Club: The Light Novel Reading Club 17585x

I don't mean to be an ass, but when writing long posts with lots of quotes, could you please use quote tags? That improves readability by leaps and bounds. I went ahead and (ab)used my club owner rights to edit your post and convert your quotes of me into proper quotes because it was triggering the autism I didn't know I have.

Anyway, long post is long and I'm sort of pressed for time, so I'll just keep a tab open and reply tomorrow or whenever.

They started with the wrong definition, said that there would be too much exceptions with those and then introduced the other definition. I specifically wrote brand instead of publisher to include those other types of publishing, too. Those LNs released at Comiket by Doujin Circles are definitely LNs even when they are self-published. (I even have some lying around here.) I'm not so sure about wether I would define WNs also as LNs, but I'm not too interested in them to begin with. I can't say that I've ever seen anyone on 2ch, futaba or twitter define them as such either. (The only WNs I'll have on my Backlog are the ones from sonzaix, because of the LNs he's writing as Carlos Zen.)


There are plenty of LNs with a higher difficulty, older Dengeki Stuff, plenty on Gagaga overall those tend to be less popular and don't get Anime Adaptions and don't run for 10+ Volumes. For example people complained how 犬と魔法のファンタジー reads more like a Novel and not like a LN (at least I think that means they thought it's not as easy as expected), or I've also read how people thought 非公認魔法少女戦線 was hard to read and that is a new'ish one on Dengeki. I've heard people compare the prose in 筺底のエルピス to Masada's works (Dies Irae, KKK) and so on. Sure a lot of people just want something easy to read from LNs with moe girls, but that isn't everything LNs have to offer.


Anything written after WW2 is for me modern literature and I'm including also non-contemporary works (contemporary works should be a bit easier though). The reason is that while before WW2 there where already works written in modern japanese there where enough changes in the language due to the american occupation to make a distinction. (Maybe not right after WW2, but a couple of years after? Like from the 50s onwards, since 人間失格 was written in 1948 and that's still classic literature for me.)


Maybe it's not the best word to describe it, I meant words like 萌死, 令呪 and 宝具. (Yes, I do know that the last two are not from a LN, but they came to mind since I'm currently re-reading F/SN.) I don't think any of those did catch on or are really used outside their respective works.


I'm sure that most japanese kids can read more kanji than what they learned in school so far, maybe they can't write them but that doesn't matter here. Like 俺 is fairly high on the list, but any kid reading shounen manga should know that one long before they learn it in school.


Nah, just experience from reading a shitload of japanese and I guess people posting text ages on twitter and so on. To be fair besides some jouyou I don't have a clue in which category most kanji would fall, since that information isn't necessary to read and understand the text itself.


I know, Japan had even back before any of the changes a higher literacy rate than the US which thankfully meant they couldn't force any stuff beyond what they did.


Anything that isn't looking like this anymore:
其泣状者青山如枯山泣枯河海者悉泣乾是以惡神之音如狭蝿皆滿
So works written in modern japanese. I don't think that there is that much prose written in old japanese anyway.


It's just one of those things that get's brought up a lot when discussing difficulty of light novels and people just go b-but normal literature is super hard for even natives. I've never heard from anyone that they are using a dictionary for literature in any of my social circles when they actually know the language, but that could just mean that I usually hang around people where it's like that. I can at least say if someone would say that they need to do something like that with their native language I would likely stare at them with blank eyes.


Exactly, but other media doesn't have works that are at the level of Dies Irae, KKK and Albatross. Eroge tend to have more Kanji than other written works in general, too. Well most of them are easy to read. SubaHibi for example isn't hard to read from a language perspective, but it's still harder to understand than others.

Which reminds me that with Novel Zero there is a LN brand that is aiming at people in their 30s. There's also Media Works Bunko who are aiming at people in their 20s.

I guess when sticking to popular stuff it's quite possible to never get confrontated with harder to read LNs, but they exist. I mean the bestseller books in the west tend to be easy to read, too. There's also the thing how people are less likely to drop a book that is too easy to read than dropping a book that is too hard. Overall there is a ton of overlooked LNs and I feel like there are still plenty of treasures to be found.

Still I'm fine with any prose as long it's fun to read for me. I really like Ero-Manga Sensei or Shomin Sample and those are easy to read. Shomin Sample is something I would highly recommend just because they author is really having fun with his text. This came in a chapter after they where talking about yuru yuri earlier for example: .

