So turns out this is coming out next month…
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Speaking of reading garbage…
I saw yesterday a manga titled よくわからないけれど異世界に転生していたようです in the daily ranking of Booklive, and the first 3 volumes were free too! So I thought, what the hell, let’s go (and hope there isn’t too much fan service).
Welllll. Long story short, the main character spends about 25% of the volume err pleasuring herself. I’m not sure about the age rating, but the author made it as explicit as possible while keeping all the “wrong” bits out of frame.
rant
Now, I have to say, it makes sense (ish) from the point of view of the story: the character starts with literally nothing but the rags she is wearing and getting back the memories from her previous life from the shock of being attacked by bandits. Turns out she was a 30-something otaku dude working in R&D and having knowledge of many things™. Using said knowledge, she goes into survival mode, and builds up until she has a massive mansion, food stocks, clothes, etc. Then, she suddenly has nothing really urgent to do anymore and is just rolling around in bed, bored to death. And then the development I mentioned earlier happens.
I have complained in the past about series teasing sexual developments but never committing to it (in which case they might just as well not do it), but here is the full commit, I guess. On the one hand, it makes absolute sense from the human point of view, especially considering that the main character seems to be a teenager. I’m still not happy it takes so much screen time, though. In universe, doing pretty much anything for long enough gives you a skill that is related. Through the status screen of the character, we can see that many new skills just appear over time, telling us that related activities (e.g. sewing) happened offscreen. Well, besides the first time, we could just see the related skill (淫乱) leveling up, and the reader would get it…
Note that I’m also not super happy about the skill name, not very sex positive if you ask me.
I feel it would have been less creepy/annoying with a male protagonist…
In terms of plot, well, the main character has broken magical abilities, but low MP. So far, it was mostly using knowledge to get the most out of those, making the character herself pretty much broken. It’s not great, but it’s free. The completionist in me just wants to finish those three volumes and move on with my life, but I might just stop reading before that if I get too annoyed.
Completely different (and much better) topic: 本好き is 90% off for the first few volumes and 50% off for the rest right now. The manga as well. I am considering picking up the short stories collections, but… I don’t like short stories… and looking at the table of contents I don’t really want to read those 
So maybe not?
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I’m trying to think of what better alternative there would be. 欲望？情欲？愛欲？But it sounds kinda weird to ‘up’ an appetite 
好色？I feel that has a better nuance but I admit I haven’t seen it enough to really have an informed opinion.
Well, I did say I would give light novels another try so went ahead and bought the first three cause 99円 each?! I have a bunch of things in line to be read though so no promises it will be soon
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Unless the sale has already changed, it seems that’s not quite the case… Here’s what I see right now on Amazon (Bookwalker looks about the same):
- Volumes 1-3: 92 yen
- Volumes 4-12: 199 yen
- Volumes 13-end: 785 yen
So I think if anything those later books are about 25% off? Which is a shame. If they were actually half off I’d buy them all now since I know I’ll read the whole series eventually. But for only 25% off I feel like I might as well wait. I’m only up to volume 15 (and already own through volume 22) anyway.
It’s a great sale for everyone else though. First arc for 92 yen and second & third arcs for 199 yen is hard to beat!
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I’m also not an expert on this type of vocabulary If possible, I would have gone with something that is actually a skill (i.e. describes an action or the ability to do an action) and I would have kept it as technical (and thus neutral) as possible.
I don’t even know if such term exists in Japanese. I’m not going to google relevant vocabulary at work either In French, I would have randomly gone with something like “Kamasutra”, since it’s supposed to be a book of knowledge about that.
Ah, I scrolled too fast and missed those
For the other discounts, I can see the discounted price on the main page, but I cannot see the price of individual books anymore since I bought them already. So I just guessed That tells you how much I care about the price before buying those.
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Just a quick heads up to let you know that the Advanced Book Club is voting again! Check it out here and cast your vote if you’re interested in participating:
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I never thought I’d be a book club person (I hated them in school) but after doing the impromptu book club for 三毛猫ホームズの推理 I decided I might give this a whirl. Hopefully something I like wins
I have reading 午後の曳航 (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea) by Mishima as one of my long term goals in reading Japanese. I read an excerpt of it in English probably 15 years ago now and it was just so gorgeous in English, I can only imagine how lovely it will be in the original Japanese. Also still probably above my comfortable reading level, but hey, what’s the fun without a bit of challenge, eh?
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I don’t really think so, as you have lots of experience reading older material tbh. I read the first two or so pages of it and didn’t find it very difficult, but then in those books the difficulty often does not come from the language itself but from the contents and writing style (i.e. how much do you need to guess between the lines? Especially for Japanese books this can be a lot 
)
Anyways, I also hope that it will win at some point!
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Happy to have someone else voting for it! 
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Just read the 5th book of 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 and this series is certified poggers as always. @morteASD if you want a good romcom to read, this is definitely what you’re looking for.
Great characters honestly. Solid story. And the forecast for the upcoming books is juicy goosey.
I know of some other people who are reading it in a different community, and they all love it, but I don’t know of anyone here who is reading it which is hella mottainai.
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I haven’t, but that seems rough indeed. At least, there’s quite a lot of words that I either barely remember seeing somewhere, or just plain don’t know.
手ん手に is funny though.
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The only person I know who has read it had good enough japanese to pass the entrance exam intended for natives and get into law school in japan and get perfect scores on the kotoba kanken 1 quizzes, and he said its fine so long as you have yomichan. I feel like he might be a bit out of touch, though, so I was hoping to get the opinion of a less advanced individual.
Apparently some of these short stories are pretty famous though, so I wonder if theres one of those versions available that have explanations in normal japanese as like furigana. Although, I guess then you’re not really reading the original anymore
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I mean, we’re talking about 芥川 here. The OG Japanese literary prize is named after him. I would expect his work to be pretty famous in general 
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Like can normal japanese people even read that stuff? Lol. I expected them to have less popularity as of recently on account of them being a wall of brain hurt
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I guess so? The vocabulary (and stuff described) are old but I know what a 轅 is (although I couldn’t remember the French word and I don’t think I ever learned the English one), so I assume Japanese people would too? And they would certainly have less troubles with the other words.
Plus, I’m fairly certain they must have studied some of his text in class at some point.
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Interesting, my coworkers struggle to get like a 50% doing my Anki reviews from chuuni novels, but I guess the nature of words in chuuni novels vs old words are different since older ones they are more likely to know from school probably. Now I’m curious, so I’ll ask a couple people tomorrow and see what they think. That was just a random screenshot so I’m sure there are both easier and harder parts, but mAh I’ll just ask about the first paragraph.
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There’s that, but also context. I would not have gotten 轅 on its own. Also, I didn’t remember its reading. So I would have failed it in an anki review, but context + furigana, and I suddenly have no problem.
In unrelated news, I have finally finished 鹿の王 4. Hurray! It only took 84 years three weeks. I’ll comment more tomorrow (it’s too late right now), but I’ll just say that I’m somehow struggling to stay focused when reading that author, yet I do enjoy her work. 解せぬ.
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I read 蜘蛛の糸 and didn’t find it particularly challenging, given a dictionary. I read the 青空文庫 version. The only other works by 芥川龍之介 I’ve read were much harder, at least for me - 猿蟹合戦 and his 遺書. 遺書 in particular I remarked at the time that I felt like my comprehension was pretty low.
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