Absolute Beginners Book Club // Now Reading: Granny Girl Hinata chan!

I just quickly put together a listing of votes over time in case it helps decide on anything to drop off:

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I’ve definitely felt it’s more difficult finding suitable material for this group. We’ve never had huge numbers of nominations. We’re at 14 at present which might be the highest we’ve had. For that reason I’d been quite reluctant to follow the pattern of the other groups and drop nominations in the past.

I’ve also been wary about the difficulty level slowly creeping up (I think we’ve done well at avoiding this looking at the natively levels for past picks). This has been another factor in not dropping nominations if we have material of the right level.

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Imo one can always bring back dropped nominations, if the number ever goes below like 6 or so. Though I’m in the process of looking through books I’d like to read and checking if they would fit this club.

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So when’s the spreadsheet about this coming? :eyes: I’d expect it to have like spikes, the difficulty slowly creeping up, then dropping when people realize that it’s too hard. Natively scores are also probably heavily influenced by book clubs, so over time the difficulty of books in book clubs will be rated lower on natively. (especially if they weren’t popular before)

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I’ll be doing my part with a very ABBC-friendly manga nomination before the next poll after the current one =D

Edit: It looks like I can reproduce the NaN on the poll now. Can’t reproduce with the same poll loaded onto my own Discourse forum (which is a couple of versions out of date), so I’m guessing it’s a relatively new bug. Discourse devs doing their part to help @MrGeneric transition into a new role =D

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Well, I could say it’s all their fault and move on… But I’m still the idiot who managed to change a default setting and not notice doing so, so I think I still have to take the hit on this one. :laughing:


As for the discussion about dropping things and the difficulty creeps, I definitely share those same concerns.

I wouldn’t want to drop too much because we do have a lower amount of nominations flowing in. I’ve got some manga that I have considered posting here, but I have some concerns. Maybe I should suss out some opinions here.

いじらないで長瀞さん is one I considered nominating, but I worry it borders on being too inappropriate. It doesn’t have anything super explicit or anything, but it definitely makes quite few “lewd” jokes, and it has some suggestive posing and the like, so while the difficulty level feels perfect, the content perhaps does not, and I would rather err on the side of caution there. I wouldn’t want anything that makes people uncomfortable!

The other potential pick comes from an anime I watched recently called 阿波連さんははかれない that was incredibly easy to understand with JP subtitles, and I immediately pulled up the manga thinking it would be a great fit because the language was so simple that I wasn’t even looking up anything as I watched, but it lacks furigana, which I feel like might be a deal-breaker for this club. Having furigana makes things significantly more accessible (though I suppose this problem is somewhat solved by vocab sheets…)

What do y’all think?

Regarding the potential for a difficulty increase, I especially worry we will make a Death Note style mistake here, which might be a bit more of a harsh slap in the face for Absolute Beginners than it was for the Beginner club. I don’t want to scare anybody off of reading. But so far I think we are doing a decent job of keeping it accessible; it’s just difficult to judge when you are no longer in that Absolute Beginner position. (Side-note: This is why it’s important to vote in the difficulty polls, especially if you are relatively new! The curse of knowledge is a real 面倒くさい!)

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I would poll this sometime. I would join that book club for sure, but yeah, the first few volumes are a bit of a fanservice fest sometimes iirc

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いじらないで長瀞さん - I had a flick through a few chapters. I don’t think there’s anything worse in there than what was in ハピネス.

阿波連さんははかれない - looks very accessible in terms of grammar and text density. I agree maybe the lack of furigana pushes it out of ABBC. Could perhaps work with a vocab sheet as long as someone is prepared to make one! I seem to remember Wanikani encouraging us to read without furigana as early as possible.

It sounds like several people have suggestions for new material. Maybe not dropping nominations has held back new ones coming through? あたしんち and Wanted have both been there since the start of the club without ever being close to being picked that I remember.

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Thanks for linking those. In retrospect, I should have done that since I was asking for opinions, instead of making people look for them. :laughing:

If I were to put up 阿波連さんははかれない, I would definitely be creating a vocabulary sheet to go along with it (similarly, if Shikimori-san gets selected, I would be sure to have any of the furigana-less words that show up between chapters and the like compiled in advance). If Nagatoro-san doesn’t seem any worse than ハピネス (I didn’t read along, so I’m taking your word on that!), then I’ll go ahead and suggest both for the next poll.

I wasn’t really holding off on those two because of existing nominations, personally; both were because of the doubts I had about them being good fits here. Nagatoro-san for content (difficulty is honestly perfect. It’s easier than Takagi-san, imo, and Takagi-san was a great pick for the club), and Aharen-san due to the lack of furigana; though you are right that Wanikan does encourage reading without furigana as early as possible, and that’s a fair point, for sure.

