Current Events > Light Novel General v0.01 "Not as good as Mushoku Tensei"

(+) Yeah! (+)

Bump.
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The 6 month anniversary for this topic passed a few days ago I think. I do wanna at least see a v.2 of the topic at the least. It feels like expecting too much since I know the readers are few in numbers and I am certainly not being a good contributor.

Meanwhile, I'm really getting into Root Double. It's a great little game, albeit the choices and requirements are a bit vague lols
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Blargle. So fucking tired today, but I actually read a chapter of a WN. Adolescent Adam. Yeah technically this one is one of those 18+ WN, but there's a manga for it. It's... alright. There's really nothing much to say about it.

I think it's about time that I find a WN that's super good. It's been a while
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So... I finally got to resume my translation project after neglecting it for a whole month. Almost done with chapter 1 now, but there's a particular part that I'm not sure if I can translate well enough. Volume 2 is currently my second favorite volume in the whole series I've read so far, so I really want my translation to be good.

Anyway, looks like Shieldbro is getting an anime. I hope the adaptation work is good for this one.

Oh god, a shieldbro adaptation will either be really really good or sadly mediocre. They have to go quickly and flower things up a bit because the latter half of the story is where it gets so freaking over the top insane that it makes the series. The Naofumi is bitter and discriminated upon thing gets old pretty quickly.

I mean... where are they even gonna end an anime based on something like this? The genbu fight? It's the same argument for something like how Mushoku Tensei is never gonna get an anime because the story is so goddamn long
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Hmm, maybe it could make some decent progress if it's 2-cour. If it's 1-cour though, I don't really see how it's going to work without cutting a bunch of stuff.

Now that reminds me, I think an anime for Death March was announced some time ago? I haven't heard any more news since then.
From the impressions I've read, that series is super long and is pretty laid-back, so I'm also interested in how much of it would be adapted.

Death March is... an odd title. It's a very very slow march with literally almost nothing happening for several 20 some chapters at a time. But unlike Shieldbro where the peace is important to the drastic shifts in tone that suddenly comes out of nowhere and fast, Death March has nothing that happens to warrant such long overdrawn peace.

And yeah like the main character basically doesn't do anything. He's insanely strong, but he spends all his time barely making his harem of young girls stronger. I dunno, I've given this series a lot of effort to read through, but in the end, it's just a very mediocre story
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You know what, that sounds like the closest to a slice-of-life LN from the ones I've seen so far. Maybe I'll gove it a try when I'm craving something of that genre. It probably won't be in the near future though, since I haven't even started Mushoku Tensei yet. The English fan-translated version is the Web Novel, right?

Yeah, but the Web Novel is just as terrific as the LN. The LN adds a few more characters and side stories to a series already freaking up to its neck on characters and side story.

It's also a great slice of life story after the time skip. I personally didn't like MT before the time skip, but I know a lot of people like the pre-time skip due to the popularity of the character Eris :P. But the pre-time skip is also important for the world building. There are constant political struggles and powerful people making odd moves that all come into play much later. You have to be constantly paying attention, but the happenings are so interestingly written that you'll probably remember it by the time it becomes important.

And I mean like literally every character you'll ever encounter is important. It's a world run by many people, not by an overpowered MC. Though of course you'll still see the world unfold only through the eyes of the main character Rudeus, and he's a joker with humorous remarks on the melodrama and absurdities of the world. It's also a story about trying really hard. You'll walk with the main character through all of his struggles to make up for his various weaknesses, and you'll see it pay off and sometimes you'll see all his effort go totally in vain. It's a very human story.

Objectively it's better written than Shieldbro, but Shieldbro has a much more anime quality to it that has a bit more mainstream appeal

Btw, tell me if you like Death March. If there's a payoff, I'll probably wade through it
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speaking of upcoming anime adaptations, anyone here read any of Gamers?
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kirbymuncher posted...

speaking of upcoming anime adaptations, anyone here read any of Gamers?

I've never heard of it.

It seems the LN translation starts here http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/gamers.html and has a link to whoever continued it.

Supposedly the story is very long? It baffles me how LN animes are just so successful when LNs are significantly longer, and anime cover 2-3 volumes at best >.>
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legendarylemur posted...

It baffles me how LN animes are just so successful when LNs are significantly longer, and anime cover 2-3 volumes at best >.>

because the vast majority of people, regardless of age or nationality or anything, don't like reading
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Yeah when you can look at a pretty animated girl do flashy stuff, reading does start to suck indeed. But nothing can beat the extent LNs can go to plot-wise.

Personally though, it's difficult for me to read a romance LN. That's why I usually try to stick to ones with some degree of fast paced action
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References
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Romance, huh? I don't think I've read any of those yet either. I think I used to read an old Japanese novel called "Love Letter", but I don't remember much of it. And I'm also pretty interested in Sayonara Piano Sonata since it's completely translated in my country.

