Light Novel |OT| Slightly Better than Manga and Anime!

Surprised there isn't more Wuxia and Xianxia love in here

Still following Coiling Dragon and Against the Gods daily, so awesome getting two chapters a day of enjoyment
 
The problem with Light Novels is that the translations can be so damn confusing to read. I remember reading Legend of the Legendary Heroes and after a few volumes I was just confused as hell regarding how the world actually looks visually. This might actually be an issue with the original writing rather than the translations though.
 
Noirulus said:
The problem with Light Novels is that the translations can be so damn confusing to read. I remember reading Legend of the Legendary Heroes and after a few volumes I was just confused as hell regarding how the world actually looks visually. This might actually be an issue with the original writing rather than the translations though.
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Light novel fan translations are generally pretty poor. Often enough they are done by people using machine translations who are not fluent in Japanese.

Not that light novels tend to be masterworks of prose to begin with.
 
Basileus777 said:
Light novel fan translations are generally pretty poor. Often enough they are done by people using machine translations who are not fluent in Japanese.

Not that light novels tend to be masterworks of prose to begin with.
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I wonder if this is the case with Maria no whatever it was that I was reading before, too. It's a prettttty clunky read.

I got to volume 5, but haven't read it in a while. Maybe I'll finish it next week.
 
Noirulus said:
The problem with Light Novels is that the translations can be so damn confusing to read. I remember reading Legend of the Legendary Heroes and after a few volumes I was just confused as hell regarding how the world actually looks visually. This might actually be an issue with the original writing rather than the translations though.
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Probably a mix of both. Even official translations can be rather iffy and a downgrade to the setting, like with No Game No Life. Stuff like The Devil Is A Part-Timer or Sword Art Online: Progressive however have a perfectly readable script, and while no masterworks, are entertaining and make for vivid imagination. Right now I'm in the middle of A Certain Magical Index 4 and that too has improved tremendously from the clunky first volume.
 
Finished volume 3 of Failed Knight. Enjoying this more than I expected. I think because it has more of a strong central relationship than magical battle school stories tend to have. Certainly is moving much faster than relationships tend to in japanese media.
 
Quasar said:
Finished volume 3 of Failed Knight. Enjoying this more than I expected. I think because it has more of a strong central relationship than magical battle school stories tend to have. Certainly is moving much faster than relationships tend to in japanese media.
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Rakudai Kishi no Eiyuutan/Failed Knight is my favorite battle school series because of this. An actual romance instead of indecisive harem nonsense. I hope it eventually gets licensed somehow.

Dedication Through Light said:
Psycome
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This is another series I've wanted licensed, awesome.
 
Quixzlizx said:
Rakudai Kishi no Eiyuutan/Failed Knight is my favorite battle school series because of this. An actual romance instead of indecisive harem nonsense. I hope it eventually gets licensed somehow.



This is another series I've wanted licensed, awesome.
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Cool, these comments have convinced me to watch the anime. Hope it gets licensed then!
 
I'm happy for overlord because it deserve more recognition and it's a damn fine book , i'm just worried that they will take their sweet time to release it.
 
TRSI hasn't had a Yen Press sale in forever. I'm probably going to end up making a $200 order when it happens :lol

If they don't hurry up I might end up switching to Amazon.
 
mdubs said:
Cool, these comments have convinced me to watch the anime. Hope it gets licensed then!
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Well I suspect a lot of that will get stripped out so it can have more action and ecchi comedy, like a lot of ln series that get treated poorly. Blade of the Elementalets is an example of this. All the depth and interesting parts got chopped out and left a pretty bland and generic anime.
 
Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance - Volume 14 - Never get involved in royal politics folks. Always ends in tears. Could really do without the repeated use of amnesia though. Not a fan of that device, even if it makes sense in this case.
 
Dang it Yen press. On one hand I'm happy that they'll be doing Overlord since the official translation will be better then the choppy fan one that I've been slowly reading but on the other hand I'm annoyed they haven't announced Sword oratoria yet. If they are going to do a series they need to make sure to do the spin offs too.

I'd love them to pick up Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance as well but I'm not holding my breath since the anime wasn't very popular.
 