Edit: I took some random photos of pages at the beginning of books that I had lying around. I've probably could find some better examples when actually looking through my collection... so likely not proving anything and just posting it, because I already put in the work.

I believe it very much claimed otherwise. Also, you can publish LNs outside LN brands; you can self-publish LNs on the internet. Does manga published on the internet cease to be manga due to not being on a manga magazine?


Not sure what LNs you have been reading but that isn't what I've been seeing. There is a reason people are given specific types of books to read in school in specific years, and LNs are marketed heavily at middle schoolers (also at high schoolers, but you'd expect that a high schooler can read anything a middle schooler can).


For clarity's sake, what definition of "modern" literature you are working with? Please state it in of a date or something that can be easily converted into one (historical event, time span, etc), and also the reason you are using that definition. In particular, please clarify whether you mean the word in the sense of "contemporary".


Neologisms aside, that really does not describe what you can find in LNs; when it does, it comes in readable ways. That's literature aimed at people still learning the jouyou kanji, you know. I hope you're not talking about the somewhat large set of actually fairly common hyougai kanji (or worse, any of the jinmeyou kanji set, which is generally actually really really really common). By the way, neologisms aren't "hard" words; if they were, they wouldn't catch on and nobody would bother introducing them into languages.

You probably know that post-WWII Japan tried really hard to simplify the language by cutting down on the kanji required for literacy. You may also know that that attempt was a spectacular flop. They've been backpedaling on it since then and are still doing it even now.


How far back are we talking about here? I'll note that they study the classic language at school as well, which dramatically improves the ability to read older stuff. Japan also enjoys the dramatically advantageous position of being able to just update the kanji (or, more automatically, the readings) of older text the way we update spelling; I'll also note that the way many classics were written would be closer to Old English (which looks less like Modern English and more like what they might speak somewhere in the general vicinity of Vega) than to Middle or Early Modern English (for general reference, Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English; Middle English basically gave way to Early Modern English with the Great Vowel Shift in the 15th century). Well, I'm sort of pushing it with the OE comparison, but you get the idea, right?


I don't know where you saw anything about adults; at least here, the discussion was on middle schoolers. With that said, average adults do need a dictionary to fully grasp standard literature in pretty much any language of the world, but that's because people are too used to literature on the difficulty level of Harry Potter. Or maybe I'm just biased.


I suppose that depends on the eroge you're talking about. Is it plot with porn, porn with plot, or porn without plot?

>It actually is. A light novel is not and will never be defined by length, illustrations, or any such. That is a very big, very common misconception right there. So common, in fact, that many even in Japan believe it.

That's exactly what the article said though. It literally said the only real defining factor is that it's published by a LN brand and not all those other things.

>The "light" in "light novel" refers to the difficulty level of the words, and in particular of the kanji, in use. [...] because the language is intentionally kept simpler than in standard literature.

That is one of those common western misconceptions, the only thing that would make LNs easier to read is the amount of furigana otherwise the difficulty of the language itself is all over the place. Modern literature is easier to read than LNs, since they usually don't use obscure words, neologisms, fancy stylistic kanji etc. in general those works aim to be read by as broad a target group as possible. Classic literature can be a bit harder, but thats mostly due to archaic words and some kanji that aren't really used anymore (for those the furigana are usually enough to know what they mean). It only made me laugh when I heard that people here think that the average adult natives would need a dictionary to read literature.

There are plenty of LNs that are quite difficult in their language, those just tend to be not that popular. Well not that any LNs can compare what Eroge has to offer when talking about difficulty. Funnily enough Mareni is releasing a LN next month, which even when he is holding back should be of a higher difficulty than standard literature.

It actually is. A light novel is not and will never be defined by length, illustrations, or any such. That is a very big, very common misconception right there. So common, in fact, that many even in Japan believe it.

The "light" in "light novel" refers to the difficulty level of the words, and in particular of the kanji, in use. They are generally meant to be readable by people at a middle school student level without forcing them to run to the dictionary at every second page. That is why Kyoukaisenjou no Horizon, being the ridiculous doorstopper it is, is nevertheless a light novel, while hard-to-read works are not, even if they measure 300-ish pages per volume and have LN-style illustrations. Not because of some silly imaginary exception, but because Horizon fits the definition just fine. That's why so many foreigners who don't really know all that much Japanese can read LNs without wanting to make themselves taller: because the language is intentionally kept simpler than in standard literature.