Well, I also finished the translation of MH Volume 2 Chapter 1. I'll get it on Baka-Tsuki later.
Link: https://goo.gl/LNW55j

Edit: Wrong link

Yeah somebody here sent me links to Romcom SNAFU, sorry for forgetting who it was, but yeah that's a good romance imo, but I would rather read romance genre in something like a manga to be honest.

And I'll have to give that a read. Is that the next volume of the same series you were translating?
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Huh, I seem to have completely forgotten about Romcom SNAFU. I did watch 2 or 3 episodes of the anime (with the chuunibyou otaku dude) but got distracted by something else.

And yeah, it's the same Monster Hunter series. I did say that I want to translate them all, so I'm going to try my best to.
I also did say that Volume 3 of this series is the weakest, but one of the new characters introduced in that book is super cool, so I kinda want to translate his parts as well.

Almost done with Root Double. I highly recommend it. It's not the greatest mystery perhaps compared to something like Ever17 or 999 or VLR which were both almost entirely mystery based. Instead, it's more about various people with different agendas causing massive problems everywhere.
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Bump.
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Holy fuck!!! The first actual picture of grown up Eris in Mushoku. That is cray. Only took 15 volumes and like 4 years after the time skip was actually written.

She looks way different than what I imagined though.
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https://i.redditmedia.com/Y6Ixvidq7DIASYfiuYQY3lZySfRzqGDosy-P1q5RXcU.jpg?w=450&s=d77f22b0596c5a8dd7371d78f877b02d

AAaaaaaaahhhhhh I swear I'd freaking learn Japanese just to read this whole series again.

Meanwhile though, Reddit's likeminded Mushoku fanboys also seem to love a series called Hakomari, which is also a finished LN. Welp, I guess somebody, who is me, is reading this next
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Huh, I actually started Mushoku Tensei WN today. I'm reading on Syosetu, so I didn't make much progress though. Only got up to the part where the magic instructor (Rokishii?) is introduced. The baby section is actually pretty entertaining, and the magic system of this series seems to be quite detailed.

Also, here's Monster Hunter V2 Ch2 Scene1
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByTOB0gqvyjtQmIzY0JNNC1zaEE

Yeah you'll have a pretty detailed understanding of how magic works in that world. It turns out to be pretty underdeveloped though because magic is pretty disadvantageous due to just how freaking fast swordsmen are.

And yeah the magic teacher's name is most commonly called Roxy in most translations. She's a crowd favorite
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Floop
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So... I've been a bit bored (despite my novel backlog) and I took a look at Chinese and Korean novels. Decided to try out "I am the Monarch". It's a fairly gritty fantasy series that has the MC "reincarnate" into his younger self and fix his past personal mistakes. Nothing spectacular, but I think it's off to a good start. The author describing the MC's past life relationships and events fairly extensively certainly helps keep it entertaining.

Speaking of which, there's this drama going on about Qidian, which is apparently an official license holder for a bunch of prominent Chinese novels. Something about them forcing translators to stop hosting Qidian stuff on other sites. I wouldn't want to say anything without knowing as much as I can, but it sounds pretty weird

Edit: Accidentally erased the second paragraph. Whoops.

Lel interesting. Yeah some Chinese companies are... rather clingy. I've worked for Chinese companies before, though they were all very nice people, and I've read plenty about horror stories. Some of those companies are too rich for their own good lol. A surprising number of prominent companies are owned by the Chinese.

It's sorta sad though, since good translations are few and far in between. They probably don't really lose much money from fan translations in English sites, much like how Crunchyroll is no longer even that good of a revenue source for actual content creators in Japan. I've heard they get like less than 5 cent out of a dollar that goes to Crunchyroll or something? It's sure tough being passionate fictional world builders
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It's all over the world, I guess? Some companies are nice and some aren't so much. I've been fortunate enough to be in the nice ones so far.

Well, fan translations are free and all, so I only expect them to be at an understandable level. I'm a lot more critical when it comes to commercial releases I buy, though I haven't bought that much English stuff, and the ones that I have bought are all good.

Anyways, I also came across some Chinese martial arts novels that have their chapter numbers in the thousands. I kinda wonder if the authors can keep up the consistency in their stories.

They churn martial arts movies out at an absurd pace. I'm sure writing one is even easier than that lmao.

Meanwhile, there's a stuffiness to official translations that I'm not always a fan of. Having a more casual voice and simplistic writing structure gets less in the way of the actual story telling, which I care about. But obviously when the translations are either shit or nonsensical, that's easily the worst of all the options
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Huh, did the official releases you buy change the writing structure around or something? As far as I checked, the ones I've bought seem to have the original structure intact.

Actually, it's the other way around. Sometimes fan translations gloss over hard to translate bits or paraphrase some writings. If they were important, it's sometimes stated in the comments that it was an important thing a translation left out or something. In any case, I just like paraphrasing the most
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Well yeah, there are some things that are just impossible to translate well into English. I also had to do some paraphrasing for my project, but unless I overlooked something I never left a detail out.

Sometimes, translating stuff way too literally can also end in horrendous resuls. While not a novel, it happened with the Vita version of SAO: Hollow Fragment.

