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

Million Yen Women

Not really a spoiler (only of the first episode), but I guess it is kind of related to the story in general.

Sherlock has a manga. The Benedict Cumberbatch one.

It’s Japanese with the English written in the margins, and the font is ugly.

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Hold on let me go copy the nomination template

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These images are disturbing to say the least. Mostly the first one I found after googling it of Benedict Cumberbatch’s weird smiling face turned manga. Watson’s looking good, though.

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I dunno, I can see if it he was pretty young, right? Like maybe he’s seven years old and is like “sweet! I can get rid of this stupid baby in exchange for something awesome!” and then four years later is like… “hmm, that was probably ethically dubious…”

Or maybe his little brother is incredibly annoying. Either way, kids man!

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君の名は (Your Name)

Summary

Japanese

山深い田舎町に暮らす女子高校生・三葉は、自分が男の子になる夢を見る。見慣れない部屋、見知らぬ友人、目の前に広がるのは東京の街並み。一報、東京で暮らす男子高校生・瀧も、山奥の町で自分が女子高校生になる夢を見る。やがて二人は夢の中で入れ替わっていることに気づくが――。出会うことのない二人の出逢いから、運命の歯車が動き出す。長編アニメーション『君の名は。』の、新海誠監督みずから執筆した原作小説。

English

Mitsuha, a high school girl living in a rural town deep in the mountains, has a dream that she is a boy living an unfamiliar life in Tokyo. Taki, a high school boy living in Tokyo, dreams that he is a girl living in the mountains. As they realize they are changing places, their encounter sets the cogs of fate into motion. Written by director Makoto Shinkai, the work has become a global phenomenon!

Availability

Amazon JP

eBook Japan

Personal Opinion

This could be a good transitional book for those looking at moving over from the beginners book club. There is both a Kadokawa and Tsubasa Bunko version (with furigana), it has a relatively low page count (262) and if you’ve seen the movie it should be easy to follow the story.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

Based on a popular movie

Available in different formats – with/without furigana, ebook, physical book

Available on FloFlo

Cons

It’s based off the movie, so not original source material

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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It was written by Makoto Shinkai, who made the movie, so the question of which came first is very chicken-and-egg.

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Good point. It set off a bit of discussion when I mentioned I would nominate it before, about the book vs movie, so I thought I would get ahead of it this time.

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But it was clearly intended as a movie first, with those gooooorgeous viauals and storyboarding. But yes, at least we’re not dealing with someone writing someone else’s characters, and it almost feels wrong to call it a novelization?

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Naturally. This is Shinkai we’re talking about, after all. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I considered nominating 狼と香辛料, but after trying to read a few pages I decided it would be better not to (for my own sake). I am kind of interested in reading it eventually, but the series is so long…

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Does anyone have any intermediate level manga to nominate? The only one I have that I would consider intermediate is ご注文はうさぎですか, but I’m not inclined to suffer through read that again.

@Naphthalene You said 風の谷のナウシカ was a solidly advanced level manga, right?

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Indeed. I think it would be painful for people, since it’s a bit hard to look up stuff from a manga.
The good point is that weird kanji have furigana… the first time they show up.
Edit: browsing through google image, that seems to not be true, they have furigana on all weird stuff.

About the difficulty, here’s a sample that feels average (and is readable).
Some characters are talking in a much weirder way than usual, so there are huge spikes in difficulty sometimes though.

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Ooo. I bought the first two volumes of 風の谷のナウシカ at the Akihabara Shosen Tower when I was there in 2017. Not completely sure why I didn’t get all seven - probably because I already had two copies of it sitting at home in English. I don’t know that I’d really call it advanced, though I have mentioned before that I’m not awesome at judging difficulty levels…

Weren’t you the one touting it in the first place? :stuck_out_tongue:

Think it’s just that they talk in various dialects. Kushana speaks like an imperial princess, Kurotowa speaks like a country hick, the old men of the castle speak like old men. And so forth.

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Right. THEM FREAKING MONKS WHY.
That is all.

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Yes, and I enjoyed it for the most part. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful to read. I mean if people wanted to read it, I would. But then I’d be reading the stuff I already read and probably still asking a million questions.

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You’re not actually supposed to be able to read the Old High Dorok. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’ve got some manga in mind, there’s

@anyone, LMK If you want me to nominate one.

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How about イカ娘? Someone said it was intermediate by Box of Manga standards, and it seems at a good level from what I see in ebookjapan

Pictures


I don’t know, seems fine by me.

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Maybe Made in Abyss?

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