DanMachi Volume 1 Week 15

Japanese Language Reading
#13

I already finished the book last week, as I already said, but I also promised comments, so here are comments!

Overall I would say I liked the book. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever read, but was also definitely enjoyable enough to keep reading. So, I’ll read the second volume with the club too :slight_smile:

More specific things

Some things I liked were:

  1. The RPG stuff with the stats and other similar things was definitely very fun, and probably what I enjoyed the most
  2. The thing with the gods living with humans what was piqued my interest in the first place, so I kind of feel like I have to mention that too
  3. The fights did a decent job being exciting and stuff

There were three main things I felt could have been better:

  1. It took a pretty long time to reach the obvious conclusion of the silverback fight. I guess it was still kind of exciting with the long chase, while simultaneously being annoying because it felt obvious how it was going to end?
  2. There was one conversation that was pretty long and felt like it was there mostly to introduce some characters, but then didn’t actually do much to show the personality of said new characters in the conversation, despite its length.
  3. Some of the sound effects. It felt a bit excessive sometimes(it had way more of those sound effect things than anything else I’ve read recently), and like some things didn’t really need sound effects.

Maybe 采 as in 采配?

The wiktionary page for 采 has this too

bild

(which just comes back as 采 if I try to copy it. So, in other words I assume it’s just 采 but in a different font on that page)

6 Likes
#14

I literally searched for like an hour for that kanji, thank you. Its weird that they changed the font.
I enjoyed reading your comments, I also like the general story and the stat system.

Ill also comment generally after I finish the book :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#15

It’s funny, because I made the exact same comment when I finished the book (I think I posted in the extensive reading thread, though). :joy:

I also agree with your general impression. Also, being a little bit ahead, I’d say that it generally gets better over time, too. Color illustrations tend to get worse, though (as in, the level of fan service is through the roof… the one for volume 7 was basically porn):frowning: But, meh, they are skippable (but I don’t wan’t anyone to have a look at what I am reading).

I think it’s just the font they have, they didn’t change it specifically for that kanji.

3 Likes
#16

That makes sense except for the fact that even on the kindle app, the character wasnt recognized. When I would try to copy that whole sentence, it would just omit the 采 character as if there wasnt even a space there. Im not sure what happened

1 Like
#17

That’s weird. Your device should be able to handle the characters it is displaying… sadly I do not have the print version anymore (I obviously gave it back to the library), so I can’t check how it was in print.

2 Likes
#18

I read print version, its the same font as the picture I sent which was from my kindle app. Since I couldnt read it in print version and didnt find it on jisho, I went and found it on the ebook and it wasnt recognized.

2 Likes
#19

Hm, it could be an encoding problem. The shape of the three dots is a frequent alternate writing, so I had no problem recognizing the kanji, but it’s indeed weird, especially since that kanji does not have such an alternate form in Japanese (I checked kanjipedia).
Just out of curiosity, can you select that kanji specifically or does it count as an image?
(An example from Natsume Soseki comes to mind, where he used an alternate form that does not exist (made a mistake?) so the kanji is usually inserted as a picture)

2 Likes
#20

I couldnt select the kanji at all, it would skip it as if it were an image when I selected the whole word or sentence. (So I would be left with whatever I selected, but with that specific kanji just not being copied, when I tried to copy paste)

2 Likes
#21

Ive read around 70 pages so far these past 4 days to catch up and im finally past the starting point for this week :sweat_smile:

This ガネーシャ arc is taking forever! From the start of when ベル and ヘスティア started running from the monster, i’ve been screaming inside “give him the damn weapon!!!”

In other news, I have evolved my reading speed from snail to turtle :grin:

5 Likes
#22

To be fair, I thought the same while watching the anime. :sweat_smile:

3 Likes
#23

I finally finished the book! My favorite part was from when ヘスティア came back to rescue ベル from the monster, until the end.

I dont really know what else to say, it took me a while to get used to the difficulty since the only thing I read before this was the book 銭天堂, but im proud of myself for finishing this book and I really feel like ive gotten the results of my studying, since ive started around February 2019.

Im glad you guys joined me in reading this book and I hope you all enjoyed as well.

