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J-Novel Club Adds Yume Nikki, Ao Oni Light Novels

posted on by Karen Ressler
Novels based on free horror games debut in English

J-Novel Club announced on Tuesday that it has licensed the Yume Nikki - I Am Not in Your Dream and Ao Oni light novels. The first 40 pages of each title are available for free on J-Novel Club's website, and more of each title is available for members. The e-book releases are slated for early 2018.

The two titles are J-Novel Club's first two licenses from its fifth publishing partner, PHP Institute.

Yume Nikki - I Am Not in Your Dream (Yume Nikki - Anata no Yume ni Watashi wa Inai-) is based on Kikyama's Yume Nikki 2004 surreal-horror dōjin PC game. Akira (Kyōran Kazoku Nikki, Sasami-san@Ganbaranai) wrote the 2013 single-volume novelization and Ako Arisaka (KADO - The Right Answer) provided the illustrations.

J-Novel Club describes the story:

Based on the cult hit freeware game by Kikiyama, the dream-like novelization of Yume Nikki follows a lonely and mysterious girl from the confines of her tiny, sparse bedroom into the infinite world that awaits her when she falls asleep. She roams through shifting scenery and opens doors leading to bizarre, nonsensical dreamscapes, all places that may hold more than a metaphorical significance to her. But here, in the deepest reaches of her unconscious mind, is she truly alone?

The game also inspired a manga by Machigerita and Hitoshi Tomizawa.

The original Ao Oni horror game by noprops makes players solve various puzzles and riddles in order to escape a demon in a locked or enclosed space. The game first debuted for free online in 2004, and it is available in both Japanese and English. The novel series adaptation with story by Kenji Kuroda (Ace Attorney manga) and art by Karin Suzuragi (Higarashi manga) began in 2013 and ran for seven main volumes and one side-story volume.

J-Novel Club describes the story:

Shun is the new kid in school, but he's already managed to attract the attention of the school bully, who's now making his life a living hell. It doesn't seem like things could get any worse, until the night he finds himself and a group of his classmates inside a creepy, abandoned mansion known as the Jailhouse. They quickly start to hear strange sounds and see weird things, but everything escalates when they realize they can't get out. Once they're trapped inside, a blue, unnaturally large figure chases after them. Is it a new species? Or is it the ghost of their old classmate who died in an accident? Nobody knows, but one thing is for certain... if it catches them, they're dead! The scariest game of tag in history begins!

The game inspired the Aooni The Blue Monster (Ao Oni: The Animation) television anime series, a collection of comedic shorts, beginning in October 2016. It also inspired the Ao Oni: The Animation anime film, which tells a new story not from the original game or any of the other adaptations. Crunchyroll streamed both as they debuted in Japan.

The franchise also inspired two live-action films in July 2014 and July 2015. The sequel smartphone game Ao Oni 2 launched for iOS and Android devices in December 2016.


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