So, I’ve been often complaining about the recommendations from Booklive.
No matter how much 悪役令嬢 series I bought, it kept giving me random 男性向け light novels that I don’t care about. I thought it was because I buy from both categories and the algorithm sorted by “sells more”, which artificially pushed 男性向け stuff higher, but maybe not…
Everything changed when I recently bought a single TL volume. The algorithm just went pikachu face and updated the list of recommendations. I wish I had taken a screenshot of the list before, but I just didn’t expect it. Now I get stuff like
I guess the algorithm just drastically modified its expectations of my gender.
There’s technically a 男性向け light novel in there (どうでもいいから帰らせてくれ) but the description makes it sound like a 令嬢 type thing, except there’s maybe no romance? I guess the publisher decision tree goes “no romance → 男性向け”. There’s also a 女性 manga about two boys in love. It’s still wild to me that Japan goes “wlw stories are for men and mlm stories are for women”. Now that’s going to be accurate storytelling.
Other than that, " 十三歳の誕生日、皇后になりました" ? Thank you I hate it. I mean, I don’t know anything about it and I’m fine this way. I guess 女性向け light novels have problems too, huh.
Unrelated, but I finished reading the second volume of 後宮妃の管理人 and it wasn’t so great.
The first half of the book was really uneventful, basically the main character working (and having some frustrating roadblocks in doing so). Then suddenly plot happened and it was fine until ~80%. Then we go to the conclusion, where we just skip ahead and are informed that the character has solved the problems from the first half, and that whole part is already over. How did she do it? Don’t worry about it. Well, then why did you spend so much time over that to begin with??
The first volume was very good, so I had high expectations, which might have been the issue? Anyway, I already own volume 3 (which made its way to my recommended list as well, funnily enough… it’s not like I can buy it twice though) so I’m not dropping this series just yet.
I decided to pick クォンタムデビルサーガ アバタールチューナー from the library, though.
It was a slow read, but I liked it. I initially thought it would focus on the coming-of-age aspect and highlight the last year of high school the protagonists spend together – before graduating and parting ways.
While that was certainly part of the story, it’s more focused on the microcosm of the island itself and the concept of “home”. For half of the book, side characters (mostly adults) take much more of the spotlight than our four leads. Overall the mundane drama felt well-written. It’s never super emotional, but there’s some sense of catharsis at the end.
It took me way too long to read it, though. I partly attribute this to the lack of tension – there are some mysteries, but they’re only mildly compelling –, but mostly to the fact that my attention shifted towards other hobbies in the past two months or so.
So tl;dr: I think it’s a good book, although not quite as compelling as かがみの孤城. I’ll definitely read more of Tsujimura’s books. It’s just that they’re all pretty long, so it’s a bit of a commitment every time.
I also (finally!) continued reading Nahoko Uehashi’s 香君, having reached the second part of the book and the 30% mark. As expected I forgot who half of the characters were in the meantime. Looks like this will be some kind of “training” arc with plenty of world building – at least I hope it will.
And lastly I’ve started a new book called 吉田の日々赤裸々。
It’s about the development of Final Fantasy XIV – more precisely a compilation of biweekly columns director/producer Naoki Yoshida wrote for the Famitsu magazine starting in 2013. The book contains a total of 45 columns. What I like is that they aren’t just random essays. They describe in chronological order how Final Fantasy XIV became the game it is today, starting from it’s catastrophic launch in 2010. So far it’s very compelling.
The book is more meaty than I expected – it’s only 250 pages (according to Amazon), but ~144k characters, so more than some 350+ pages novels. It’s also only the first book of three (so far?), so I definitely won’t run out of Yoshida content for the foreseeable future.
Yoshida has a very enjoyable style of writing – very clear sentences, but with a lot of humor and self-tsukkomi-ing. I’m planning to read at least one chapter a day, though knowing myself I probably won’t be able to keep this rhythm.
