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The Best Light Novels Not Yet In English


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ANN_Lynzee
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 9:22 am Reply with quote
Guys, please brush up on your history. That is if you're being sincere at all.

Racism has always been mutable and the definition of "White" now is not the same as it was during World War II. Jews and Slavs were not considered "White" then and still aren't by plenty of Neo-Nazis.

Also Nazi Germany had a whole Africa campaign. Seriously.

http://www.understandingrace.org/history/society/nazism.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_black_people_in_Nazi_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_Campaign
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Slavic_sentiment
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macattack



Joined: 07 May 2011
Posts: 256
PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 3:08 pm Reply with quote
octopodpie wrote:
Guys, please brush up on your history. That is if you're being sincere at all.

Racism has always been mutable and the definition of "White" now is not the same as it was during World War II. Jews and Slavs were not considered "White" then and still aren't by plenty of Neo-Nazis.

Also Nazi Germany had a whole Africa campaign. Seriously.

http://www.understandingrace.org/history/society/nazism.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_black_people_in_Nazi_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_Campaign
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Slavic_sentiment


As someone who's researched World War II extensively and is the grandson of two veterans of the war, I guess I'll be the one who replies.

You are right, Germany did field a North African campaign. But it wasn't done to conquer Africa or because Germany felt like wiping out Arabian or black people, like you seem to be implying. It was done because Italy had royally screwed up on the African front.

In 1940, the Italians lost Ethiopia to the British, and by 1941 had nearly been chased out of Libya, which was an Italian territory at the time (keep in mind this was before the USA had entered the war). With the invasion of Russia looming Nazi Germany was concerned about Britain coming through Italy like a back door. So they sent one of their field marshals, Erwin Rommel, to build an "Afrika Korps" to assist the Italians before they lost the African front completely. It was purely defensive and holding, and Rommel could never get the supplies and reinforcements necessary to finish the British off, which would bite the Afrika Korps hard in 1942-43. If Hitler had his way, he'd never have sent Rommel at all and would've used those troops in Russia.

The Afrika Korps did kill many minorities on the battlefield, who were under the British Imperial banner like the Indians. But the Afrika Korps also utilized a Free Arabian Legion that had many Africans participating in the unit. The Nazis were racist towards black people (though as one of your references say their treatment could vary widely as there was no official policy on how to treat African prisoners), but they could be pragmatic. Erwin Rommel was the most pragmatic of them all, to the point where he is probably the ONLY field marshal who's respected by Western institutions. Though it probably helps that Rommel supported the attempt to kill Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944, which he would eventually pay with his life for.

More to the point, I strongly believe Eighty-Six is influenced by the Eastern Front, where the Germans used, among others, Romanians, Bulgarians, and Finns to bolster their assaults, and frequently send them to the Russian grinder on offensives instead of Germans. The Germans also used propaganda to turn many of the Cossacks against Russia as well, and formed a small army of them that wound up facing a grim fate when the war ended.

However, I don't see the same sort of racism used in Eighty-Six, but something more akin to classism, so it, at the very most, is an indirect analogy. The same goes with the hair color discrimination, which could be akin to the Germans sending other people to die for them on the Russian front, but it's again indirect. There is clearly prejudice at play here, but it's not white supremacy, especially when all of the characters seem to share the same skin color. It would be more of a specific sect supremacy, a hair color supremacy, which is more localized.

Racism and prejudice is mutable and can change with time, I agree. The Germans hated Slavs, the USA long had a vicious bias against Irish immigrants, Spain has a long and troubled history of discrimination with specific sects in its country. But it is more of a "sect supremacy" that Eighty-Six seems to be using than the broad brush of "white supremacy".

Though obviously Nazi Germany practiced white supremacy just as much, if not more so, than specific Aryan supremacy. But I don't see signs of a broader supremacy being used in Eighty-Six, so I think ultimately the author is reaching with her description.
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ANN_Lynzee
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 3:56 pm Reply with quote
I appreciate your thorough response, I wasn't intending to be flippant in my earlier links. My point was more to illustrate that what it means to be "White" has not been consistent across time and what it meant during World War II is not the same as what it means now. Your more detailed examples show that. I also wanted to acknowledge that People of Color were also killed by Nazis, i.e. during the African campaign, even if it wasn't purely out of a desire to eradicate them.

If the book is taking inspiration from the Eastern campaign, then I still think the racial discrimination interpretation stands as the views during that time towards Slavic people would have considered them a different race than their oppressors.
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Crext



Joined: 04 Nov 2012
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 4:47 pm Reply with quote
Frog-kun wrote:
Hi, this is the author of the article.

The theme of "white supremacy" is about as explicit as you can get.


