Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Haven't Light Novels And Visual Novels Caught On In America?
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2418 Location: Germany |
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VNs are a software and tend to be put into the video game category but they usually feature no gameplay. Clicking A or B to chose a path doesn´t really count, so most gamers will immediately scratch their heads. Hybrids as Ace Attorney, Snatcher or 999 are clear cut video games in the end, so they are easier to process and get behind from the get go. One can also easier market and present the VN adaptations as Jason said. Most VNs are also niche products in even Japan.
I am aware of the exceptions but these are/grew into a multimedia bonanza. Reading blocks of text for 20+ hours in front if your home monitor and having someone translated all of that is an undeniable problem too. Portable VN´s though should help to ease all sorts of problems. Reading on the go is way more feasible and most carry their smartphones at all times, so the future should be bright enough. I am actually not a fan of all sorts of popular VNs, Fate/stay night managed to nearly put me to sleep, but that´s neither here nor there. LNs are young adult books by (near) default and most teen readers i meet would never touch a "picture book". I recently held a Death Note LN next to a late grade-school reading level book and similarities in terms of the simple writing and high reliance on short/conversational sentences were immediately noticeable. I am hardly the first to say something similar (Twilight has better prose -NOT story!- than your average LN...) and most LNs are low risk manga/anime pitches anyway. It´s also again easier to just license the manga/anime (first) and at least the German book market isn´t set up for LNs in general but that would be too complicated to explain. I actually think that LN adaptations tend to be better than the source material on principle but that´s neither here nor there. Yeah, this one is kind of impossible to answer "right" and most importantly alone. Even a round-table discussion with licensees and distributes, with survey based studies @ the ready, would have a hard time to reach a consensus. I am lastly not sure how "mainstream" manga and anime currently are in the "West". Let´s flood the market and find out! Oh wait... |
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DJStarstryker
 Posts: 140 |
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I think the American education system has to stop assigning almost exclusively books like Hamlet and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Classics are fine, but when you have almost exclusively classics, books that kids sometimes have difficulty reading (different language used in those times) and perhaps feel boring to them at the time, then it can turn kids off to reading. I graduated high school in 2001 and I had 1 year where Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone showed up as a choice for summer homework book report. But that was the ONLY time I was allowed to read anything after 1960 in my entire time in the US public school system (To Kill a Mockingbird - everything else was generally 1800s and before). |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9836 Location: Virginia |
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@DJStarstryker
I graduated in 1963 and I had the same complaint. All the recommended reading was pre 1900. The school system did its very best to destroy any idea that reading might be fun. It didn't work though. 
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H. Guderian
Posts: 1255 |
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For instance, ask anyone what a great anime story is and LoGH, based off books, comes up. We finally are getting the books translated....and. Well. The reviews aren't exactly glowing. To translate quality literature is difficult.
I've been reading Haiku collections lately and damn there are giant introductions to those books explaining all the little nuances and multiple translation versions. Fansubbers will assure you their way is the best way, always. But legitly good translation is hard. |
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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I know that Aria, at one point, was coming out digitally. Forget who was releasing it, but I am unsure if they are still releasing new volumes. Personally, I have no interest in VNs. They just don't seem very attractive to me, but I haven't played one. Probably the closest I've come is playing Ace Attorney on my iPhone? 
Maybe I should check one out, but I wouldn't want it to be something I have to play on my laptop. I don't use it for gaming, as I have no interest in doing so. Maybe I should look into what is available on iPhone or 3DS...if anything. On LNs, I've collected some, and they make up very little of my overall novel collection. I do own the Haruhi series, and the Kieli series. I'm collecting Rising of the Shield Hero and the Monogatari series, and plan to grab SNAFU when that series starts coming out some time this year (?). Book/Literature Girl and Spice & Wolf are a couple of other series I want to get. But, seeing as S&W is almost done and BG finished release awhile back, it's more a matter of saving some extra $ to try and grab as many volumes in on swoop. I'll probably go for Book Girl first.
I am on the fence when it comes to Black Bullet. The ending of the anime seemed to be heading somewhere interesting. I'd go in for Full Metal Panic, if another company were to grab that series. I think Tokyo Pop released some of the LNs. Also, I'd like to see HakoMari licensed, as that LN series sounds so interesting to me.
