Forum - View topicAnswerman - What's Actually Happening at Kadokawa?
|
Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
TheAncientOne
 Posts: 1946 Location: USA (mid-south) |
|
|||
|
Stating "After all, when an isekai anime is good, it's really good, and I will fight anybody who argues otherwise" and then mentioning "Delicious in Dungeon" immediately after, followed by two popular isekai titles gives the impression that DiD is isekai.
|
||||
|
||||
|
AnswerJerome
Posts: 34 |
|
|||
Yeah. Fair point. It's got Dungeons and Dragons in it, so my brain wants to refer to it as an isekai, and my hand didn't refuse the instruction. But yes. You are right. It isn't technically an isekai. It's bloody good though. |
||||
|
||||
|
Nate148
Posts: 656 |
|
|||
|
as a side note Kadokawa has there own Narou as they run Kakuyomu as well. The move to book also is linked with Haruki KADOKAWA getting nailed for doing coke and his brother Tsuguhiko Kadokawa (who had just left to form MediaWorks and was in charge of the books games and magazines side of Kadokawa before he left) was now made CEO.
|
||||
|
||||
|
GregoRoach
Posts: 13 |
|
|||
|
Allow me to speculate on something that I don't know firsthand, because I can't read Japanese... It's interesting to me that a website like Narou could've become anything, but because of a few standout titles and the feedback-loop style of the website and internet trends, it became the home of seemingly only a few major archetypes - magic schools, isekai, JRPG fantasy.
There's definitely something about the chapter-by-chapter release style that almost requires the use of familiar settings and tropes to gain traction, but I wish we were getting more unique settings and plots. I wonder what you could do to encourage that sort of writing while still keeping the free self-publishing style of Narou? |
||||
|
||||
|
AnswerJerome
Posts: 34 |
|
|||
I wrote about Narou back in January, and I attempted to answer some of these questions. You have more or less got the gist of it. Maximising engagement and turnover is a key responsibility for the editors seeking out hot new talent on the platform. animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2026-01-12/.232986 |
||||
|
||||
WANNFH
 Posts: 2080 |
|
|||
Popularity of works from Narou - like basically any self-publishing web novel fiction site - is the product of natural selection of the readers demand, and while ability to write the decent setting and plot is entirely on the writer's side - as long as the readers' audience not interested, you simply cannot enforce them what to read. Though if anything - after some years, Narou sort of expanded beyond just being the unending abyss of the cookie-cutter plots (but it still mostly remains the same) and the writers actually can put something different in the other genres as well - like you cannot think of something like Apothecary Diaries, Ascendance of Bookworm, Roshidere, My Happy Marriage or Kusunoki's Garden of Gods being brewed at the very same pot as your typical isekai #9001 - but they actually do. |
||||
|
||||
|
YagamiBlackstone255
Posts: 469 |
|
|||
|
I have a question. If you send a question to Dear Answerman do you have to put the question in the title of the Email? If you sent a question without doing that what should I do?
|
||||
|
||||
|
Keen Fox
Posts: 166 |
|
|||
You do not have to do that,you can do whatever you like though but since titles tend to be shorter please let me guide you. First, you might want your question in the main message. Personally speaking, you can have the title being something like "Regading Answerman(or the main subject)", or Hello Mr Answerman, or Hello Mr Jerome! and then have your question in the main message. If you like you can even have dots (...) I have sent my question asking about the troubles of the production of the third season of One Punch Man and it was featured here 
|
||||
|
||||
enurtsol
 Posts: 15208 |
|
|||
|
Narou/isekai has become Japan's superhero movie fatigue
|
||||
|
||||
|
maximilianjenus
Posts: 3114 |
|
|||
|
The biggest problem with Isekai ,especially with kadokawa's fast pipeline is that writers in naru, particularly the popular ones, are not professional writers ,they are just normal people who have a cool idea. So they go, write their cool idea and have a great first arc, but because they are not professional writers, most of them had.not planned beyond that.
So you get a cool setting or a cool first arc , then the story regresses.to normalcy, to become cookie cutter and generic, bw sue there were no extra plans. The earlier you adapt the story, the bigger the risk of choosing one like this is. Two examples Gunota: it's pretty cool, dude was a blacksmith in Japan, he was also a gunotaku. So when he reincarnates in a fantasy world with the second lowest amount of magic power, you know it will be interesting how he will leverage the creation of weapons to become an advanturer, you know he is not gonna be op, like Megumi h becomes obsessed with explosion magic, but I like her he is weak, he can only cause a small explosion, just big enough to substitute for gin powder. The fact that he does not start creating op guns , but instead starts with a revolver and then later is a huge deal when he does an AK-47. For no gunota, both are relatively simpler weapons mechanically. Then the dude does magic training, starts caring advanced weapons and the premise is borderline ruined and it b comes average Isekai slop.howndonyoy bet on this an d not lose? Shield hero.at the basics, It starts with betrayal and creating a character with trust related PTSD. Then it ,with great pacing build back his trust,not in humanity but in a sngle person. Not with a romantic interest mind you, but with a daughter figure. The intrusive thoughts make it the more interesting z you can have the worst thought and still push yourself to act decent.good first arc but after it mind of solves that it fails to keep the magic and b comes a generic Isekai with characters who had a great arc at first, but eventually degenerates to slop. Like the previous one, you bet on this one because the first arc was great, funny thing in this case the bet did not fail, because even if quality wise it was inferior, it changes into just the right type of slop that kept some viewers hooked. |
||||
|
||||
|
YagamiBlackstone255
Posts: 469 |
|
|||
Ah ok. I already sent an email with the title Hey Answerman, and I was terrified I wouldnt be read because I didn't put the question in the title. I put it on the main body of the email and I was scared because you can only ask once. |
||||
|
||||
Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10539 Location: Do not message me for support. |
|
|||
Don't do that. It's annoying, it's bad etiquette, and it's ineffective (ie: lower chance your email will be read). I delete every email sent to me that has a subject line "Hi Chris...." Your subject line should be the subject of the email. Since all email sent to answerman@... is about Answerman, it's redundant to put "answerman" in the subject. So here's a good example based on this week's question: "Kadokawa and Isekai," or "Is Kadokawa in Trouble?" Chris |
||||
|
||||
kgw
 Posts: 1539 Location: Spain, EU |
|
|||
|
All I know is that, after checking the manga sales in webs like Oricon or Shoseki and Twitter channels that Kadokawa releases A LOT of manga volumes that barely register in sales. I don't know if it makes a dent in their income, but surely it can't be good.
|
||||
|
||||
Jun12oto
 Posts: 4 |
|
|||
|
I miss the days when anime adaptations and even light novels themselves weren't adapting literal fan fiction from sites like Narou that have no barrier to entry and so anyone with an internet connection can write with no editorial speed running the becoming a writer process unfairly
There was bad stuff back then sure but literal fanfiction exploited because of how an endless abyss it can be sure puts way too [expletive] much amateur writing on display that it's too samey even as someone who doesn't like to use that critique and it all being so uninteresting as fudge |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group