Forum - View topicAre Light Novels Dead Here?
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1242 |
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Thanks, that sounds like it might be right up my alley, then. And by "his recent two books" do you mean this and "Anata no Tame no Monogatari"? I've got the latter in my backlog and have been thinking about getting to it soon. To everyone who answered (and may yet answer) my question, thank you very much; your replies are very interesting. As for me, I was an old-school SF reader long before I got into anime, and one of the early attractions of it was the "novel for television" approach (e.g. Yamato and Macross) that was unheard of in the US at the time. Back then, TV shows either A) solved everything in one or at most two episodes or B) were endless soap operas that went on and on and on until everybody got sick of them and they got canceled. So encountering serialized SF stories that had beginnings, middles, and most importantly *planned* endings gave me something I had previously only been able to get from novels, long before Babylon 5 came along and blazed that trail for American TV. When I learned about light novels, I was very excited at first. The idea of a TV series continuing in novel form (as happened with Gundam, Patlabor, and a few others), or having additional source material not in the anime (Lodoss War, Nadesico, Crusher Joe, and tons of others) sounded awesome to me. Most works now are not like those, however, so I've kind of been nudged away from LNs and toward more straight-up SF and fantasy. Still, when something comes along that has the ideas of SF and the fun of an anime, it has my attention, regardless of how it's categorized. |
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Mits
Posts: 54 |
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@vanfanel
Yes. I meant “Beatless” and “Anata no Tame no Monogatari (A Story for You)”. Unlike “Beatless”, “Anata no Tame no Monogatari” is not “light” at all. Main character, Samantha, is a middle aged scientist with fatal disease. The story starts with her death and gets back to describe what was like her life was. In the story, she made an artificial intelligence called ＜wanna be＞ and communication between her and ＜wanna be＞ is the main content of the story. No battle scene, no cute girls. I believe that this is one of good Japanese SF novels, but not sure whether this will or has been translated to English or not. |
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vanfanel
Posts: 1242 |
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Thanks much. You just bumped "Anata no Tame no Monogatari" up a little higher on my list of books to get around to reading. It isn't out in English, though, and isn't licensed as far as I know. |
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dragoon119
Posts: 6 |
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Yes, light novels are dead here for a majority of reasons.
1. Reading in North America is/has been on the decline for a LONG time. 2. The North American fan base for light novels are to a large extent, lazy and extremely small. Combine these two and you don't really have much of an incentive for anybody much less publishing houses to even consider selling light novels to United States in the present or forseeable future. Meanwhile, across the ocean. Korea starts breaking into the Light novel market with amazing artists and innovative stories that are starting to push the boundaries at least equal with Japanese writers. Their are reports of Chinese light novels beginning to appear, and I'm sure the rest of Asia will be on board in a couple of years, the market for light novels over there is pretty strong and growing. With Korea's exposure to western culture, they are taking FULL advantage in pushing that knowledge into the anime world. Meanwhile Americans sit back and wait for all of this to hit their shores and hope one day the Light novel industry will grow big here... 
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5120 |
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After a search for The Twelve Kingdoms series, I fear that the Light Novel market here in the U.S. may truly be a niche market.
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population_tire
 Posts: 575 |
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"Light novels are dead" claims Seven Seas
Meanwhile Yen Press decides there is an audience and brings over Spice and Wolf, completes the Haruhi Suzumiya series, then brings over Sword Art Online, Accel World, Another, Log Horizon, The Devil is a Part Timer, and No Game No Life, Kagerou Daze, and others. Wow! It's almost as if licensing current and well-known series works better than releasing a whole bunch of obscure novels that don't already have a fanbase in the US. I know it looks like I just like bashing Seven Seas but I just hate how they blamed us for not buying their novels when it was their fault for releasing novels that had no popular or current anime to back them up. I just want them to admit they screwed up but I guess that's just never going to happen. I'm upset because I wanted them to do well. Seriously if Seven Seas wanted a light novel line of books then all they'd have to do would be to go on Crunchyroll and look at the most popular anime then pick a few titles that are based on a light novel (For example, and I know someone else has the license, but Durarara seems to popular on CR and it has a second season coming soon) and licensed them, they'd probably actually have success that time around. And who knows, maybe then they could try puttings ads in the popular books and slowly rereleasing the odd titles they chose originally. |
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MoonSttar
Posts: 26 |
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That's because its more safe and profitable for them to license novels that people seen the anime or heard about the anime then risk taking a novel that has no anime and no one heard about. |
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