Uhm... You still need to ditch "white" though? Japanese Imperial soldiers killed other Asians during WW2 because they were "Japanese supremacists". Robert Mugabe committed genocides and chased white people out of his country because he was a "black supremacist". You've had all kinds of supremacists throughout history, right? By adding the white tag unnecessary when it comes to supremacy you seem to imply only whites are/have had supremacists, something which ironically can come off as pretty racist I guess. I'm sure this wasn't your intention, and that you're just being a bit clumsy with the wording. Anyways, let's hope it gets an adaptation as the premise looks like it got potential.
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leafy sea dragon



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 6:50 pm Reply with quote
meiam wrote:
None of that apply because the book sidestep all that by just having the character be essentially normal anime character, taking the safe route. This remind me of another story that tried to tackle discrimination based on weight... and did so by having a reverse world where everyone was fat except the discriminated main character who were lean, completely missing the point of there story.


It all comes down to how it's written, but you absolutely can have a story about a particular form of discrimination by creating a world where it's reversed, as it will illustrate how ridiculous it is. A good example is The Twilight Zone episode "Eye of the Beholder," set at a plastic surgeon's office in a world where spoiler[our conceptions of beauty and ugliness are reversed]. Well, as of the USA in the 1960s at least.

Really, science fiction and fantasy are excellent grounds for social commentary, as you can create a world as strange as your imagination can be while making them parallels with real-world things. (Of course, then you risk people deriving unintended meanings out of them--Attack on Titan can be interpreted as a commentary on illegal immigration, but I've seen a lot less of that than I expected...though I do believe it has commentary on the dangers of the related issue of isolationism.)
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Toonces



Joined: 27 Nov 2017
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 6:53 pm Reply with quote
All 4 of these sound pretty good. Admittedly, Tata sounds like the one I'd probably pass on, but the write up here has me thinking twice about that. I'd at least check out the first volume.

Hello, Hello and Hello and to a lesser extent That Alone Would Have Been Good Enough sound depressing, but I actually am very interested in them. I think that the former in particular sounds pretty good.

86 sounds like it would be an awesome anime.

Hopefully some publisher picks these up! And thanks Frog-kun, I always enjoy your LN coverage! If you have time or the chance, I'd love for you to participate in the seasonal(?) LN guides or do more reviews here (although I do love seeing your opinions on your blog, twitter and elsewhere too). Smile
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meiam



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 9:46 pm Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
It all comes down to how it's written, but you absolutely can have a story about a particular form of discrimination by creating a world where it's reversed, as it will illustrate how ridiculous it is. A good example is The Twilight Zone episode "Eye of the Beholder," set at a plastic surgeon's office in a world where spoiler[our conceptions of beauty and ugliness are reversed]. Well, as of the USA in the 1960s at least.

Really, science fiction and fantasy are excellent grounds for social commentary, as you can create a world as strange as your imagination can be while making them parallels with real-world things. (Of course, then you risk people deriving unintended meanings out of them--Attack on Titan can be interpreted as a commentary on illegal immigration, but I've seen a lot less of that than I expected...though I do believe it has commentary on the dangers of the related issue of isolationism.)


My point isn't that you can't talk about something without actually talking about it. My point is that it's supremely ironic when you're trying to say one things but act like the opposite. So in the case of 89, if the story is really about how racism (and not classism) is bad, then the real way to make your point is by having the character not be the usual race for this sort of story, really make the story about empathy for people different from you. But they know that doing that will hurt sales, so they compromise on there idea by making the main character not be of a different race than the audience/most character in this genra.

Same for the example about fat/lean being reverse, this wasn't done to prove a point, it was done because they knew fat main character wouldn't sell so they made everyone else fat instead just do they could have lean MC.

There's no reason to make a different world to talk about social commentary, you're just putting distance between the audience and the world. Plenty of very racist people could pick up 86 and think "How can they discriminate against the main character! They're not sub human black people!". I just think if you have conviction and want to talk about them you should fully back them up.
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SilverTalon01



Joined: 02 Apr 2012
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 11:02 pm Reply with quote
octopodpie wrote:
Also Nazi Germany had a whole Africa campaign. Seriously.


Which is irrelevant because it isn't Africans that the Germans are known for conscripting into the Nazi army and throwing in mass numbers into oncoming streams of bullets. This is what matches the setting of the book. You're just diverting with irrelevant information.

Perhaps instead of suggesting the problem is others needing to brush up on history, you should focus on separating different historical events from one another. The Nazis did an incredible amount of horrible things. You don't need to lump them together.

Nazis of course did horrendous things to blacks along with many other groups. Nobody in this thread has once implied otherwise. Why are you twisting the conversation in that direction?
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Nordhmmer



Joined: 11 Feb 2017
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 12:44 am Reply with quote
octopodpie wrote:
Guys, please brush up on your history. That is if you're being sincere at all.
Racism has always been mutable and the definition of "White" now is not the same as it was during World War II. Jews and Slavs were not considered "White" then and still aren't by plenty of Neo-Nazis.

