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What's A Light Novel?


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relyat08



Joined: 20 Mar 2013
Posts: 4125
Location: Northern Virginia
PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 2:48 am Reply with quote
samuelp wrote:
*shameless plug alert*
Best way to figure out what light novels are, is to read some yourself!

Like say, on j-novel.club?


But you didn't even link it! This is a pretty low level plug, if I've ever seen one. Laughing Razz
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vonPeterhof



Joined: 10 Nov 2014
Posts: 729
PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 4:11 am Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
Parsifal24 wrote:
there is also the fact that Light Novels to quote the TV tropes page on it
Quote:
Modern light novels use simpler, easier-to-read everyday kanji as opposed to "hard" novels, which generally contain much older words which, even for Japanese readers, may necessitate keeping a dictionary on hand to understand. The closest parallel in the Western world is probably the distinction between "Modern English", "Middle English" and "Old English".
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LightNovels. So the language is also "lighter" or easier to understand in the original Japanese.


I don't know if that is necessarily the case across the board though. I am not good enough at Japanese yet to really know, but both Narita's work, as well as NisiOisin's work, struck me as particularly complex, kanji-wise, compared to most other LNs I've tried.
This. I remember reading Urobuchi's Fate/Zero on the train in Russia once, and there were Japanese tourists, a young couple, sitting a couple of rows ahead of me. When I had trouble interpreting one kanji I came up to them to ask them about it, but even they had to whip out their phones and look it up (and it wasn't even a rare kanji; just an average frequency kanji used in a somewhat unconventional way). On the other hand, the language in Sound! Euphonium is generally quite straightforward, aside from the Kyoto dialect and the musical terminology, and it's not marketed as a light novel.

I think the biggest offenders in terms of language complexity in the LN market are the titles that deliberately appeal to a chūnibyō aesthetic, using obscure outdated terms, mythological references and fanciful kanji readings. While some teens do want their novels more easily readable, others may derive extra enjoyment from reading something non-transparent and arcane-sounding. When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace makes fun of that trend pretty well.
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Clarste



Joined: 06 Feb 2012
Posts: 424
PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 4:57 am Reply with quote
Cetais wrote:
Parsifal24 wrote:
I like the fact that Light Novels are gaining some popularity in America as it's at least encouraging people to read actual novels and literacy is becoming sadly scarce in this day and age.

Literacy is actually wayyyy bigger than it has ever been in the whole world, in this day and age.


Mostly because kids spend so much time texting, etc. Our culture encourages everyone to constantly be exposed to reading and writing, and while people like to complain about the use of chat abbreviations and whatnot, that's still far better than the "good old days", where unless they had the specific hobby of reading novels, kids would basically only be exposed to reading at school and probably graduated semi-literate. In the same sense that people who take a 2nd language at school aren't going to be fluent unless they also spend time using that language outside of school.

IE: Even a kid who only uses chatspeak is probably a far better reader and writer than their parents or grandparents were at that age.
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writerpatrick



Joined: 29 Mar 2006
Posts: 670
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 8:47 am Reply with quote
It does seem as if this is what would be classified as YA here. But if you're dealing with a story like The Hunger Games it could be placed both in YA and out of it.

300 pages is the length of a full novel. Although publishers put out novels of 400 or more pages regularly. There's a tendency to want to give print readers as thicker and thicker novels without any regard for the quality of the story. Although that doesn't hold true with e-books.

Pulp novels tend to be written fast because the writer is using an outline or a story template. There is almost no creativity involved. 10,000 words a day, 1-4 weeks and you have a novel. That's how you get writers producing a novel a month.
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
Posts: 13540
Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP
PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 10:01 am Reply with quote
Another thing is that, unlike most fansubs and scanlations, some LN and even web novels received permission from the authors to do fan translations.
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Cptn_Taylor



Joined: 08 Nov 2013
Posts: 925
PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 11:55 am Reply with quote
kinghumanity wrote:
I mostly want to know how all these awful assembly-line made "magic high school battle harem fantasy" light novels get published and animated in the first place. Surely their sales aren't that great, especially after their 14th permutation of the exact same story setup?


LNs are fanfic material. Maybe slightly polished but that's the standard.
It isn't even considered bad literature. Laughing
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maximilianjenus



Joined: 29 Apr 2013
Posts: 2858
PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 12:31 pm Reply with quote
Kadmos1 wrote:
Another thing that sets LN apart is popular ones like Shinmai and Magika have sex scenes.


well, hentai light novels exist; and I mean pure hentai, not heavy fanservice stuff like shinmai amou or HxH.

Also, soe light novels get published notonly by volume, but in recopilatory tomes, like shounen jump weekly does, though I don't know specifics, such as which series or how big that part of the market is.
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omoikane



Joined: 03 Oct 2005
Posts: 494
PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 1:04 pm Reply with quote
@ vonPeterhof,

You're right about that. There is nothing about light novels that makes them different than other novels in the same genre of story in terms of the difficulty in reading them. In fact I think sometimes they write in an obtuse way just on purpose for this reason ("Take that, your garden variety YA novels!"), so it's not just the fancy kanji or mythological references.

