Light Novel Discussion Thread

KurokamiDG

Well-Known Member
Sekai Game is very fun.

Just being a humorous and clever twist on the whole 'Trapped in a Video Game' genre makes it interesting, but Souma and the rest are legitimately fun characters.
 

AJ_Katon

Well-Known Member
Azure said:
Talking about SAO, just finished the new book in his new Series called the Isolator which has an official translation. It's basically a pretty basic super hero story, but I liked it since it reminded me of Accel World in some places, specially in the MC. The novel surprisingly likes to spend a lot of time with the villains, which was a nice change of pace from say how SAO originally did it, and I like how the MC doesn't feel as perfect as Kirito did back in the day. Having our hero be limited to a power that only protects him forces him to be creative in his fights. Even though it's not something to the level of Jojo, I loved reading about how the hero and the villain were constantly thinking about how to beat each other.

Like I said before the MC reminds me of Haru from Accel World, and I hope that fighting as a hero from here on out will help him get over his depression and forget about his goal of basically erasing everybody's memories of him. I guess I kind of like that, right now the MC is not that heroic, but one day he might become one with the help of others.

I guess in the end the Isolator was a nice LN, a nice replacement for Anti-Magic Academy which got DMCA-ed and thus won't get its last two volumes translated ever. Really why did they have to kill my favorite LN just when it had gotten a horrible anime adaptation, just thinking about it makes me feel depressed.
You can buy the ln on rightstuf.
 

H-Man

Random phantom.
So I just read volume 6 of No Game No Life.

So it's basically where the animé ended, minus three volumes' worth of content. And man is this thing thick and full of content.

I like what was told, even if it's a tragedy. And now the story will completely proceed from this point.
 

Azure

Well-Known Member
AJ_Katon said:
You can buy the ln on rightstuf.
You mean the Anti-Magic Academy novels? Someone actually gave them an official translation?
 

AJ_Katon

Well-Known Member
Azure said:
AJ_Katon said:
You can buy the ln on rightstuf.
You mean the Anti-Magic Academy novels? Someone actually gave them an official translation?
Sorry. I meant isolater. AMA might be there. Check yen press or vertical to be sure.
 

T.L

Well-Known Member
I don't think that anti magic has been released in English yet. 
I think that it only got DMCA'ed around xmas time.
But if you look on google volumes 1-11 are easily found. 
There are only 11 volumes out so far I believe.
 

MastaofBitches

Well-Known Member
Just finished reading the KonoSuba Light Novels, and it's good stuff. I'm not really sure why people get annoyed with Aqua's antics, it's not like they get worse or anything, plus she's usually off to the side while the main heroine of the arc does stuff.
 

MastaofBitches

Well-Known Member
Finished KonoSuba Vol 10, Iris is adorable and needs more screen time.
 

AJ_Katon

Well-Known Member
MastaofBitches said:
Finished KonoSuba Vol 10, Iris is adorable and needs more screen time.
Link to them pretty please?
 

MastaofBitches

Well-Known Member

AJ_Katon

Well-Known Member

MastaofBitches

Well-Known Member
Good. The more people who buy them, the less likely they are to stop translating them.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
Recently stumbled across this web novel,

I Appear to have been Reincarnated as a Love Interest in an Otome Game

Translation link = https://kudarajin.wordpress.com/reincarnated-love-interest/

It got me so hooked that I went on a binge reading spree. What attracts me the most is that the protagonist isn't a complete relationship idiot like in some other light novels. The basic premise is that he got un-willingly sucked into an Otome game that he guided his sister with. And his impressions of the game are that the lead heroine wasn't worth a damn. Instead, he liked the 'evil' antagonist. Interestingly enough, he (as prince) starts of engaged to her. A lot of the story is about him trying to KEEP the engagement. The game version, the heroine need to interfere with it, but damn, our hero's good at chopping down flags.

In the latter half of the story (volume 1) we get exposed to a few potential 'reincarnators' and divergent consequences of changing routes.

I'll warn you lot, this is a VERY WAFFY tale. And I like it for that. :) Volume 1 closes a lot of the story threads and leaves a few things hinted for Volume 2, but for me, it ties things up well.

