I know this is a really old thread, but I just finished the book. This is after really liking the old anime 5 years ago or so, and then deciding 3 years ago that once I’m good enough with Japanese I’ll read the light novels in their original language. So, this was much anticipated by me, and now after finishing sadly my result is the same as @NicoleIsEnough’s:
It’s been too long for me since watching the anime to be sure exactly why I feel like that. Maybe the author wasn’t on the top of their game for the first book yet. Maybe I like it in a more visual form, or the anime is just better.
Maybe it’s because I half-remembered some of the twists, so it wasn’t as exciting, especially with me reading at a glacial pace due to jumping from Natively level 23 (my previous highest) to a Natively level 29 book.
I don’t remember too many details of the anime episode contents, but reading the short blurbs for them I think (and hope) that the reason I liked the anime more might be due to the anime having more varied subject matter. You know, with not almost every episode being sad, and not half of the chapters basically being about “humans kill other humans for basically no good reason at all”.
Considering that I am really fond of the anime, I’ll try out the next volume once I’m better at reading, and I really hope that it’ll be less disappointing for me!
(Nevertheless, pretty proud of finishing my first L29 book!)
'Also, what the heck is up with the logic in this last chapter' rant
I know this book is not trying to be particularly realistic, but there is absolutely no way a country (much less two of them at the same time!) would decide that instead of fighting the enemy that they hated even before over a hundred years of mutual killing, they’d switch to doing some random killing contest together instead. I could’ve seen one country starting some kind vaguely justfied “war” without risk to keep the economy going, or because of political reasons or for entertainment or whatever, but doing it as a replacement for attacking the country who has been killing your people for so long, TOGETHER with that very country?
I can follow the internal logic in the other chapters, but this one lost me.