I recently visited a remote Japanese marketplace.

https://imgur.com/gallery/9YczD

That was only a small sample of what I saw.

'Twas music to my eyes
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Man, that's some good place you found. As far as I know, there's nothing like that in my area. There's a few anime-related shops, but none of them sell import manga/novels.

Yeah it's a bit far and a real hassle to get to. Fucking parts of the road there didn't show up on my goddamn outdated GPS.

But knowing that it exists is pretty big. I mean I live somewhere between San Diego and LA, so there are quite a few hobby centric places near there
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My friend has been raving about how Holo beat Megumin in the /r anime poll. Hilarious

Supposedly somebody prepared this because they thought Megumin would win

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7aJ_Wwpmfw&feature=youtu.be
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I've been voting in that competition every day and saw that video earlier, the poster even got gilded for it.
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I've not been voting but my friend is super into it. His reaction to various things losing to Konosuba characters has been the highlight of the competition for me. He does NOT like Konosuba lmfao. I still really don't get why. He simply doesn't find it funny whatsoever.

For me who was really into the Isekai genre for the longest time, it was a blast to watch
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Now that's some funny stuff. If this happens frequently, I should read stuff on anime reddit more often.

I heard it's yearly. One of the years, the bland black haired braid girl from Shokugeki no Soma won. I didn't watch that series, but supposedly a lot of people raged cuz she wasn't even the best girl in that series alone.

But yeah the salt level in that competition is ocean level. Ultra salt boys
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Heh, maybe I should go have a look at some of them. Should keep me entertained when I don't feel like reading novels.

Speaking of which, I read through MH: Hayate no Tsubasa volume 1. This series runs in parallel with Tamashii wo Tsugu mono, following hunters from Pokke rather than Jumbo. This volume has a dual Hypnoc quest, which gave me nightmare flashbacks from Freedom Unite. (Seriously, that quest was a nightmare to go through the first time)
Anyway, the author seems to be going for a dual protagonist approach this time. One is a boy who is trying to make money for his poor family in Pokke, and another is a girl who used to be part of a famous hunting duo that disbanded for some reason. Pretty interesting characters introduced, but nothing special happens yet so I'd say that this is by far the worst first volume of the 5 MH series I've read.
(I did look at the front illustrations of all volumes, and it looks like things will get real epic from volume 3 onwards)

I am sick today. My head is fucking killing me, so in case I pass out, I'll just bumpo nowo
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Seven Seas is releasing Arifureta and Clockwork Planet physically, though supposedly on March 2018. I'd buy an Arifureta physical. Probably vol 1 and then vol 4~ though since those are the best bits :P. Unless the LN version improves upon the 2nd dungeon...
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Huh, looks like Toradora is licensed as well. Pretty weird that it wasn't picked up earlier, but it's still better than never.

Still waiting in anticipation of the Shield Hero anime. It feels like it's stated to happen for years now, but it's definitely not within the next 2-3 seasons of anime. I guess I'm mostly curious as to how they'll handle it. I feel like it's just much stronger when it's not about Naofumi getting betrayed or looked down on. Because the story drags that plot point along a bit too long, but it's long enough that an anime of it will fill an entire season with it.

Also rofl I totally didn't realize you made that topic on Reddit LOL. Yeah I don't check it out much either, but there were some cool news rising here and there, so
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Seriously, I was pretty surprised to see you answering my post there. I created my account so that I can post updates to my project there as well, though I also just discovered that there's someone posting there already.

I also enjoy pretty much anything I read, so I just asked for stuff that are well-translated so that I can gain some insight on how others translate things. I'll probably pick up Literature Girl's official release when I get back to the US, and right now I'm doing that "study" using Death March and Spider Girl since there are raws available on the web.

I don't post there often at all either lols. It was a sheer coincidence that I saw that post. Death March might not be bad. In my opinion, the current translation, while generally solid, has pretty awkward dialogue. I dunno if it's the source material or a bad translation
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I don't know if it was a good idea, but I tried reading chapter 16-1 of Death March. The dialogue in the Japanese WN feels a tad bit more refined compared to the translation. That "nanodesu" character though... it felt like I was back in Kantai Collection for a moment there.
Well... I did get some new ideas from this, so I would say that it's working.

Anyway, I did read it from the start and got up to the part where the MC arrives at the first village. It's surprisingly entertaining, considering that all he has been doing for about two parts were walking and reading stuff.

A LOT of this story is just walking and doing not much of anything. I think the story doesn't set up a convincing enough world to do this, and you're always sorta aware that this is a game that the guy made. And yeah, a lot of Satou's troupes are just little girls who only talk in tropes.
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Anyone itt ever read Spice & Wolf? I only just recently found out it's getting a spinoff/sequel covering

*Ending spoiler*

Holo/Laurence's daughter.
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It is a very high priority one for me. I might just delve into buying physical copies. I finished WEE in its entirety not too long ago, so I guess I'm still cooling down on Economic nostalgia, since I majored in it but am doing programming now lul
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