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Black_Kendoka
 Posts: 18 Location: Cincinnati, OH |
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Since I've been out of the grade school system for quite a while at this point, I really can't say much about incentives to read for fun today. But back when I was a kid, there were a lot of attempts by the community to get kids to read for fun. The most famous example would be the show "Reading Rainbow" which taught kids about books they could probably find at a library to read on their own. Then there's that program where, if you read a certain amount of books, you get a free Personal Pan Pizza from Pizza Hut. Then there was also the Scholastic Book Club where you could order books from a catalogue for you to read when they came in the mail. What I think killed reading for fun for quite a while for me was being forced to read all those books that teachers deemed "must reads" throughout high school and having to read during the summer from a pre-determined list of books that I would be quizzed on soon after school started back up again. With only a few exceptions, most of the stories were either uninteresting or bored me to tears and I never got a good explanation on why these books were classics that everyone had to read (now if there was a better tie to historical context, then I could see things getting a little better). I've since gotten a little better after I found some books on subject matters that matter to me (Martial arts), but I'm still a very slow reader. Another reason why I don't read a lot of novels is because I'm more of a visual person. One thing that games provided me was more of a "show, not tell" mechanic where the more memorable games were able to use their graphics--or the lack thereof--to bring me into the worlds that the creators were trying to lay out for me. Novels try their best to use words to make up for that, but my eyes eventually gloss over details, which force me to go back to reread the stuff I missed. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4570 |
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Yeah, the few translated sample passages I've seen have seem pretty damn awkward, which is a royal shame, because I was really pumped about getting the source material over here. Even in that case, my interest came from already knowing the source, and the fact that they're full-fledged novels. From what I've gleaned and other people have noted, most light novels seem to be on the level of your standard young-adult novel, and we're pretty much drowning in those. Outside of the all-time classics that manage to appeal to young and old, and a few old nostalgia picks (good ol' Animorphs), there's not really much targeted at that age group that I'd find particularly compelling. That's also putting aside the fact that just about every light novel series released over here is a result of us already getting its anime adaptation, and having to jump from that to a bite-sized book to see what happens next is a bit too jarring to appeal to me. The only time I've really been tempted to do so was with the second Moribito novel that Scholastic limped out before it gave up, but even in that case I've heard that the anime adaptation added much more depth than in the original tween-targeted novel, so I'm not sure it'd even be worth it. (And visual novels? Yeahno. I don't even like choose-your-own-adventure books, but at least they're not drowning in otaku garbage.) |
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Melicans
Posts: 620 Location: Canada |
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I think it is also fair to say that in the last 12-18 months, the publishing of LNs over here are being given more of a chance to find a market; or perhaps the series that are being chosen are ones that there is a known demand for. Notwithstanding Aria the Scarlet Ammo's digital release from emanga which unfortunately seems to have been dropped (along with a few manga series I was hoping to continue acquiring, cough-cough), the series on storeshelves seem to have a longer shelf-life than the ones from the mid-to-late-2000s. We don't have cases where we get one or two (if lucky) volumes of Zero no Tsukaima or Shakugan no Shana before they are dropped these days. The sheer popularity of Sword Art Online probably helped revitalize the market for LNs over here, and having other relatively popular series like Log Horizon and No Game No Life come out around the same time as it airs/streams has probably helped to keep the momentum going. I'd be very much surprised (but delighted) to see something like Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko released over here, but it may be that we have to wait a few years yet before publishers start taking chances on series that aren't mega-hits with anime fans. Until then we may have to just be content with the manga versions that are printed, like with Saekano or High School DxD. |
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DerekL1963
Subscriber Posts: 1113 Location: Puget Sound |
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The first is an educational program, not an incentive program. The third is a bookstore, not an incentive program. The Pizza Hut program of encouraging reading to collect a reward is still active. Etc... etc... |
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DLH112
Posts: 115 |
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My problem with light novel localizations is that usually a series will get brought over after it has an anime adaptation. That anime adaptation covers at least the first 2, if not as much as 8 volumes. Then they release volumes at most 4 per year. By the time the first volume of what happens after the anime comes out, it's already been a year or 2 since the series had relevance. For example, volume 4 of No Game No Life just came out about a week ago, and the anime aired in spring 2014.
I realize the amount of text makes it so something like simulcast/pub can't be done, but maybe volumes from right after the anime could be published first or something. |
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Crisha
Moderator
 Posts: 4290 |
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Re: Reading books for schoolwork
Thank goodness for wikis and websites like Sparknotes. I read every darn book in Freshman and Sophomore year in highschool (early 2000s), but started relying upon other means to avoid reading novels I wasn't interested in but still had to write reports on (which was the majority... I did end up reading and enjoying all of Wuthering Heights, a trashy romance novel). I followed the same pattern through college, where I was still required to take a literature and writing course despite being an engineer. I did not fully read a single one of those books, yet was able to get an A on all of my papers - as long as you can grammar well (hurr), stick to the format a teacher wants, and be able to make a thought-out argument. To get the quotes you need to support your argument, you can search online for summaries of the chapters that would most likely support your argument and then skim the chapters for the important quotes you need. ----- Re: LNs and VNs The problem with LNs and VNs is the same problem I'm having with anime, manga, books, tv shows, etc: not enough emotional and time investment to get involved in a new story with a new cast of characters. There are hundreds of premises out there that sound very interesting, and they all vie for my attention. Equally, I have a strong love for fandom, so oftentimes I'd rather just read fanfiction/AMVs. Lately, it's the emotional/energy commitment that's more difficult than time. I got my Master's in December, so my evenings are mostly free now that I don't have any online coursework. When I have low mood swings, it's so much easier to stick to what I already know and love. Getting involved with something new or something that would require a lot of commitment feels like too high of a hurdle to crawl over. This past December through March, I barely consumed any anime or manga, maybe one a month. Instead, I watched a lot of Let's Plays on youtube or read a lot of fanfiction (mainly Undertale, my last big fandom grab since last October). Now that spring is out and the weather is better, I feel a lot more energized and have started getting into things again. Anyways, there's too much out there and not enough time, energy, or commitment to get through it all. |
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AnimeLordLuis
 Posts: 1626 Location: The Borderlands of Pandora |
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Well you can't expect EVERYTHING from Japan to catch on in America there is after all a huge cultural difference between the two, Hell even Anime and Manga are still considered niche here.
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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It is. There were so many errors in the small Kindle sample of volume 1 that I never purchased it (especially since it wasn't exactly cheap either). |
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Saffire
 Posts: 1255 Location: Iowa, USA |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2402 |
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Not really. Light Novels are usually written more like how people talk. 'Regular' novels would use the more traditional written Japanese. It isn't just higher level vocabulary and more complex sentence structure (though that may also be the case) but actually a different set.
I'm not personally familiar with all of the ones you listed, but I don't really see how it is debatable. Light Novels are in their own section in a store (talking Japanese stores). If you would find it there, it is a LN. |
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