-chronodekar
 

AJ_Katon

Well-Known Member
To those that like Toradora, good news.

http://www.sevenseasentertainment.com/series/toradora-light-novel/
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Getting somewhat into the game now, since I have lots of free time on my night shifts.

Read KonoSuba volume 1. I understand the first 2 anime seasons + movie only covers the first 5 volumes, so I'll overtake them soon.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
And now finished KonoSuba volume 2. It was interesting to see the 'Kazuma switches places with another team for a day' storyline I heard about that wasn't in the anime.
 
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chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
And now finished KonoSuba volume 2. It was interesting to see the 'Kazuma switches places with another team for a day' storyline I heard about that wasn't in the anime.
Now, I'm hoping they animate that. Sounds like something I'd like to watch.

-chronodekar
 

MastaofBitches

Well-Known Member
Now, I'm hoping they animate that. Sounds like something I'd like to watch.

-chronodekar
It's super wholesome, because Kazuma fully expects to just be carrying bags and the like. Instead, he learns the basic magic spells, some other useful adventurer skills and ends up saving the party, and being genuinely complimented and treated with respect.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
MoB has it mostly right. Kazuma has Basic Magic and some adventurer skills like Chris' thief skills learned prior to the events of the chapter. Everyone in his new party including himself expects him to just be a porter since he's 'the weakest class' Adventurer. Kazuma then proceeds to carry the show with clearing out a goblin mob and saving them from an expected tough monster appearance with Sense Foe, Ambush, and Basic Magic, showing off the versatility of his class. Meanwhile, the guy he traded spots with for a day, expecting a harem comedy, is panicking to get away from the useless female trio.

I can see why it was cut, especially with that annoying '10 episodes per season' thing. It isn't integral to the overall storyline. All that's lost is a bit of context with some of Kazuma's bar buds.

Anyways. I read Death March to a Parallel Dimension, the first light novel. I see daniel_gudman was reading the web novel back in the day. The first novel is...kind of a little on the tell-y side? Then two-thirds through it jumps from a kingdom world-building story to a dungeon crawler. The protagonist even lampshades that. I'll stick with it for another light novel and see if I care to continue or drop it.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Death March to a Parallel Dimension LN #2. I will drop the series here, before I hit any sunk cost fallacy. The writing is passable, but the characters are pretty boring. The first half of each novel is basically the MC, Satou, travelling the first city he arrives in, spending money, and encountering females. Almost exclusively females. I think there may have been 5 named male characters in that entire stretch besides the MC, only one who has any real plot relevance. But tons and tons of females. The people he goes shopping with. The slaves he rescues from a demon-possessed master. The female knight. The female innkeeper and her daughter. The female attendants of the female knight. The female merchant. The other female slaves he buys since one of them is also a Japanese reincarnation. On-and-on. In his first battle when Satou transmigrates, where he uses his one-time cheat to kill a bunch of lizardmen and dragon, he acquires several million gold coins. A gold coin is enough for a commoner's monthly living expenses, so he spends fairly freely. And spends, and spends, and spends. Like, there are multiple entire chapters where he goes to the marketplace and buys clothes, and books, and jewelry for the girls, and meat and treats for himself and everyone else, and hygiene items, and more meat and treats, and so on.

Also, that first encounter of his leveled him up to level 310. Yet he actually gets a little bogged down in fights against enemies who are around...level 50ish? That really throws off my suspension of disbelief. Satou has a very powerful cheat on its own (access to a game-like menu, which lets him analyse objects and people for information, gives him full view of maps with fog of war cleared, infinite storage space, and able to edit his name, profession, level, and skills that are displayed to others, so while he's level 310, he displays as level 10), so the need to make him a staggering level 310 seems really bizarre when he's underpowered.

Oh. So a couple of interesting things (but not interesting enough to keep me from dropping it). The isekai world mostly mimics medieval Europe with its culture, and something that gets mentioned a few times is the whole 'marry them young', where the female knight, unmarried at 19, is looked at as being weird (Satou is of course repulsed by this). But something that shows up here that doesn't in these other types of novels is that there's also a very 'simple-mindedness' to almost everybody's way of thinking. The other thing is that the villain of the 2nd book is another transmigrator. He started out human but eventually became a lich, and when he wants to die, he can't kill himself, and needs to set up a hero for him. I found it kind of neat, because it's very rare to see a non-MC reincarnate who actually ends up becoming evil over time.