The whole idea that page count and illustrations can define a literature format is so silly that it falls apart under basic scrutiny. Self-publishing has been a thing for a very long time; Japan has a word for that and it's "doujinshi" (which, unlike what people seem to think, does not mean "derivative work"; while many self-published works definitely are also derivative works, many others are not, and derivative works may be published the traditional way as well). Web manga is also a thing, and it's still manga even if you adamantly refuse to publish it on magazines. If we assume, for simplicity's sake, that all web novels adhere to the simpler language of light novels, they are similarly just self-published light novels, although they have no page count to speak of (being published on websites, rather than on paged formats) or illustrations (most of the time); indeed, unless strictly necessary (e.g. when a WN is later republished in print with changes that cannot be ignored), the distinction between paper LNs and WNs is quite silly.

To drive the point home, I'll give you a silly example to work with. I can take any the freaking Romance of the Three Kingdoms, split it into however many volumes I need to make it approximately 300 pages per volume (should be about 6), give it some manga-style illustrations, and publish. That does not turn a classic of the Chinese literature into a light novel. If you argue that it's not a Japanese book, okay; let's do it with any Japanese hard-to-read classic of your choice. To reiterate: rather than a publishing format, light novel is a literature format.

On the contrary their definition isn't full of all those western misconceptions about Light Novels that usually get thrown around. Obviously there are plenty better articles about Light Novels, but those also tend to be in japanese only like http://matome.naver.jp/odai/2140717491204383601?&page=1

A whole article about what a light novel is supposed to be that is filled with pointless padding, when not outright garbage, and starts by defining LNs incorrectly. On ANN. Why am I not surprised.

Pretty good article on LNs:
http://anidb.livresgratuits.org/feature/2016-10-19/what-a-light-novel/.107843

I'm told that he's pretty consistent despite the insane pace. How he does that is a mystery.

http://anidb.livresgratuits.org/interest/2016-09-07/a-certain-magical-index-kamachi-has-written-a-novel-a-month-for-24-months/.106210

Crazy. An editor's best friend?

Anyone know if the quality of any of his works has suffered?

I only listening to Audiobooks when i was a kid in german and those had all those things. After looking it up Audiobook is refering to both, but it's more common that it's just a book read by someone. Never had much interest in checking out western Audiobooks, so I'm only familiar with japanese Drama CDs and that's mostly due to how a lot of them are just extra's to games/light novels etc.

Still interested in seeing what they'll do. Even if i won't buy it, but it's not like I'm part of the target audience anyway.

Not any I've listened to at least. They've been purely the book read by an author or other professional. Then again, I've never listened to any English spoken ones, only Swedish ones, so they might be different. I don't know.

That's been my general impression of the word Audiobook, while Drama CD fits the whole "voice acted-sound effect-music" criteria more.

But yeah, we'll see whether they mean a localization of a Drama CD, or something they themself produce, however they do it.

Wait Audiobooks don't have music, sound effects and voice actors? Weird.

I meant it sounds like they are just adapting an light novel into audio-form and not producing a localized version of a Drama CD.

^ It's possible that it is just Audiobooks and nothing more, indeed. But the fact that they're using music, sound effects and voice actors makes me believe that's more than just a simple Audiobook, and it definitely sounds more like a typical Drama CD. But we'll see what it ends up being.

The wording makes it sound like they are producing Audiobooks of Light Novels and not localizing Drama CDs. I don't even know what Drama CDs would be feasible to localize, considering how most of them are just side-stories of something and not stand-alone. I mean yea they are a nice extra and i don't mind paying 1200 yen instead of 600 yen for a Light Novel volume to get them, but i don't think that's what a western publisher would aim for.

http://anidb.livresgratuits.org/news/2015-10-10/vertical-to-release-audio-light-novels-in-spring-2016/.94027

It sounds like Vertical are gonna start releasing Drama CDs from the looks of things. Question is if they will purely be audio books with English voice acting, or if they'll also include a video file and/or script with the original Japanese voice acting.

Yeah, emoticon parsing is broken.

It seems a lot of bbcode works in 10 different ways across the places where it's supposed to be deployed.

Intended, or did you actually want an emoticon there? Cause in the club desc field itself, it seems the emoticon isn't parsed.

Hi, everyone. Welcome! Help yourself to some tea, grab an armchair and a volume from the shelf, and get reading! Alternatively, gather everyone together for a discussion on a light novel of your choice.