so I'd recommend watching that first and coming back to the LN's to pick up the rest of the story.
Invaders of the Rokujouma: High school student has to find his own apartment after his father gets transferred to another city. This one was incredibly cheap because it was rumored to be haunted. A couple of days later, he meets the ghost. But as they're fighting to see who has to leave, someone dressed as a magical girl crashes in through the window, warns them that there's a huge mana pool in the apartment and that the evil magical girls will be attacking it at any time - so they need to get out of there, now! Over the next day, two more girls with increasingly over-the-top claims to the apartment show up... and just as all-out war is about to break out, the scary 'how dare you damage my building!' landlady demands that the competition be limited to peaceful means. Cue a cutthroat series of non-violent competitions, as the group is forced to get along and gradually start dealing with problems as they show up. Many if not most of the plot beats are fairly predictable, but the joy is in watching how they come together. It's not uncommon to see an unanswered question from several volumes back pop up again and get answered in a very satisfying way.
How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Another isekai, it reminds me a lot of Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. As mentioned above, the 'summoned hero' is a college student studying to be a bureaucrat; so his focus is on applying the things he's studied, and concepts common in our world, to raise the level of a medieval fantasy kingdom. Occasionally the 'one more' bits get tiring, but in general it does an enjoyable job of applying contemporary ideas to a fantasy world. A bit of warning, the author tends to be a little too fond of quoting Machiavelli.
The Magic in This World is Too Far Behind: Another hero-gets-summoned-to-fight-the-demon-lord... except that his two high school friends are summoned along with him. The story follows the male friend, who is a secret magician in our world... and now has to deal with a world where the study of magic is far less advanced than what he's used to. Very cynical by comparison to most of what I've read.
Lazy Dungeon Master: A lazy NEET gets summoned to another world... this time, by the sentient 'core' of a fantasy dungeon, who wants him to get rid of a set of bandits infesting her dungeon. Unfortunately, she's a bit of an airhead, and her summons used up almost all the magical energy she had, so he has very little to work with... and all he really wants to do is sleep. ^^;; Amusing look at things from the other side of the fantasy adventuring equation, though sometimes disconcertingly cold-blooded about what happens to the adventurers who try to enter.
yhlee's blog, and rather than hijack her thread, I thought I'd get into it more here.Light novels are another form of Japanese storytelling, closely related to (and often spawning) anime and manga. But just like anime based on manga is often missing large swaths of the original manga story, light novels usually cover a lot more plot than their related adaptations. For example, one of my favorite light novel series - Invaders of the Rokujouma - had an anime adaptation that ended at about volume 7 of the light novels... out of a total of 29 so far, with the main story looking like it'll end around volume 30. Or in other words, the anime ends right as the story is kicking into high gear. :)
(TVTropes has a fuller definition and a pretty long list of examples at https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LightNovels )
As literature... they're a mixed bag. While quite a few have now received official English translations, the translation quality ranges from 'quite good' to 'bad 70s kung-fu movie dub'. That can make it hard sometimes to judge the literary quality; some (like Log Horizon, another of my favorites) have lots of ideas, pretty good characters, and a pretty good plot... but the prose is pretty poor, and it's hard for me to tell if it's translation issues or just mediocre in the original. Others are quite readable, but have the depth of a pulp adventure story.* And then you've got the obvious wish-fulfillment drek - gamer gets summoned to another world by a pair of magicians with a control spell, but something goes wrong and they end up as his slaves themselves - and of course they're beautiful women in skimpy outfits. :p
*(Which brings up another point... while 'light novels' are often on about the level of YA fiction, for good or bad, 'light' doesn't actually refer to the depth of the writing; instead, it means the original Japanese text stuck to a relatively common and easy-to-read set of kanji and left out more obscure characters.)
A very popular genre right now, verging on glut, is isekai - literally 'another world', referring to stories where the main character(s) get transported to a different world, usually some kind of heroic fantasy pastiche. It's been done so often by now that they often feel quite generic, particularly the ones along the lines of 'we brought you here to fight a newly-arisen demon lord.' It's still possible to find interesting variations, though - How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom is a good example, where the summoned hero turns out to be a college student working to become a government bureaucrat, and his heroism is in figuring out how to prevent an oncoming famine.
Yen Press and J-Novel Club are the two U.S. translation publishers that I'm most familiar with; J-Novel has a pretty nice membership option, where subscribers can read new titles as they're being translated; and does monthly 'catchups' on series, where you can read all the published volumes online.
I first got hooked on LN's through a friend's manga/LN review blog, A Case Suitable for Treatment; I don't always agree with his reviews, but I enjoy them.
A few of my own favorite LN's:
Log Horizon: An entry in the 'fantasy MMORPG world becomes real' genre, Log Horizon was interesting for me because instead of telling your usual quest or fighting story, they focus on society-building - 30,000 people get dumped into a fantasy city where the only laws are a few game rules, and they have to work out how to actually live in a world where they can't just log out at the end of the day. Also notable for doing a good enough job of explaining MMORPG mechanics and tropes that I (who knew nothing about them) could finally understand a lot of my MMO-playing friends' discussions. :) As noted above, the translation quality is questionable; the anime version is two full 20+ episode seasons, which is actually long enough to give the story justice, so I'd recommend watching that first and coming back to the LN's to pick up the rest of the story.
Invaders of the Rokujouma: High school student has to find his own apartment after his father gets transferred to another city. This one was incredibly cheap because it was rumored to be haunted. A couple of days later, he meets the ghost. But as they're fighting to see who has to leave, someone dressed as a magical girl crashes in through the window, warns them that there's a huge mana pool in the apartment and that the evil magical girls will be attacking it at any time - so they need to get out of there, now! Over the next day, two more girls with increasingly over-the-top claims to the apartment show up... and just as all-out war is about to break out, the scary 'how dare you damage my building!' landlady demands that the competition be limited to peaceful means. Cue a cutthroat series of non-violent competitions, as the group is forced to get along and gradually start dealing with problems as they show up. Many if not most of the plot beats are fairly predictable, but the joy is in watching how they come together. It's not uncommon to see an unanswered question from several volumes back pop up again and get answered in a very satisfying way.
How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Another isekai, it reminds me a lot of Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. As mentioned above, the 'summoned hero' is a college student studying to be a bureaucrat; so his focus is on applying the things he's studied, and concepts common in our world, to raise the level of a medieval fantasy kingdom. Occasionally the 'one more
The Magic in This World is Too Far Behind: Another hero-gets-summoned-to-fight-the-demon-lord... except that his two high school friends are summoned along with him. The story follows the male friend, who is a secret magician in our world... and now has to deal with a world where the study of magic is far less advanced than what he's used to. Very cynical by comparison to most of what I've read.
Lazy Dungeon Master: A lazy NEET gets summoned to another world... this time, by the sentient 'core' of a fantasy dungeon, who wants him to get rid of a set of bandits infesting her dungeon. Unfortunately, she's a bit of an airhead, and her summons used up almost all the magical energy she had, so he has very little to work with... and all he really wants to do is sleep. ^^;; Amusing look at things from the other side of the fantasy adventuring equation, though sometimes disconcertingly cold-blooded about what happens to the adventurers who try to enter.