A bit longer than expected, but after 16 days I’m back. I’m sure everyone missed me dearly. I feel like I got refocused and made what I feel like was the most progress in listening yet. Major shoutout to @WeebPotato for recommending tsukino mito. She has been a godsend in terms of interesting listening content.
Anyways, this is a book thread, so thats enough about listening. I finished 10 books while I was away. Just a general summary about my thoughts about them:
ひげを剃る。そして女子高生を拾う: I only read book 1 and then kinda figured out the book didn’t go further than the anime (which I also watched for listening practice). As a result I don’t know if I’ll bother reading the next 4 books or whatever. Overall, they were pretty similar and there were just a couple added parts it felt like so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on much. I thought the book/anime would be pretty sketchy because of the plot, but honestly it wasn’t bad. MC had his shit together, and I mean theres some stuff I certainly was a bit iffy about, but overall it didn’t feel immoral or anything. I was expecting something a bit more controversial, but honestly I’m glad it wasn’t. I liked the story overall.
カノジョに浮気されていた俺が、小悪魔な後輩に懐かれています6: Wew, what a book. This series is really just great. The writing feels different from other light novels, but not necessarily in a good way. It just feels like the author keeps trying to one up himself and stay original, but thats whatever. The story had some good developments and it was an enjoyable read as always. The ending though… I dunno man. It’s like, I dunno. Part of me just feels like while it looks happy on the surface, its really actually kinda unhealthy. Like he basically rejected reina outright, but doesn’t want her to move on and wants her to remain in his life one way or another. And shes like cool with going along with that. But like really, is she even gonna be happy with that? There was the whole thing about how she wouldn’t be able to face him for awhile so I guess she won’t necessarily be with him for awhile but still. Were it some other series I would just kinda blow it off as “thats just how light novels are.”. But this series seems to take the relationship between characters quite seriously relatively speaking, so it feels like something worth 突っ込みing.
蜘蛛の糸: This one isn’t really a book and more like a very short story, and it was really easy so it just took a few minutes to read. I dunno though, I didn’t really vibe with what I think the story was going for. Like I feel like I sympathized more with 犍陀多 by the end of it lol. I was like damn bro shoulda carried the end up with you, or cut the part under where you were climbing. And then theres the fact that if the thread didn’t break, then like what was the plan, 御釈迦様? Like were you actually cool with 犍陀多 not have to be in hell all because of one spider he helped? Were you cool with all those other people making it up the thread? Like you wanna talk shit about 犍陀多’s lack of compassion, but he woulda been doing your dumbass a favor by cutting the thread below where he was climbing. Besides, you said it was repayment for his good deed, so why should he let other people, let alone horrible people, not only possibly prevent him from being able to climb the thread that YOU prepared for him but also possibly make it to heaven by a means that wasn’t intended for them. Like maybe I’m reading into this too literally, and sure theres the fact that he didn’t actually know thats why the thread was lowered, but still. I thought it was kinda dumb.
わたし、二番目の彼女でいいから。3: Holy schmolies. Review written above. This shit is wack doe.
娘じゃなくて私が好きなの!? 2-7: Very wholesome and great story. At first I kinda didn’t know what to expect and felt kinda iffy about the premise, but it turned out to be like the most wholesome and cute thing I have ever read. Very nice. The author really liked using yojijukugo for some reason, but ey all good with me. I thought the pacing was also surprisingly decent for a rabucome. Until the end at least, lol. Like bruh, what. Right after they start dating they start living together and he gets her pregnant while hes still in college. Literally in the course of a couple months it goes from not dating to pregnant and keeping it. Yikey blikeys. Overall, everything ended pretty happy though and it was a really pleasant read. Would recommend.
Next, I plan on reading 今日も生きててえらい. Main girl is cute. Thats really all there is to it. I also know someone who read it and liked it, so theres that too.
I don’t understand publishers sometimes. I want to read the series 青い花 at some point, because I like the mangaka (放浪息子 is one of my favorite series, and I’m currently reading おとなになっても) and I enjoyed the anime years back, which covered maybe about half the manga. And yet for some reason, the first volume and only the first volume is always sold out. I’ve never seen it in stock, and yet volumes 2-7 are often in stock (as they are currently). It’s like, did they decide to discontinue just the first volume for some reason? Makes no sense.