I was going to make a post book discussion but I guess we’ve mostly discussed here so it wouldnt have any posts anyways.

Time for some polls! How did you enjoy the book?

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10

0 voters

Are you reading volume 2 with us?

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

5 Likes
#24

Getting to finish a full Japanese novel (even a light novel) a year after starting to learn the language is amazing! Congratulations! :tada:

Since you can’t see the individual votes, I’ll just say that I voted “7”. Not great, but enough to keep me going (obviously, since I’m going to read volume 9 as soon as the library opens again :stuck_out_tongue: ) To summarize what I have said elsewhere: the story is fun, but obviously I’m not in the target demographic and it shows at time.

I feel like the club was a bit 寂しい since many weeks didn’t have discussions, but as long as you don’t mind going, I think it’s perfectly fine :ok_hand: I guess I won’t be any more active next time around, since my schedule is what it is, but I’ll try to drop by as usual. Also, the second book introduces my favorite character, so, hey, there’s that.

6 Likes
#25

I am glad to have you participating with us in the threads :grinning:

This was completely my fault, sorry :sweat: To be honest when we ramped up the speed to 20 pages it was probably ok for me at that time after getting used to 10, but then I realized it was overboard a while after we went to 30. I got overwhelmed between life stuff and reading japanese, while also keeping up my studying japanese.

I think my speed has recently vastly improved from even a few weeks ago, and since I finally caught up to the club, hopefully I will not fall behind again so I can have something to say about each week’s threads :slightly_smiling_face:

4 Likes
#26

I just noticed that the next week is not properly set to volume 2. Is that on purpose? :thinking:

1 Like
#27

Oh I didnt think of it since it was a new volume, good idea!

#28

I thought similarly about Hestia taking so long to give the sword to him, but apparently it was because she needed some time to update his stats before he used it, so that’s fine. And it’s not like they had time to stop and chat. ^^

some impressions :)

I liked how the stats system was incorporated, it seems pretty unique. The writing was fine - the dungeon/battle scenes as well as Hestia bugging Hephaistos were my favorite I think.

I do not understand :tm: the harem draw? And bell’s motivation for coming to Oraria seems very flimsy to me. The author tried to give it some more dimension at the end, and maybe it’ll get more fleshed out in future? But yeah, nope. Also, he’s 14? (did I misunderstand? Otherwise) what’s up with all these grown women ‘falling for him’? (that’d explain his motivation though ^^)

Yeah, I think my biggest yike with this book is the harem trope, haha.

Sometimes the ‘of course xyz trope isn’t the case here’ was a bit too much also.

At times having it be from Bell’s pov and have him describe all the things he expressly didn’t know at the time could be a bit jarring.

I feel like that sounds pretty bad? But I actually liked the book well enough to continue, just not enough to actually buy the next volume right now. Since the next volumes are available with Kindle unlimited, I’ll probably read them at some vague future point that I’m not reading so many other things already. Also re zero is going to go into the next volume next week and it seems we’re ramping up the speed a bit, so it’s not like I necessarily need more stuff to read right now anyway. :sweat_smile:

That said, I’m looking forward to crashing the book 2 thread at some point. :smiley:

3 Likes
#29

Yes he is, and I don’t know either. Also it’s very weird that he acts his age on occasions, but at the same time he just destroys monsters left and right and drink alcohol. What.

I pretty much agree with the rest of your impressions. I would not have kept reading if it wasn’t free :stuck_out_tongue: that being said, I’ll say that it gets better (with regressions but still). Volume 9/10 were the best so far. I picked up volume 11 today so we’ll see where that goes.

3 Likes
#30

Well i mean its an isekai setting so there are no age restrictions there apparently :grinning:

1 Like
#31

I tend to just ignore the official ages as they are pretty arbitrary in these kinds of works anyways.

3 Likes
#32

I’m fine (?) with that. It’s just that there’s that weird discrepancy between his relation to “adult” things like alcohol or violence (like… killing things in the dungeon; he has no problem) and his relation to affection (why does he and others blush all the fricking time?).
And obviously he was not okay with violence at first (duh) but got used to it. Why isn’t it the same thing for interactions with the opposite gender?

3 Likes