2012-11-30, 01:02 | Link #742 |
Pedestrian
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Sweden
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Finished Mahouka-koukou no Rettousei vol 1 by Satou Tsutomu. It takes place in the year 2095, where magic has been discovered to be real, and augmented by technology, it's turned into a kind of advanced engineering field. To fully take advantage of this setting, our protagonist is, of course, a high school student with a fawning little sister and pretty girls surrounding him.
This title is surprisingly popular, having started out as a free web novel on an amateur site, where it racked up 30 million views. A publishing house noticed it and convinced the author to publish it in book form, and now it's just a matter of time until it gets animated. Not that any of this saves it from being shit. The author has the most hardcore infodump fetish I've ever seen, making the book horrendously tedious to read. If a character is taking the train to school, he'll waste two entire pages describing how trains have evolved, including superfluous information on how the pricing differs if you occupy more seats. To make matters worse, the magic system is filled with fictitious jargon, and working through what it all means in page-long explanations on the different branches of magic or the maintenance of magical devices is worse than studying for a biology test. I can appreciate his passion for world building, but randomly stuffing encyclopaedic paragraphs of completely made-up information into his plot is a terrible way of doing it. It would make more sense if it at least had some kind of connection to what's going on, but nope, someone uses the train, so we've got to explain the history of the train! Someone uses a mobile device, so we must describe every minute detail of these devices! Why is there no teacher in the classroom? Here's a few pages on how the school system is developing in this imaginary future! You get the picture. As I reached the final page, it dawned on me that this volume is actually just the first half of a longer novel, so it practically ends in mid-chapter. In spite of that, I sincerely doubt I'll ever bother to get the next part, since it'd probably put me into a coma. Maybe the inevitable anime will cut down on the tedious bullshit.
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2012-11-30, 02:13 | Link #743 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
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This is really its greatest weakness for some, but it can also be its greatest strength when used appropriately, especially for fights. At least, his knowledge in computers and physics is a lot more solid than Kawahara's knowledge about brain science. As a DM for Dungeons & Dragons for 1.5 decades, I can really appreciate the amount of details he put into the world building, rather putting the readers through great suspensions of disbelief in a futuristic setting with overly trite conveniences. Of course, I'm merely speaking for myself. Though sometimes, it can be indeed a drag when a particular portion adds little value to the plot. All in all, it's all a matter of reader taste and preference, and bear in mind that you are just speaking for yourself when you are labeling it as shit. Actually, from all your past criticisms on many of the popular light novels, I wonder why you are still hanging around reading light novels? The majority of light novels these days either have bad or lazy writing, bad presentation style, cliche developments, or bad this bad that. Most of us light novel readers are either amateur readers or people who enjoy an aspect of the story without concern for its flaws. You should just move on to read mainstream literature. Of course, it's just my personal thought and you have the choice to continue reading and Quote:
Note that collaborators are give higher point values, and as I recall there are only about 50 collaborators among the 1500+ survey participants. Last edited by larethian; 2012-11-30 at 03:20. |
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2012-11-30, 07:12 | Link #744 | |
一日之计在于晨
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: A place where the seasons come to a standstill
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2012-11-30, 11:07 | Link #745 | |
Pedestrian
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Sweden
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I still don't feel ready to tackle proper literature at my language level. Japanese is hard, kind of thing. Why do I keep reading shit light novels? Because I genuinely enjoy some authors, like Nishio and Takemiya Yuyuko. I know there's quality stuff out there, as long as I'm persistent enough to find it. People have different opinions, though, and I have to wade through such an enormous amount of crap to find something decent, even if it's praised to high heavens by others. ._. Some positive reviews of previous reads: http://ranobe.muri.se/reviews.html#bakudan http://ranobe.muri.se/reviews.html#kizumonogatari http://ranobe.muri.se/reviews.html#ben-to-01 http://ranobe.muri.se/reviews.html#durarara-02 http://ranobe.muri.se/reviews.html#lollypop http://ranobe.muri.se/reviews.html#mimizuku I'll probably try Rikka no Yuusha next, since it's on the shelf.
