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REVIEW: Chivalry of a Failed Knight Novel 1


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Thespacemaster



Joined: 03 Mar 2012
Posts: 1095
PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 12:11 pm Reply with quote
This series was one of the most unqiue experiences that has ever been shown especially when Magical Battle School Series were at there height.

I mean heck this is probably the last real major good series of the genre that has been out, as nothing has come close to matching it since.

Still have no idea why it took them so long to release the novels officaly but now that they have i really recommend you get it and support as much as you can, you won't regret it.
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Treecko Tempo



Joined: 25 Sep 2016
Posts: 155
PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 12:30 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Most notably it shares a lot of similarities with The Asterisk War, and given that that series began in 2006 and this in 2013, it is difficult to believe that those shared aspects are a coincidence
The Asterisk Wars began in September of 2012 not 2006 well Chivalry began in July 2013 which make me believe any similarities are just a coincidence. With how short of a time-frame that is.
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AP24



Joined: 21 Apr 2011
Posts: 144
PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 1:00 pm Reply with quote
Regarding Alice's gender, to be precise Sol Press is the one that uses female pronouns when referring to Alice. The original Japanese text almost never uses pronouns when referring to Alice and if it does it uses male pronouns. The way I see it, most of the characters including Ikki and Stella don't really care if Alice is a boy or girl because to them Alice is Alice.
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yurigasaki



Joined: 06 Apr 2015
Posts: 192
PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 1:01 pm Reply with quote
I'm not usually a fan of these kinds of high school battle shows, but I really enjoyed Chivalry when it aired and a big part of that was how much I loved Alice. The fandom and the unofficial translations of the LN are pretty puke-worthy in the way they treat and handle Alice as a character, so it's a big relief to know she's treated with the respect she deserves in the proper translation.
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pharmboy23



Joined: 05 Oct 2018
Posts: 196
PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 2:36 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
along with illustrator Won's unique idea of how breasts fit into clothing


A really good review, but this line in particular is golden. I almost want to read this just to see the artwork in a train-wreck curiosity sort of way.
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micah007



Joined: 25 Jan 2017
Posts: 205
PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 2:48 pm Reply with quote
Will read the translated 1-3 volumes when I finish my semester next week. Can't wait.
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Rosiero



Joined: 05 Jun 2013
Posts: 113
PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 3:41 pm Reply with quote
Chivalry is an important series to me. It feels a little weird saying that about a light novel series probably written for people way younger than me, but that's how it is. Ikki and Stella are very relatable to me in the way that the environments they respectively grew up in shaped them, and the series does some pretty interesting stuff with regards to romance and sexuality going forward. After binging the anime a couple years back, I started gushing about it wherever I could, which caught the attention of someone else who had a lot of the same feelings, and uh... we're engaged now. So yeah, it's pretty important.

So of course, finally seeing the novels get licensed was both incredibly exciting (finally, a professional translation! Books I can hold in my hands! An easy way to get friends to read it!) and immensely terrifying (What if they screw it up?!?!)

Having read the first volume (I'm kinda broke, so I'm holding off on the others until the physical copies ship Embarassed), I still have mixed feelings. It's pretty obvious the localization was handled with care by fans, and I've even gotten to speak to some of Sol Press' staff about it. It was pretty cool seeing certain lines match up with the anime, and I couldn't be happier about the way Alice was handled in translation, especially considering how gross some of the fanbase can be. But I also think there were some parts that were a little overly wordy; dialogue tags were added where necessary to make the story read more naturally in English, but then sometimes sentences that served a similar function in Japanese weren't removed, leading to redundancies. Some parts were definitely a little tiring to read.

There's also the fact that... well, here it is now. This is the definitive version of the book, no ifs and/or buts about it. So it's hard to get around some bits that I don't like, such as Ikki actually getting a little... confused about Shizuku's advances towards him (something the anime mercifully glossed over) and the infamous scene where some bad guys force Stella to strip--which the author admits he got off on in the afterword, and that makes me feel pretty filthy, even if the series does some cool stuff with sexuality later.