So I just picked this translated LN in my country last year and somehow decided to read it. The LN is "Leena's World Map", written by Tsukasa Kawaguchi. Despite some typos, annoying translation decision (keeping the honorifics while my native language have enough of it on its own, really translator?), and basic problem in the material itself one or two times needless infodump, it was a decent read. The author surprised me by showing some small details in his writing. The world he write feels it act like one as one big event involving kingdom states can affect the livelihood of many. Not much, but there is some sense of politic within the royal family. The characters while can feel quite stocky at time, but in general they're likeable. This is the impression I got just from reading 1 volume and I want to know if there is more to it. I found that there are two other volumes yet. I'm upset at my finding. Not because it ended quite fast, but because the other work that the writer had done.

So how he come from this
12165965_1170657449616614_763134587_n.jpg
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to this
12167304_1170657496283276_17386320_n.jpg
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and this
11997268_1170657532949939_294592610_n.jpg
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I couldn't understand
/rant
 
Shengar said:
So I just picked this translated LN in my country last year and somehow decided to read it. The LN is "Leena's World Map", written by Tsukasa Kawaguchi. Despite some typos, annoying translation decision (keeping the honorifics while my native language have enough of it on its own, really translator?), and basic problem in the material itself one or two times needless infodump, it was a decent read. The author surprised me by showing some small details in his writing. The world he write feels it act like one as one big event involving kingdom states can affect the livelihood of many. Not much, but there is some sense of politic within the royal family. The characters while can feel quite stocky at time, but in general they're likeable. This is the impression I got just from reading 1 volume and I want to know if there is more to it. I found that there are two other volumes yet. I'm upset at my finding. Not because it ended quite fast, but because the other work that the writer had done.

So how he come from this

to this

and this

I couldn't understand
/rant
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I like the Vanadis novels. :P

Although it doesn't even look like Seizuyomi is listed on BU, so I guess there's been no English translation of it at all.
 
^I'm planning to read it, too xD.

It's been a while since I last swung by, but I haven't really read something for a while. The last LN I read was The Irregular at Magic Highschool vol. 2, and boy did it soured me on the franchise. You see, the anime was decent because the narration there was non-existant, but in the LNs, wow, it's annoying. Every page, every chapter, they need to keep reminding you how perfect is Tatsuya, how beautiful is Miyuki and all sorts of annoying quirks which took its toll on me. Had to drop it, which is a shame since the story itself isn't that bad (I quite liked the anime).

Next LNs I'll read will be Danmachi and maybe Index
 
Quixzlizx said:
I like the Vanadis novels. :P

Although it doesn't even look like Seizuyomi is listed on BU, so I guess there's been no English translation of it at all.
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I'm not surprised if Vanadis at basic level writing turned out to be decent. I can see that the author have good enough grips on the fundamental to make his work readable and not fall into obnoxious crap that some Japanese fantasy writers tends trap themselves to. But it just shame that he must resort to harem crap in order to sell his novel while his plain fantasy-adventure work didn't sell.

Also his other work beside Seizuyomi are pretty high in its fantasy premise. Seizuyomi is pretty low in that where the story is about a princess who dream to make a world map. Such low fantasy and soft-tone premise really appeals me. But even with maid companion and female main character, it is not enough to sell, and fanstrantlation ;__:
 
Shengar said:
I'm not surprised if Vanadis at basic level writing turned out to be decent. I can see that the author have good enough grips on the fundamental to make his work readable and not fall into obnoxious crap that some Japanese fantasy writers tends trap themselves to. But it just shame that he must resort to harem crap in order to sell his novel while his plain fantasy-adventure work didn't sell.

Also his other work beside Seizuyomi are pretty high in its fantasy premise. Seizuyomi is pretty low in that where the story is about a princess who dream to make a world map. Such low fantasy and soft-tone premise really appeals me. But even with maid companion and female main character, it is not enough to sell, and fanstrantlation ;__:
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Have you tried Risou no Himo Seikatsu? It's a low-magic fantasy setting, and the romance is based on a real relationship instead of a harem. The premise sounds stupid, but I've really enjoyed it. It also helps that it has a good translation instead of the usual 2 steps above machine translation script.

And I agree that almost every harem setting would be better if the protagonist was dating one character instead of not dating a bunch of them.
 