Anyways, I also read Konosuba V3. The anime actually translated this very faithfully. There were a couple small things I noticed here and there, but nothing I could remember off-hand after except that Dust spends a night with Kazuma in prison prior to the trial. Well. That, and Yunyun's yunyuns aren't quite as well-endowed in the LN illustrations. Or maybe it's the same, but she doesn't have the boob window in the LNs.

 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
Death March to a Parallel Dimension LN #2. I will drop the series here, before I hit any sunk cost fallacy. The writing is passable, but the characters are pretty boring.
Sounds like something a good fanfic author might be able to fix.

The first half of each novel is basically the MC, Satou, travelling the first city he arrives in, spending money, and encountering females. Almost exclusively females.
Perhaps not. You might be able to fix this by adding some OCs but ... it's going to be hard.


Also, that first encounter of his leveled him up to level 310. Yet he actually gets a little bogged down in fights against enemies who are around...level 50ish? That really throws off my suspension of disbelief. Satou has a very powerful cheat on its own (access to a game-like menu, which lets him analyse objects and people for information, gives him full view of maps with fog of war cleared, infinite storage space, and able to edit his name, profession, level, and skills that are displayed to others, so while he's level 310, he displays as level 10), so the need to make him a staggering level 310 seems really bizarre when he's underpowered.
I can understand why you would drop the story. This sounds like the kind of idiotic drama that's inserted for the sake of drama without actually thinking things through. -_- -sigh-


If you didn't tell me this was Yunyun, I would not have guessed it. Well, I _might_ have guessed it was someone role-playing her, but not the actual character. Looks like the anime made a few changes. Hmmm... I like reading Kazuma + Yunyun pairings, but my head-canon? It's the anime Yunyun.

-chronodekar
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Read Konosuba LNs 4 +5

The anime is mostly faithful to Volume 4. It does toughen up Hans at the end of the Alcanretia arc for dramatic value. Notably, Kazuma never actually dies in the book. Megumin is mentioned to have turned 14 at the start of Volume 4 or just slightly prior to it, and even mentions at one point how Kazuma has dialed up the sexual harassment to her, hah!

I was actually surprised at just how many flags these two novels planted towards the KazuMin ship. Surprising, considering there are 17 LNs, so I thought it would have been a little more slow burn.


The movie makes a few changes from Volume 5, which it's based on. The big one is that Sylvia is killed with Komekko's launching the cannon. There's no second phase (and with that, Kazuma doesn't die in this book, either). The Crimson Demon Clan is the Crimson Magic clan in the books. Then there's a few smaller things that are changed up or moved around. The scene at Megumin's school doesn't happen, and the meeting with Arue and the other two Crimson Demon girls takes place at the end of the book. Megumin's scene with Kazuma at the end occurs while they're still at the Crimson Demon village, instead of after they've returned home. When Wiz teleports the party away at the start, she teleports them to Alcanretia because she set it as a teleport point due to the hot springs (which...probably won't help much now that they're made of holy water), since The Crimson Demon village is past Alcanretia. I mention this because the movie omits a short camping scene with Kazuma and Megumin at the start of the book, and short third night where Kazuma and Megumin are sleeping together in her bedroom. In both cases, she has a cute romance flag-triggering line, which I really wish made it into the movie. Another flag line? Megumin realised Kazuma let Sylvia gain access to the Mage Killer (Aqua mentions that he can read Japanese characters), and Megumin considers her Explosion skill as her helping Kazuma clean up his mess, after he's helped her clean up all her messes.

Other than that, there's a few things that make more sense in the book because the movie failed to mention the context. For example, when Kazuma gives a bunch of food to Megumin's family? It's because those buns were food he bought from the stalls in Alcanretia, because the party didn't even have time to unpack after getting home from fighting Hans, so he still had them in his luggage. When Kazuma uses his Freeze spell on Megumin's window, he overloaded it with MP, so he doesn't have anything left to fight Sylvia with besides trying to stab her with Chunchunmaru.


Also, I mentioned how Yunyun's yunyuns aren't anywhere near as large in the LN illustrations. Two more examples.



 
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