How am I supposed to buy the series physically if the first volume is never unavailable? Of course I could resort to buying the series used, but that tends to not save that much money when you account for shipping costs, and it’s a gamble on whether they will be in good condition. Plus I’d rather support the mangaka anyway. (I always felt a little guilty about buying 放浪息子 used.) And of course I could resort to digital, but the resolution isn’t that great. It’s good enough that I could read the series that way, but I think it wouldn’t be as enjoyable as reading physical copies.
Back to the waiting game I go I suppose. Maybe by some miracle they’ll start printing volume one again.
I have no idea about online stores, but some (all maybe?) brick-and-mortar bookstores can place a request for stuff out of print (and will inform you when it becomes available). They will also tell you if something is definitely discontinued.
Generally speaking, though, I feel like a lot of publishers are putting more efforts in ebooks than paper books, as they are cheaper to produce and can’t go to the second hand cycle nor be borrowed from a friend.
I inquired about another out of stock item at CD Japan before and the response was “We are sorry to inform you the book will not be available again”. It ended up being back in stock again a couple weeks later. So clearly their support staff at least is unreliable.
Which is why digital media is a scam because you never truly own the thing you’re paying for. (And also why DRM is awful.)
And I finished it. Somehow not the kind of plot I expected, but it was good in its own way. Somehow, it gave me some 1980s vibes. Hairstyles are very neon. Much synthwave. You can almost see the gridlines when they are traveling. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/89/2f/a4/892fa41535cd98ac43e7219f26c03e31.gif
Also, characters are not only color-coded for your convenience, they are also name-coded. Can you guess the element related to the following characters? サーフ (surf; water although he is technically using ice), ヒート (heat; uses fire), アルジラ (argila = clay; earth although technically gravity), シエロ (cielo = sky; he can fly! Also thunder), ゲイル (gale; wind), バート (bat; he turns into a literal giant bat) and so on. There are some exceptions (or I’m just too dumb to figure it out), but overall pretty straightforward.
The overall plot felt kinda basic, but very nostalgic, so I didn’t mind too much. I’m not surprised that the original motivation was to write the scenario of a video game, it does match the pace of a JRPG.
I did like the plot line of the characters being basically war clones or something (they are born adult and just join a group to fight in an endless war for the total domination of the land) who are suddenly granted a personality and don’t know what to do with it. Although, I have to say, for a group of people who don’t know what sex is, women are sure showing a lot of skin. It felt kinda weird that one of the leaders had a custom armor that put emphasis on her “large breasts and bottom, to assert dominance” (?!? How does that even work in a “society” that only cares about fighting?). This is an almost literal translation. The actual sentence is
Interestingly, my backlog spontaneously increased just after my post. I just happened to inadvertently walk into a BookOff during my lunch break (how does that keep happening) and I came across a few manga that I was looking for, including volume 11 of ダンジョン飯 and volume 1 of ホテル・メッツァペウラへようこそ. Both of which are recommendations from @rodan. I am thus blaming them for everything.
I started by reading volumes 9 and 10 of とんがり帽子, thus catching up with publication, but, gah, that’s a bad place to stop. And the next one is this winter?!?
… Oh well, I do have a lot of other things to read to keep me busy.
The first thing I tried to read, though. Err. Was a bad idea. I’ll move on to something else.
That sounds like a good plan, as it puts you close enough to the publication of the next volume.
Well, I’ve only read the prologue, so it’s hard to judge. I may try again tomorrow, once I have somehow abstracted away that part.
(Or I’ll be back to 獣の奏者, which does sound like a good idea)
It’s actually really hard to time when to order physical manga since I’m following a handful of series with drastically different publication schedules. This time around I was waiting for the final volume of Blend-S, which is releasing today (Japan time). I already placed my order, so in theory everything should ship early next week at the latest.
布団のなかから出てえらい 