Finally managed to finish A Certain Magical Index Vol. 4. Was a decent read, writing improved quite a bit from the first two volumes, but overall the whole story felt more like decent filler material. Yeah there were a few revelations in terms of characters and a certain group of supernatural beings, but in the grand scheme of things it felt rather underwhelming. And the ending was quite a bit too convenient, really. Still, it had Kanzaki in it, so it was all worth it.

Next up is The Devil Is A Part-Timer 2 or SAO 5, not sure yet.
Will probably play/read through Ar Nosurge Plus first though. And maybe even Steins;Gate.
 
Quixzlizx said:
Have you tried Risou no Himo Seikatsu? It's a low-magic fantasy setting, and the romance is based on a real relationship instead of a harem. The premise sounds stupid, but I've really enjoyed it. It also helps that it has a good translation instead of the usual 2 steps above machine translation script.

And I agree that almost every harem setting would be better if the protagonist was dating one character instead of not dating a bunch of them.
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I don't say that harem wouldn't be able to deliver good character relationship and interaction, it's just too many of them are trash and that have make me to set my expectation on harem really low.

I'll keep an eye on your recommendation. As for physical LNs, there aren't too many translated yet to my language so I consider to importing Spice and Wolves.. But before that, maybe I should try the first volume of Absolute Duo first.
 
ThatChairMan said:
Quite glad Horizon's does. Wouldn't want to know how bad it would be machine translated, what with all the specialized terminology and historical references.
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I can't comment specifically on Horizon, but even most machine-translated scripts are looked at afterward to tweak into making sense. You can still tell because it's really stilted, and phrases get through that were obviously 100% literally translated without thought to how they fit the sentence.
 
Quixzlizx said:
I can't comment specifically on Horizon, but even most machine-translated scripts are looked at afterward to tweak into making sense. You can still tell because it's really stilted, and phrases get through that were obviously 100% literally translated without thought to how they fit the sentence.
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Yep, you can edit and rewrite the sentences Google gives you without actually having to know Japanese. It still makes for a poor read. And with so many people out there that don't mind if something is barely intelligible you get a whole scene where doing this is rampant. It happens with manga and visual novel translations too.
 
Basileus777 said:
Yep, you can edit and rewrite the sentences Google gives you without actually having to know Japanese. It still makes for a poor read.
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Yeah, I wasn't defending them, just mentioning that the presence of official series terminology doesn't preclude the possibility of a machine translation being involved.
 
Finished Accel World vol 1, I liked it overall. Lots of wish-fullfillment though, even by LN standards. Although as with most Kawahara books, still quite enjoyable.

I have Vols 2 and 3 on the way, will get to them once I finish Progressive 3 which is this week's task
 
Well that's curious, the main fan translation site just got told to take down Campione translation.

Wonder if that means we're going to be getting a official translation soon. Certainly otherwise its odd the publisher only did it for one title rather than all their stuff.
 
Quasar said:
Well that's curious, the main fan translation site just got told to take down Campione translation.

Wonder if that means we're going to be getting a official translation soon. Certainly otherwise its odd the publisher only did it for one title rather than all their stuff.
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Noooooo

NOOOOOOOO

You're telling me that the translation will stop at "That" point ?
WTF

If this cliffanger wasn't already evil , knowing that i'll have to wait "yeeeears" before we get the rest SUCKS.
I'm mad
 
R_thanatos said:
Noooooo

NOOOOOOOO

You're telling me that the translation will stop at "That" point ?
WTF

If this cliffanger wasn't already evil , knowing that i'll have to wait "yeeeears" before we get the rest SUCKS.

I'm mad
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Yeah. Unless some translators do it away from that site.

Hopefully it does mean western publication is coming rather than them deciding just to take it down for the hell of it. Not that that helps folks already 15 volumes in.
 
YenON bringing

The Asterisk War, both the manga and the light novel, in Summer 2016!
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Sword Oratoria light novels in 2016!
Re:Zero both the manga and light novels in Summer 2016
 
Today is a good day! I've been requesting Sword Oratoria for months now so knowing that it's confirmed to be coming really sets me at ease

Thought if they keep going and lisencing stuff at this rate my wallet is going to break! I don't collect every series that they put out since I'm not intrested in all of them but it's going to reach a point very soon where I won't be able to support all of the ones I would have liked to get
 
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