Intermediate Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: セーラー服と機関銃

Oh no, I made the same mistake I teased someone on in another thread. :joy:

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Okay, I’m planning to open the vote for the next book in a week.
We have 18 (!) nominations right now, so I’m going to change a little bit the traditional about looking for nominations.

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I’ll create a bunch of forum accounts to make 魔法少女育成計画 win this time.

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I’ll have my friends seanpurple, seanred, and seangreen vote for it as well.

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It’s like they say, you’re the average of your closest friends…

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All You Need Is Kill

Summary

Japanese

「出撃なんて、実力試験みたいなもんじゃない?」敵弾が体を貫いた瞬間、キリヤ・ケイジは出撃前日に戻っていた。トーキョーのはるか南方、コトイウシと呼ばれる島の激戦区。寄せ集め部隊は敗北必至の激戦を繰り返す。出撃。戦死。出撃。戦死―死すら日常になる毎日。ループが百五十八回を数えたとき、煙たなびく戦場でケイジはひとりの女性と再会する…。期待の新鋭が放つ、切なく不思議なSFアクション。はたして、絶望的な戦況を覆し、まだ見ぬ明日へ脱出することはできるのか。

English

There’s one thing worse than dying. It’s coming back to do it again and again… When the alien Gitai invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many raw recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to find himself reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On the 158th iteration though, he sees something different, something out of place: the female soldier known as the Bitch of War. Is the Bitch the key to Keiji’s escape, or to his final death? (from goodreads.com)

Availability

Amazon
Bookwalker

Personal Opinion

One of the most famous japanese SF light novels. I didn’t see any other SF book in the nominations, so I thought it would be a good addition to the list. This book has been sitting on my shelf for almost two years and when I tried reading it recently it felt quite managable. Since I’ve seen the movie, I know the general story, but I still think that there is more depth in the book.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Different from the current nominations
  • Not too long (276 pages, but without illustrations and other stuff it really about 255 pages)
  • Has furigana on many words
  • Not about school

Cons

  • This genre is not for everybody
  • Terminology can be tricky, but I think it’s going to be an issue only at the start
  • Contains some strong language, but not over the top
  • Contains fight scenes, where people die… and description of how people die

Pictures

First Three Pages of Chapter One


Additional Pages



Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Just right
  • Challenging
  • Impossible, even with everyone’s help
  • I don’t know (please click this if you’re not voting seriously)

0 voters

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I’m not planning to vote for anything other than 魔法少女育成計画 in this round, but I’ll consider voting for it next round depending on the difficulty. Sounds like the kind of story I’d enjoy. This was adapted into a movie called Edge of Tomorrow, which I haven’t seen yet, but I hear it’s actually pretty good. Perhaps one of the only well done American adaptions of Japanese media.

Also, the art is apparently done by Yoshitoshi ABe, so that’s a treat.


Similarly in the sci-fi vein I kinda wanted to nominate 空ろの箱と零のマリア, but it’s a little long at 331 pages and oddly the first volume is out of print, even though the rest is still in print. I actually own a digital copy somewhere (not on Kindle, so it’s kinda inconvenient), but I’m having trouble finding a physical copy.

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I saw this nomination and was like ‘Yay, I got this one! I can vote for it!’, then opened the sample pages and realised you nominated the book, and I own the manga :sob:
Anyway, loved the manga when I read it in English, so maybe I can be convinced to order the book if it wins (please don’t let this happen I need to stop buying things from Japan.)

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I saw that amazon recommended that to me earlier, but I didn’t really get the impression that it was sci-fi from just reading the product description. If you know, is it just a story with some light sci-fi elements or does it become more sci-fi-ish later? Or is it just similar to sci-fi stories? (just asking because it looked slightly interesting, but I generally have trouble with getting into books that are really heavy on sci-fi stuff).

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If you read the first few pages I think it’s pretty clear that it’s all-out sci-fi. It starts with this girl transferring into the school on loop basically.

I’m interested because I really like time travel stories, which this seems to be, but I don’t really know anything beyond that.

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Well, if it’s just time travel, I don’t mind. If anything, I generally like it if it’s done well. I was thinking more the kind of books that really go in-depth about how everything in their world works and whatever, but I don’t really know what those kinds of books are called.

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Oh, yeah I have no idea on that.

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To be clear for anyone playing at home, “the movie” is Edge of Tomorrow, starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Oh wow I was reading the synopsis and feeling very confused like I’d watched that already. I had no idea it was based on this.

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Has this been here… All along? Feels kind of threatening. Also, true.

I had no idea it was there! Well spotted.

Edit: it was added on Jun 30th by a certain Canadian made of Japanese animation.

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Ahhhh has it been a week yet?! I’m so impatient!

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That glaring “1 nomination slot left!” feels like a personal challenge. Like I should write up “First Love” or “100 Year Flood”. Must restrain myself. :slight_smile:

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I have 人類は衰退しました sitting on my shelf, but I think I’ll wait until next round to nominate it.

When I saw this thread had new answers I literally thought “Has it been a week yet? Maybe that’s finally the poll” :see_no_evil:.
I’m disappointed but amused.
Voting is too fun. You get to know which is going to be your new addition to that currently tiny pile of books you have read in Japanese.
Or, you know, maybe that’s just me.

I also have a couple of things I could nominate but I don’t want to dilute the votes too much…

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