Also Nazi Germany had a whole Africa campaign. Seriously.



........ Racial supremacy.

Nazi racial theory believed in Aryan superiority.The was the belief that those of the Germanic/Nordic race were better,those of other Caucasian races were the next best....

Study Alfred Rosenberg and his use of the works of Arthur de Gobineau & Lothrop Stoddard to come up with his crackpot racial theories.
Also look up how the Nazi incorporated the USA' race based anti-miscegenation,citizenship and immigration laws of the 20s and 30s into their own race based laws.


@macattack

Only after the war was Rommel so fully tied to the July 20th plot by those that wanted their hero to be untarnished.

What is known is Rommel was contacted by the conspirators,and none of his personal writings indict being deeply involved beyond he sympathized with their outlook on the war.
This was the attitude held by a surprising large part of the Heer's higher officers... von Rundstedt ,Manstein,Guderian and on.All contacted by or knew of the conspiracy, but in typical German manner sat on the fence,some changing their stories after the war.

Rommel was a believer in the Nazi party and Hitler,keep that piece of salt in mind when reading about him.

macattack wrote:
Quote:
Germans used, among others, Romanians, Bulgarians, and Finns to bolster their assaults, and frequently send them to the Russian grinder on offensives instead of Germans.


That is patently false.
The Germans did not use Romanian,Hungarian,Slovakian,Bulgarian Italian,Spanish and other Allied/volunteer troops as massed cannon fodder.
And to say that of the Finns........ Finland thought of German troops as inferior,even the German troops stationed in Finland felt themselves inferior in the Finns.
Seriously....wtf.
Also ROA units saw very limited frontline combat use.


Suggest you study the period from June 1942 to March 1943 to understand why the Hungarian,Romanian and Italian armies ended up holding front line positions.
Nothing to do with being cannon fodder.


.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 12:48 am Reply with quote
meiam wrote:
My point isn't that you can't talk about something without actually talking about it. My point is that it's supremely ironic when you're trying to say one things but act like the opposite. So in the case of 89, if the story is really about how racism (and not classism) is bad, then the real way to make your point is by having the character not be the usual race for this sort of story, really make the story about empathy for people different from you. But they know that doing that will hurt sales, so they compromise on there idea by making the main character not be of a different race than the audience/most character in this genra.

Same for the example about fat/lean being reverse, this wasn't done to prove a point, it was done because they knew fat main character wouldn't sell so they made everyone else fat instead just do they could have lean MC.

There's no reason to make a different world to talk about social commentary, you're just putting distance between the audience and the world. Plenty of very racist people could pick up 86 and think "How can they discriminate against the main character! They're not sub human black people!". I just think if you have conviction and want to talk about them you should fully back them up.


Ah, I see what you mean then--the way 86 was written, you mean, causes it to undermine its own ideas in that the intention was to create characters its Japanese audience would be able to relate to?

Though there's technically no reason to create fantasy worlds for social commentary, it can still be done for stylistic purposes (like Animal Farm or Watchmen) or to express ideas that would've been taboo or otherwise off-limits at the time it was written (like Star Trek or South Park). These works are meant to get their audiences thinking, and South Park, in particular, frequently uses allegory and satire to show how ridiculous a particular popular thought is when removed from its familiar context (such as "Goobacks" in regards to discrimination against illegal immigrants and "Black Friday" to comment on the dangers of overhyping).
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macattack



Joined: 07 May 2011
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 1:30 am Reply with quote
Nordhmmer wrote:
@macattack

Only after the war was Rommel so fully tied to the July 20th plot by those that wanted their hero to be untarnished.

What is known is Rommel was contacted by the conspirators,and none of his personal writings indict being deeply involved beyond he sympathized with their outlook on the war.
This was the attitude held by a surprising large part of the Heer's higher officers... von Rundstedt ,Manstein,Guderian and on.All contacted by or knew of the conspiracy, but in typical German manner sat on the fence,some changing their stories after the war.

Rommel was a believer in the Nazi party and Hitler,keep that piece of salt in mind when reading about him.

macattack wrote:
Quote:
Germans used, among others, Romanians, Bulgarians, and Finns to bolster their assaults, and frequently send them to the Russian grinder on offensives instead of Germans.


That is patently false.
The Germans did not use Romanian,Hungarian,Slovakian,Bulgarian Italian,Spanish and other Allied/volunteer troops as massed cannon fodder.
And to say that of the Finns........ Finland thought of German troops as inferior,even the German troops stationed in Finland felt themselves inferior in the Finns.
Seriously....wtf.
Also ROA units saw very limited frontline combat use.


Suggest you study the period from June 1942 to March 1943 to understand why the Hungarian,Romanian and Italian armies ended up holding front line positions.
Nothing to do with being cannon fodder.