The only other nomination I held back on was 五等分の花嫁, and I discussed the reasons for that somewhere in this thread. (Text density and potentially too difficult being the main concerns there). So, I can’t speak for others, but it’s not existing nominations hanging around keeping me from suggesting new ones; it just goes back to it being a bit difficult to find suitable material for the club that is also engaging and doesn’t run the hazard of being too difficult. :sweat_smile:

However, seems that at least the two most recent thoughts might be okay picks, after all (with 阿波連さん being somewhat doubtful, but the difficulty polls can be the final decision-maker as to that), so I’ll go ahead and throw them into the running after this poll. (That does mean that I’ll have 3 potential picks going at the same time, so I’ll probably not nominate any more after that unless we end up with really slim pickings! Also, kinda funny that all 3 will be names :laughing: Shikimori-san, Nagatoro-san, Aharen-san…).

I didn’t realize we had so many legacy picks still floating around. That really is unfortunate. I mean, it hasn’t slowed the club down any. We still are regularly picking books to read, and things are still going perfectly fine, but it is a bit troublesome that some picks have been around for 2+ years without having been selected. Maybe we should try dropping some more nominations and if people really want them, they can renominate. That could drum up some more interest for those picks, too, seeing a new nomination post for it; maybe by virtue of them being old picks, that’s part of the lack of interest? I’m not sure.

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My only reason for holding off is because of upcoming book club duties. Hopefully everyone else with suggestions is posting them when there’s a call for nominations. I feel it’s beneficial for older, less popular nominations to give way to newer nominations.

Y’all are almost making me think I should have recommended Whisper of the Heart here rather than BBC :wink: (That one has partial furigana use and I feel is great to help those trying to transition to material without furigana.)

One thing I didn’t include in my spreadsheet is the items that were picked. I wonder what the average number of polls a nomination appears in before being picked. I believe レンタルおにいちゃん, 三ツ星カラーズ, からかい上手の高木さん, and それでも歩は寄せてくる were all picked on their first polls.

Hm, now I’m curious…

Edit: From what I see, the last five polls favored brand new nominations (and Rental Oniichan bypassed the polling process).

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In the first volume there’s:

  • a scene with a reverse anime fall (page 78) with a bunch of suggestive stuff happening afterwards to the main guy
  • some neck stuff (page 98) that’s very suggestive
  • teasing while modeling with a bunch of thigh stuff (130)
  • and of course it ends with a bath scene with prolly the least amount of censorship you can get away with while still being technically sfw.

Of course all of this with added suggestive language.
I love the series, it’s really a joy to read, especially in the later chapters where the horny gets toned down in favor of cute and romantic. The first volume is honestly the closest to a fanservice compilation, after that it does get better.

This is why I said that it should be polled.

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Oh, yeah, I have read the first volume of Nagatoro-san, so I was definitely aware of all that, and I definitely enjoy the series too (having only read the first 3 volumes, because they were free; I’d be happy to continue the series at some point. I just had other priorities!). I just meant that I didn’t read along with ハピネス, so I have no idea how suggestive that series was.

I just know that a lot of people don’t particularly care for the kind of humour that Nagatoro-san uses, so that was my main holdback (and the bath chapter was high on the list for “Hmm. This might toe the line too closely”), but I agree. I’ll put it to the polls. If folks don’t want to read it, they just won’t vote for it, right? :stuck_out_tongue:

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I thought about nominating ギャルと恐竜 (“My Roomie Is a Dino”). I really liked the first few chapters. I didn’t nominate it because I haven’t read the rest, and after flipping through the pages I saw a few big blocks of text in later chapters, so I’m not really sure if it gets too difficult. I should have spent more time looking into it though, since the natively score is 18. I’ll definitely nominate it for next time unless I actually get around to reading it and it turns out to be a bad fit.


Regarding 阿波連さんははかれない, I would be hesitant to pick a manga with absolutely no furigana, just because it’d be intimidating for first-time readers (even with a vocab sheet). I haven’t actually looked at the book though. I would think a book with some furigana and some plain kanji would be perfectly fine.


ハピネス has a fair amount of violence (mostly people getting beat up pretty bad). As far as sexual content, it’s mostly suggestive in the first volume, with a few times when guys are being kind of creepy but nothing happens, and one scene with brief off-screen implied masturbation.

I think ハピネス is definitely more mature than Nagatoro-san.