Also, just as an aside, page count is a poor way to describe length of books, especially when comparing a kanji-based language with any western language. Word count is a much better way to measure things.

[Edit]: removed unnecessary nested quotes. Please read the quoting guidelines. Errinundra.
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jymmy



Joined: 11 Nov 2011
Posts: 1244
PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 4:15 pm Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
samuelp wrote:
Like say, on j-novel.club?

But you didn't even link it!

But they did. j-novel.club is the link. Here it is as a hyperlink: j-novel.club
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MrFox123



Joined: 12 Oct 2016
Posts: 22
PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 4:40 pm Reply with quote
Jonny Mendes wrote:
MrFox123 wrote:

Based on those figures, what's the amount of sales for a novel to be considered a wide success for an anime adaptation?
SAO alone from those two on the list is ~800k
How about something like Re Zero or Gate?
Would love to see anime adapations Surprised Question


You are talking about a second season, wright?

That i don't know. Depends of the sales target the publisher wanted to achieve. How many volumes the LN sold before the anime and how many volumes sold after varies from LN to LN.

For ReZero before the anime it don't even appear in the top 30 of sales for 2015 so i don't know how many volumes it sold but after the anime it jumped to #10 in just half of 2016, so the probability of a 2 season is high but far in the future because the anime caught up with the LN.

Gate also don't appear in the top 30 of sales for 2015 but is only #28 in the 1 half of 2016 (is still a good increase) . Depending if the increase meet the target of the publisher or not, the probability of a second season is high or low.


Yes! Hoping for another season. Chances seem good for Re Zero based on figures but dunno about GATE. haven't heard too much about either of these once they finished airing Confused
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relyat08



Joined: 20 Mar 2013
Posts: 4125
Location: Northern Virginia
PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 10:46 pm Reply with quote
jymmy wrote:
relyat08 wrote:
samuelp wrote:
Like say, on j-novel.club?

But you didn't even link it!

But they did. j-novel.club is the link. Here it is as a hyperlink: j-novel.club


Ah, thanks. I would consider that a url, rather than a link, since it was not clickable. But I didn't realize that it was the url, even, since they normally hyperlink automatically.
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samuelp
Industry Insider


Joined: 25 Nov 2007
Posts: 2228
Location: San Antonio, USA
PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2016 1:35 am Reply with quote
So i am actually angry at this article, see, because I was going to write an advertorial with this exact same title for J-Novel Club here in a month or two when we have all our titles announced.

But now with this article out that will ruin all the SEO we would have gotten! Damn you well written and researched article scooping my possible advertisement hits Sad

Need to find a new angle... maybe like What makes Light Novels so great?
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SaneSavantElla



Joined: 25 Jan 2013
Posts: 216
PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2016 2:36 am Reply with quote
Karasu-Lacryma wrote:

It's interesting, I started reading some samples of Keichii Sigsawa's LNs after loving the anime adaption of Kino's Journey, and found most of them outside of that one to be fairly generic by-the-numbers sort of things. Yet Kino's Journey manages to be something completely different from anything else he (or almost anyone's) written. I get the feeling most of the other LNs of his I've tried were boilerpots to pay the bills (even with the occasional flares of psychological insight), and Kino was his own personal creative project that he really lets loose on. I wonder if that's the case with many authors?

I agree that Kino's Journey is quite different from Sigsawa's other works, but then most of his other stuff (except maybe for the SAO spinoff, Squad Jam) still do not fall under what one poster's doesn't-appy-to-all-but-still-not-so-inaccurate description of light novels as "magic high school battle harem fantasy".

Somehow I think that's actually why his other works aren't "hits" with regular LN fans. He even commented somewhere that that Squad Jam has sold more than his latest series (the one with the verrrryyy long title). But then he has gained enough following that a small but steady stream of fans always check out whatever else he puts out, and unlike most run-of-the-mill LN authors, Sigsawa is probably able to make a living out of writing.
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SilverTalon01



Joined: 02 Apr 2012
Posts: 2401
PostPosted: Sat Oct 22, 2016 9:54 pm Reply with quote
omoikane wrote:
You're right about that. There is nothing about light novels that makes them different than other novels in the same genre of story in terms of the difficulty in reading them. In fact I think sometimes they write in an obtuse way just on purpose for this reason ("Take that, your garden variety YA novels!"), so it's not just the fancy kanji or mythological references.


I think the reason a lot of people think that is because the first LNs they think of are just aimed at a younger audience. For example a harem action battle LN being easier to read is more because of the harem action battle part than the LN part.
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Polycell



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Posts: 4623
PostPosted: Sat Oct 22, 2016 10:46 pm Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
Ah, thanks. I would consider that a url, rather than a link, since it was not clickable. But I didn't realize that it was the url, even, since they normally hyperlink automatically.
A quick test and it only autolinked with 'www' before it.
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