But hey, I know it's just going to get better and better from hereon out, and I'm excited to be along for the ride.
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AP24



Joined: 21 Apr 2011
Posts: 144
PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 9:15 pm Reply with quote
yurigasaki wrote:
I'm not usually a fan of these kinds of high school battle shows, but I really enjoyed Chivalry when it aired and a big part of that was how much I loved Alice. The fandom and the unofficial translations of the LN are pretty puke-worthy in the way they treat and handle Alice as a character, so it's a big relief to know she's treated with the respect she deserves in the proper translation.

It's not about whether we believe Alice is a girl or a boy. Everyone at fandom and fan translators are just being precise about the information from the original Japanese text. The author rarely uses gender-specific pronouns when referring to Alice and uses male instead of female pronouns in the original text so we just follow it.
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Richard Joash Tan



Joined: 28 Apr 2015
Posts: 20
Location: Cavite City, Philippines
PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 10:15 pm Reply with quote
Looking forward to buy this book soon.
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Sabruness



Joined: 23 Oct 2019
Posts: 90
PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 10:25 pm Reply with quote
AP24 wrote:
yurigasaki wrote:
I'm not usually a fan of these kinds of high school battle shows, but I really enjoyed Chivalry when it aired and a big part of that was how much I loved Alice. The fandom and the unofficial translations of the LN are pretty puke-worthy in the way they treat and handle Alice as a character, so it's a big relief to know she's treated with the respect she deserves in the proper translation.

It's not about whether we believe Alice is a girl or a boy. Everyone at fandom and fan translators are just being precise about the information from the original Japanese text. The author rarely uses gender-specific pronouns when referring to Alice and uses male instead of female pronouns in the original text so we just follow it.


+1. Honestly, i think most of the fandom prob doesnt care what gender Alice is and the translations were just following what the text says so i think yurigasaki's reaction is, well, an over-reaction.
I wouldnt be surprised if there was a corner of the fandom where all the.. unpleasant readers gather to whine about Alice but they'd probably be only a small part.

I'm impressed with the positivity of this review, but then it shows that... yes, a novel can be quite innovative while still being trope-y. Now it's just a matter of the usual with trying to divine how long Sol press will take to deliver the next volume. My initial guess is sometime late next year, given their past record.
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Shay Guy



Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 2091
PostPosted: Sun Dec 08, 2019 1:35 am Reply with quote
AP24 wrote:
It's not about whether we believe Alice is a girl or a boy. Everyone at fandom and fan translators are just being precise about the information from the original Japanese text. The author rarely uses gender-specific pronouns when referring to Alice and uses male instead of female pronouns in the original text so we just follow it.


Sounds like the official translation is an improvement on the original.
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SilverTalon01



Joined: 02 Apr 2012
Posts: 2401
PostPosted: Sun Dec 08, 2019 4:13 pm Reply with quote
Shay Guy wrote:
Sounds like the official translation is an improvement on the original.


You can like it one way over the other, but swapping the gender of a pronoun doesn't fall under "translation."
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Kisuke525



Joined: 05 Nov 2019
Posts: 191
PostPosted: Sun Dec 08, 2019 4:31 pm Reply with quote
SilverTalon01 wrote:
Shay Guy wrote:
Sounds like the official translation is an improvement on the original.


You can like it one way over the other, but swapping the gender of a pronoun doesn't fall under "translation."


Yeah can't say I'm a fan of altering the original material.
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Rosiero



Joined: 05 Jun 2013
Posts: 113
PostPosted: Sun Dec 08, 2019 6:42 pm Reply with quote
Given that Alice says she has "the heart of a maiden in the body of a man" and Shizuku explicitly asks the other characters to consider Alice a woman because she does so herself, it's pretty clear Alice is trans. I don't know what the norm is in Japanese, but over here it's no bueno to refer to a trans woman with male pronouns. The translation is doing the right thing.
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Hal14



Joined: 01 Apr 2018
Posts: 652
Location: Heart of africa
PostPosted: Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:07 pm Reply with quote
Rosiero wrote:
Given that Alice says she has "the heart of a maiden in the body of a man" and Shizuku explicitly asks the other characters to consider Alice a woman because she does so herself, it's pretty clear Alice is trans. I don't know what the norm is in Japanese, but over here it's no bueno to refer to a trans woman with male pronouns. The translation is doing the right thing.


?
do you mean "refer to trans woman with female pronouns"
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