Personal thoughts about Nagatoro-san

I might be biased because I only skimmed the English version, I haven’t really read it all the way through. Personally think it’s a little problematic because the teasing + sexuality gets into some non-consensual territory. It’s less explicit technically, but they don’t really treat the sexuality in a mature way. It seems that she’s always really mean towards him in a way that’s not really resolved? sorry… we all have our own sensitivities, and apparently this hits mine.

Can anybody more knowledgeable about the series tell me if my take is accurate? Do things progress in later volumes in a better way?

To be clear, I’m not trying to keep anybody away from nominating it. Looks like a good difficulty level.

Unnecessary detail about ハピネス I typed up anyway

In the first volume:

  • Guys creepily looking up a girl’s skirt as she goes up the stairs (page 15)
  • Off-screen masturbation (page 19)
  • Panels of almost looking up a short skirt (page 72). (Okay, so this actually has to do with the plot, but the imagery is still there).

Later volumes seem to be a bit more explicit (sex scene with no actual nudity shown in volume 2, implied off-screen sex in volume 3). Of course we’re still working our way through volume 3 of 10, so no idea what happens later.

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I think it’s a good fit for this club. I’ve read through the first volume. It’s pretty light on text, uses simple language and grammar. Wholesome series with cute art and just a neat slice of life manga in general. Sure uses a lot of casual speech and some slang, but nagatoro does it as well.

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In fairness, Takagi-san threw some large blocks of text right from the first chapter here and there, and is rated higher than ギャルと恐竜. I just read through the Bookwalker preview on that one, and there would have to be a huge difficulty spike from there to make it a bad fit. It seems like it would be a great pick for difficulty. Though I confess, I would personally not read it because while it looks cute, I would likely very quickly get bored while reading it. That’s just me, though, and applies to a few of the books that are currently in the running! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Yeah, that’s my reservation, for sure. The only furigana is for names, unfortunately, and even then, it shows you once, then moves on. The only reason why it feels like it might be okay is because the grammar is quite easy, and being a slice-of-life, the vocabulary is generally quite common. The Natively level for the book (default, without user grading) is 24, which is within range of the club (lower than the two current leads in the ongoing poll, which were rated as readable… though I suspect both are going to turn out to be harder reads than in the past, so we’ll have to see how it turns out for first time readers because most of our difficulty votes were from familiar faces!) even without furigana. It’s just in a weird place difficulty-wise; the lack of furigana is the only mitigating factor here, because it’s definitely way too easy for the BBC.

Nothing to apologize for; I was skeptical of it myself during the first little bit, because it felt like outright bullying as opposed to the lighter teasing I expected and it was more sexual than I initially expected as well, but I decided to give the series a chance. The tone definitely softens up as time goes on, but the first volume is not where that happens, for sure. You see glimpses of her kindness, but just the vaguest hints. The humour seems like it remains pretty similar (though starts to be toned down/it becomes more obvious that the MC isn’t opposed to the sexual stuff, just is easily flustered by it) through the first 3 volumes at least, though, so if it is something you don’t like at all, the series probably just isn’t for you, frankly, which was why I have held off so far; I try to pick things that I think will be generally more widely appealing because I don’t want people to feel like they have to skip a pick because they find the content uncomfortable (as opposed to skipping a pick for time constraints/lack of interest in the subject matter).

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*remembers that both of them are his*
*starts sweating profusely*

Btw, I don’t think they will be that bad, I sure am hoping that the interest will help overcome any difficulty.
For cells at work the main issue imo will be the explanation boxes, and those let off after chapter one.
Besides that I don’t think they are harder than Wadanohara was (now’s the time to mention that it was waaay to difficult :joy: ). I hope the interest will at least help overcome the difficult parts.

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Hahaha, to be clear I don’t think they were bad picks, at all, either! Just that they might be a bit harder than some of the other reads.

I didn’t read Wadanohara, either. :sweat_smile: I’ve been kinda picky with what I read with this club, now that I think about it. :laughing:

If I was at all concerned they were too difficult, I would have said so when we were talking about them. I was just using them as the barometer to compare against with Aharen-san, so please don’t take it as me thinking they are gonna be too difficult. I agree that both should be fine! :grinning:

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You are not referring to my lovely nomination here, are you? :rofl:
C’mon, I’m expecting a nicely laid out plot and a decent arc of suspense
perfectly suitable for a 5-year-old :crazy_face:

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Tbf, that is the sort of story I would expect the absolute beginners to read normally. But if that was the case, I don’t think we’d have too many readers…

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Yeah, I thought I’d give it a try and nominate it here, but I absolutely don’t blame anybody if the nomination gets dropped at some point.

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