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2012-11-30, 11:27 | Link #746 | |
Master of Coin
Join Date: Mar 2008
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Ah Gosh, it is that bad? I was going to read it. Thought it might Blade Dancer lite. |
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2012-12-03, 04:08 | Link #747 |
Pedestrian
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Sweden
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Light Novel sales 2012 (in number of volumes).
1. Sword Art Online (2,764,454) 2. Accel World (1,033,906) 3. Kotenbu Series [Hyouka] (767,236) 4. Mahouka-koukou no Rettousei (696,322) 5. Shinyaku To Aru Majutsu no Index (686,467) 6. High School DxD (654,224) 7. Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (620,972) 8. Ore no Imouto wa Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (544,507) 9. Oda Nobuna no Yabou (450,794) 10. Papa no Iu Koto wo Kikinasai (447,053) Of note is that SAO and AW (#1-2) are written by the same author, Kawahara Reki. Nishio Ishin tops the non-paperback sales at 1.4 million volumes.
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2012-12-03, 04:15 | Link #748 |
We're Back
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Redgrave City
Age: 35
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Yeah, both SAO and AW got massive boost from their Anime, though they're not the only ones- Nobuna, Kokoro Connect, Campione, Nyaruko... Even Sakurasou and Onii-Ai that were just aired manages to sneak into the top 20.
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2012-12-06, 18:09 | Link #749 |
Pedestrian
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Sweden
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Fuck this. Fuck fuck fuck.
I just spent three hours on the toilet, furiously reading Rokka no Yuusha vol 1 all the way to the end. 140 goddamn pages without a break. That's how good it was. That's how hard it was to put down. And then, fucking fuck, that fucking last page. FUCK! How the fuck can he do this to me?! Urgh.
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2012-12-06, 20:08 | Link #751 | ||
Nyaaan~~
Join Date: Feb 2006
Age: 40
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Outlook is optimistic Last edited by willx; 2012-12-06 at 20:22. |
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2012-12-06, 20:38 | Link #752 | |
Ava courtesy of patchy
Join Date: Jan 2009
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2013-01-25, 21:08 | Link #755 |
メインヒロイン
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata is a very fun series written by Maruto Fumiaki (the same guy who wrote White Album 2). Well, because of this it fells like I'm reading a VN in form of book. The main theme of making a normal girl (Katou Megumi) into a main heroine of a game is interesting too. The setting of their game already looks better than a lot of things out there. But the best thing is the interaction between Megumi and the MC. It has been some time since I liked the "main heroine" so much since the first volume.
Saihate no Kyuuseishu is a new series by the author of Mushi Uta. The MC looks a little like Okarin from S;G and revolves around the existence of a genius. The aspect that made me like this so much was that the heroines didn't have any appearance at the climax. In other words Saihate is like a mixture of slice-of-life (with the heroines) + a battle between "geniuses" involving the most important powers in the world (no heroines here?). |
2013-01-28, 05:48 | Link #757 | |
Kotori!Kotori!Kotori!
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: 2D world
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2013-01-29, 19:52 | Link #758 |
The Power of One
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Earth
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Anyone tried Strike the Blood yet? Or the Divine Blade's Successor?
I am about to start Rising Rydeen or 学戦都市アスタリスク, whatever that name might be. The latter interests me because from the illustrations I saw, it is kinda similar to IS.
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2013-01-29, 20:53 | Link #759 | |||
メインヒロイン
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Spoiler for KnMB:
If you don't have problems with the setting and like harem/battle series this will probably be a good read. Quote:
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About 学戦都市アスタリスク (Gakuen Toshi Astalisk?) the illustrations are similar because the illustrator is the same guy: okiura. |
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