[Doraneko]

Originally Posted by ion475

It's just strange, that's all. It's not like I don't like new blood (Circlet Girl has been around for a LONG time, though...), it just feels weird.

The strangeness of the ranking is how bipolar it is. To get into the top 10, a title either has to be extremely good at the sales department with no regard to quality, or has extremely good quality regardless of terrible sales. Circlet Girl is a good example. There are only three public (non-collaborator) votes for it and the general light-novel reading public wouldn't even expect it to come up in the ranking at all, let alone top 10.

The 2012 ranking almost seems like mixing two rankings of completely different natures into one, and departs from the previous year's ranking which was more or less a more sophisticated version of annual sales chart.

I suspect that with the increasing popularity of the ranking there was a large influx of causal readers voting in the polls for 2011, diluting the collaborator votes and turning the ranking into a sales chart. To fix the problem and restore the reputation of the ranking, the weight of collaborator votes have been significantly increased in the 2012 ranking. Of course you can never please both sides. This time the mainstream readers scream unfairness.

This is exactly what Shouji Gatou (FMP author) described in 2005 as a discrepancy between the taste of mainstream readers and critics which makes an all-purpose light novel ranking obsolete.

But then what is the point of creating an independent light novel ranking if it is simply another bestseller list? In fact for multiple instances the ranking had picked up gems of the industry ignored by the public. Getting Haruhi or Index in a light novel list is a no-brainer and I think even some random Naruto/Bleach-loving teens in the US can do so without reading one single light novel. But getting quality titles like Mimizuku, All You Need Is Kill, とある飛空士への追憶, ある日、爆弾がおちてきて shows the reference value of the list.

Getting Idolizing and Iris in top 10 is more like allowing the ranking to return to its original purpose instead of pushing the ranking to depart from it (like many mainstream readers feel right now). On the other hand, if the mainstream readers shows too much of a displeasure, there is a good chance that the 2012 ranking will increase the weight of public votes again. After all, the publisher of the ranking relies on the mainstream readers instead of critics for the sales.



Another strangeness is that the mainstream entries in the top 10 are mostly titles from last year's top 10. In fact only SAO is the newcomer. This probably illustrates the problem of the industry in finding a heavy-weight successor to Index/Haruhi rather than some inherent shortcomings of the ranking.


Anyway I include the sales figure of the latest bunko and media mix progress of the 2012 top 10s for your reference. Those with "?" are having too miserable sales (below 10k) to have their figures listed. As you can probably expect, fans of series with 30k-100k sales per book are rioting right now . For me, as long as I can see Iris at any place in top 50 I won't complain at all, but seeing it in top 10 is a pleasant surprise.

SAO 100k
Index 200k
Bento 10k
Circlet ?
Bakatest 200k
Haganai 250k
Occult ?
Haruhi 400k
Idolizing ?
Iris ?

Anime adaptation done: Index, Haruhi, Bento, Haganao
Anime adaptaion announced: SAO
Drama CD: Idolizing
No media mix project at all: Circlet, Occult, Iris

Originally Posted by larethian

plus he actually has time and patience to go through the tens of thousands of posts (maybe more) on 2ch on light novels.

You know there are summary sites for 2ch threads. There are too many of them (hundreds or even thousands) for one to simultaneously pay attention to unless he was an AI.


EDIT:

Top 10 for the public with no regard of collaborator votes:

SAO (1)
Index (2)
Haganai (6)
Monogatari
Bento (3)
Bakatest (5)
Oreimo (11)
Haruhi (8)
Kamimemo (14)
Kokoro Connect (12)