The Light Novel - Will it ever be a popular thing?

[trancehime]

Undeniably, there is a large amount of people who enjoy watching anime and reading manga. At the same time, undeniably, there is at least some percentage of the anime and manga we watch and read that is adapted from either light novels or from games (visual novel or not, for example, the Arad Senki anime was adapted from the MMO of the same name - the Japanese version of Dungeons 'N Fighter). However, recently, I have come to observe that a lot of people who enjoy anime and manga adapted from a light novel, are blissfully (?) unaware that a light novel of the media as a source even existed! For some reason, that really gets on my nerves. At the same time, it might have been a good thing, as a trend I see is that anime adapted from a light novel (this case applies less for manga, though I do observe it, and sometimes, the complete inverse happens - case in point, the Kara no Kyoukai movies adapted from Nasu's gargantuan 1000~ish page work, a movie per chapter) does turn out to be outright worse, or is missing some details that detract from the full potential of being a quality piece of animation that it could be.

I know that there are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, light novels are strictly a Japanese affair. Japanese is a language that, face it, not an incredibly huge amount of people know - compared to English speakers. The language barrier is a huge impediment in being able to absorb and appreciate (or criticize) the particular book you've picked up. Anime is a thing in its country of origin, yes, but unsurprisingly, the lack of awareness is in overseas audiences, which is why I brought this point up first. People who have looked up these adapted anime may have run into phrases such as "originated as <so and so>" and "was an adaptation of <this and that>" and may have thought nothing of it due to the fact Japanese is something they Can Not Read, or Can Not Read Very Well. Fortunately, while translations do exist (for example, Sword Art Online is covered by BakaTsuki), they are still relatively scarce and do not cover enough source material.

Secondly, light novels tend to be under the radar - people overseas just never hear about them, unless peers or friends tell them or big announcements are made, but such big announcements are never really made on a regular basis. Not enough to spread awareness. Even in Japan, there have been criticisms towards the Light Novel storytelling style as one that panders to the lowest denominator (and while this is true to some extent, there are some rather interesting works out there that don't fall under this category). A lot of criticisms also point to a lot of the LNs just being plain junk... I guess a lot of the stuff is bad, This blog post from 2 years ago comments on an AnimeSuki discussion thread debating on why light novels "would never become as popular as Harry Potter." From a Japanese perspective, it seems like a lot of it stems from the lack of merit to be found in LNs. Which I guess as I mentioned, is true to some degree. I bought a Chinese translation of Famima! and found it looked like stereotypical MC+loli shenanigans coated with a Mafioso flavor, felt like I wasted money there. There's also a distinction to be made between cultures - overseas readers prooobably wouldn't be able to wholesomely get the intricacies in Japanese culture unless they themselves were already greatly immersed in it. Operative word - wholesomely.

Lastly, demographic. Interestingly enough, LNs are actually quite popular when viewed under the lens of non-Japanese, in other parts of Asia, especially Taiwan, where I get a lot of my Chinese translated light novels. There's also a sort of similar light-novel publishing culture prevalent in Taiwan as well, though they seem to be mostly published web novels (similar to SAO) and/or fan fiction (similar to 50 Shades of Gray). I think that in some ways, light novels don't actually seem to mesh properly into a given strict demographic - they're almost always written for pleasure and because "I felt like it", and invariably fall into a given niche rather than demographic. Manga and the like tend to be more specialized into age groups, hence we have shounen/shoujo/seinen/josei. For example, Sword Art Online is the kind of story I feel anyone of ages higher than, say, 15 could easily enjoy if they were already interested in the premise to begin with (and this is discluding chapter 16.5, which was removed from print editions of SAO but still can be found floating on the Internet translated even).

I want to know how many of you folks read light novels, and maybe you could talk about your experiences with them, maybe have a bit of discussion on this general topic? Since I know we have a bunch of people who enjoy anime and manga, it seems interesting to me to observe how people who don't read LNs but enjoy anime and manga observe LNs, what do they think of them, basically.

To answer the question posed in my thread title, in my opinion? I don't see it becoming popular ever, in my view. It's sad because there are good light novels out there, and some of them do produce great anime at best, or hilarious trash at worse. There are even those that get the reverse treatment, so I think it's a topic worthy of some discussion.

[Widermelonz]

I just want to pop in real quick and say that reading light novels is a great way to learn Japanese, since most light novels are easier to read than say, a full novel or a newspaper. If you've got most of the essential grammar down, light novels is a great place to build up your bank of vocabulary and common phrases.

[Zengar Zombolt]

Well.
I think most of it boils down to a single factor. Effort.
When reading a novel you don't only need to read the words, but to actually keep up a mental image of what's happening. Meanwhile in anime adaptations, you get the visuals handed down to you. Besides, reading is mostly seen like a chore nowadays, more than something to be enjoyed. I, personally, look up to people that read novels as much as I do with whoever write them.

I can relate to Trance here, as I read the SAO novels as well. In my case, I did it as the series was airing, reading all ten that were out in the week between ep. 10 and 11. And I did find the novel was a much more complete experience. We got to see things that were barely touched upon on the anime, had the time to analyze the character's reactions further and what I found the biggest difference, was that the novels are written in Kazuto's POV. On the series, we miss completely all the thoughts and opinions that we get to read on the novels. This is an important point since it changes a lot about the presentation: It'd be really hard to show a POV that way on anime, as it would require keeping the whole experience on a single light, instead of a neutral way like it's mostly presented. And perhaps this would take away a character's spotlight. I mean, it'd be like having a narrator speak every couple of lines. It would feel disruptive, no? I did miss Kirito thinking of having a nearby window to jump off of, but well.

That being said I still hope Mother's Rosario gets animated one day. Yuuki da bes.

[Solais]

Yeah, that indeed was a good volume of SAO, and I really have the same opinion about the SAO issue now that I read it up to Alicization.

I also agree that reading the stuff - even if it's translated, like I do - takes effort, and even more importantly, time. Time is seemingly short nowadays and for one, I very rarely have time and motivation to read them when there are other stuff to do. Due to this, I only read any kind of novel, be it LN or western novels, when I can do nothing else, like when I'm travelling in my parents car or when on the toilet.