.


When I said Rommel supported the coup, that is exactly what I meant, that he sympathized but did not get directly involved (of course, him professing sympathies was all that it took for the Nazis to force Rommel to kill himself in exchange for his family being spared). You're reading too much into it.

I did study the period you were speaking of and the regions those events happened (aka the Battle of Stalingrad, along with the Siege of Leningrad that the Finns were involved in) and those battles were what I was alluding to.

The Italians and Romanians in particular were involved in the Stalingrad battle in both offensives and on the defensive. The Romanians got their asses kicked in November 1942 when the Russians identified them as a weak point in the German lines and thrust a whole army on them, which cut General Paulus and his army off in Stalingrad. As for the Italians, the Italian 8th Army was was routed when the Russians attacked them at the Don River as the Germans were attempting a rescue effort of the encircled Stalingrad forces. The Italians were furious over the losses and accused the Germans of sacrificing the 8th Army to protect themselves, which is where I got some of my wording from.

And the Finns did play a leading role during the siege of Leningrad, which was a big reason why the siege dragged on for so long. The Finns were amazing fighters, and their earlier war with Russia in 1939-40 proved it.

All in all, though, I probably should have chosen my words more carefully.

But back to the main point:

octopodpie wrote:
I appreciate your thorough response, I wasn't intending to be flippant in my earlier links. My point was more to illustrate that what it means to be "White" has not been consistent across time and what it meant during World War II is not the same as what it means now. Your more detailed examples show that. I also wanted to acknowledge that People of Color were also killed by Nazis, i.e. during the African campaign, even if it wasn't purely out of a desire to eradicate them.

If the book is taking inspiration from the Eastern campaign, then I still think the racial discrimination interpretation stands as the views during that time towards Slavic people would have considered them a different race than their oppressors.


I think what you are saying is more along the lines of sectarian discrimination than racial, which is what Eighty-Six seems to be more closely alluding to.

The better analogy is how American Protestants treated Irish Catholics. It's sectarian discrimination and the Irish were treated like pond scum. Even in 1961, JFK being Catholic became a campaign issue and many Protestants were terrified that JFK would be beholden to the Pope over his country.

The people were all white in this case, just like the Germans persecuting Slavs. Race had nothing to do with either example. It was pure sectarianism and/or religious differences. That's what Eighty-Six is going for, stripped down to pure sectarianism based on hair color.
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KonradWerner



Joined: 06 Aug 2015
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 3:53 am Reply with quote
octopodpie wrote:
I appreciate your thorough response, I wasn't intending to be flippant in my earlier links. My point was more to illustrate that what it means to be "White" has not been consistent across time and what it meant during World War II is not the same as what it means now. Your more detailed examples show that. I also wanted to acknowledge that People of Color were also killed by Nazis, i.e. during the African campaign, even if it wasn't purely out of a desire to eradicate them.

If the book is taking inspiration from the Eastern campaign, then I still think the racial discrimination interpretation stands as the views during that time towards Slavic people would have considered them a different race than their oppressors.

I think the problem is that you're trying to transplant american perspective into european problems. Nazis were killing because of racist reason, but not because they didn't consider slavs and jews "white". This "white supremacy" construct is one that exists in such strenght mostly USA, because there the racist divisions existed between white and black folks, so it's "all whites vs all XXX".. In Europe for most of it's history racism cut through ethnic groups and nationalities, not simple skin tones. Germans wanted to murder slavs and jews not because they weren't white, but because they weren't germanic. The idea of white supremacy didn't mean much to germans. They wanted germanic supremacy.
Bassicaly not every case of racism needs to be about "whites opressing peopole of color". Such thing is natural for USA, but it doesn't work when transplanted to the rest of the world. Whites were murdering whites for racist reasons too. Ethnic genocides were carried out by asians and africans too.
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Razor/Edge



Joined: 05 Jun 2015
Posts: 607
PostPosted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 6:52 am Reply with quote
Lobokendo wrote:
Anyone willing to spoil the Hello, Hello and Hello ending for me? I have a guess and want to confirm or deny if its right. I can't seem to find any info on it anywhere.


I believe that this: https://twitter.com/myfragment is the twitter account for the author (or at least for the novel, I don't know Japanese that well). The pinned tweet seems to be talking about reading this message from the author after reading the ending. If you can read it or get someone to read it for you, there you go.

Direct link to tweet.[/url]
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TdFern 87



Joined: 03 Jun 2017
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 4:20 pm Reply with quote
The first light novel mentioned, Its cover looks like it was done by the same artist as Triage X & High school of the Dead.
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Kadmos1



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PostPosted: Sat Jun 09, 2018 12:21 am Reply with quote
TdFern 87 wrote:
The first light novel mentioned, Its cover looks like it was done by the same artist as Triage X & High school of the Dead.

It is the same artist!
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