/lit/ - Literature

They are western YA shit but with pictures.

If you want to have a wank, sure.

>>5150043
No they're not, they're worse actually since in addition to being pretty bad to begin with they usually suffer from poor translations.

This is coming from a huge weeaboo by the way, I'm not just a crank who hates everything jap-related

>>5150052
>light novel
>short form with illustrations

So it's like a comic book right? Like how manga is just the Jap version of a graphic novel.

>>5150101
>So it's like a comic book right?

No, they're books with illustrations. They are books though, albeit very simplistically written ones marketed towards adolescents.

>Like how manga is just the Jap version of a graphic novel.

Also no, "manga" is just the Japanese word for "comic" and doesn't have any relation to the concept of "graphic novels" in the west.

>>5150101
It's a novel and you could read it just as well without the illustrations. In fact, some old classics are being released as light novels in order to appeal to a younger audience. And then again there are some light novels without any pictures at all.

>>5150112
>>5150113
So it's like a short story for kids with ADHD who need pictures?

>>5150101

They're more like Western short stories with a couple illustrations thrown in so that everyone has the same perception of the aesthetics of a character.

Although I hate to say that >>5150057 is right. Most LNs aren't that great, they're 'light' not only in the length, but also in their depth. The fact that you have ameature, semi-pro translators at best translating the stories doesn't help.

I still enjoy some LNs for fun though, Crab's a best.

>>5150118
2/10
Try to be less obvious next time.
>short stories
>for kids
>ADHD

>>5150118
More like novellas than short stories, and they're often parts of long series so I don't know that the ADHD thing really applies, but yeah sort of.

They're basically targeted towards middle school students to read while commuting and shit.

>>5150126
Why would anyone want to read a Western short story? I never understood this obsession some people have with cowboys. It's such a pointless genre, just the one fairly insignificant period of history. Why don't hussars get their own genre, or any other random group of people from an unspecified time?

>>5150113
>some old classics are being released as light novels
Classics as in literature classics? Tell me more!

>>5150132
I think he meant
western as in "western culture".

>>5150132
He meant "Western" as in the region of the globe in which the short stories are produced, not the genre.

>>5150132

It's just one of the more pathetic manifestation of US American exceptionalism. I don't know why the Japanese are so fond of it.

>>5150043
Since I can't into moon and only read the translations, I can't really talk much about the writing etc, but I do feel like the stories are much more imaginative than western authors. Western fantasy novels have Orcs and Elves and someone has to save the world. LNs on the other hand have people trapped inside a game, neets trying to challange god to a game and the devil working at McDonalds.

>>5150132
Meant European and American lit.

>>5150043

If you speak moon, then they're great to pass the time.

>>5150162
>people trapped inside a game
The premise is fine but SAO is a huge piece of shit when you look past that. LH is fine, I guess. Regardless, the actual plot and prose in Western fantasies are much more complex (not surprising, as LNs are basically young adult fiction).

>NEETs challenging god to a game
>devil working at McDonalds
These are basically semi-comedy LNs that don't really have a proper analogue in typical Western literature.

>>5150057
Agreed.

>>5150113
>>5150134
They've done this for a while now, unless this is somehow different?

I've never seen a LN before, so I don't know how much different it can be compared to this, or an illustrated copy of Alice In Wonderland or Treasure Island.

>>5150118
Pretty much.

>>5150162
Um, actually, that sounds like exactly the kind of retarded crap a stupid fantasy or sci-fi novelist might come up with

>>5150384
The difference is that the illustrations in light novels are anime, and often sexually perverse in nature

>>5150043
>Surely they are at least superior to western YA shit, right?
You would think, but no. They are somehow even worse than YA crap. Light novels have prose so awful it makes me want to kill myself. I try to read them and I have flashbacks to the slush pile and all those awful manuscripts I sent rejection slips to.

>That's the translator's fault, Anon.
No. No it's not. They're called LIGHT novels because the prose is LIGHT and it's this LIGHTNESS that makes it CRAP.

Why read light novels when there's so much real Japanese literature to read?

Light novels are terrible, I can count the amount good ones on one hand

I actually just read book 1 and 2 of the Zaregoto series. they are nice. a shame the rest of the books will probably never be translated

>>5150598
I doubt the anglophone world is missing out on much.

Excerpt from Strawberry Panic, professionally translated by Seven Seas.
>Flutter flutter...
>All around them, cherry blossoms scattered to the ground. In the middle of a cherry-blossom-colored mist, a larger figure and a smaller figure stood close together atop a hill, surrounded by thick, old cherry trees. Standing atop the gently rolling hill of bright green, the two figures looked like they were floating in a thin, cherry-colored cloud.
>"The time has finally come to say goodbye, hasn't it?"
>"Oneesama, I...still..."
>Fwooo. A gentle breeze blew. It scattered the cherry blossoms again.
>Flutter flutter...

If someone can find a western YA book with prose worse than this I'll give you a bitcoin.

>>5150588
>Haruki Murakami
>Japanese literature

Pick one.

>>5150614
>fwooo.

>>5150588
cool a was looking for a good list of jap lit

>>5150614
Could be worse.

>>5150624
What, are you unfamiliar with the notion of onomatopoeia?

>>5150614
The "flutter flutter" refers to their short schoolgirl skirts blowing in the wind

No, OP. Take this from a guy who enjoys plenty of anime and manga. Light novels are just as trashy as western YA, the country they come from is no reflection of their quality.

Light Novels > anything Celine has produced

>>5150638

>>5150614
>If someone can find a western YA book with prose worse than this I'll give you a bitcoin.

Found an example: “There is something sad about people going to bed. You can see they don’t give a damn whether they’re getting what they want out of life or not, you can see they don’t ever try to understand what we’re here for. They just don’t care. Americans or not, they sleep no matter what, they’re bloated mollusks, no sensibility, no trouble with their conscience.
I’d seen too many troubling things to be easy in my mind. I knew too much and not enough. I’d better go out, I said to myself, I’d better go out again. Maybe I’ll meet Robinson. Naturally that was an idiotic idea, but I dreamed it up as an excuse for going out again, because no matter how I tossed and turned on my narrow bed, I couldn’t snatch the tiniest scrap of sleep. Even masturbation, at times like that, provides neither comfort nor entertainment. Then you're really in despair.”
― Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

>>5150725
That's not a young adult book.

>>5150728
>Celine
>not YA

>>5150732
He isn't. The material is too intense for a young audience

>>5150846
>Celine
>intense

>>5150855
Ya.

>>5150868
Yup, he is YA fiction.

>>5150870
I don't think any bookstore would classify him that way.

>>5150505
Watching a deck of cards play king and queen really fucked with my head, so boobs shouldn't be too bad.

>>5150588
Because it all revolves around shame and family honor. Its hilarious how true the stereotype is, across every Japanese age.

>>5150880
That is true because his books would be in the trashcan

>>5150043
I'm a sucker for weeb shit but light novels are the worst thing ever.

>>5150901
bait

>>5150902
Why would they be there? I've seen him in several bookstores, and he's usually in the "Literature" or "Fiction" section.

>>5150917
How are you this obtuse?

>>5150920
Very Carefully.

>>5150923

>>5150941
Please don't post bad pictures like that at me.

>>5150043
Superior in world-building by far, but no way in prose or charatcers.

>>5150493
>Um, actually
Um, like, why do you type like a, like, teenage girl?

Is top tier the name of a Chinese Cartoon or something?

They are terrible. At least Western YA try to be original and are diverse in content. 95% of LNs are schoolife/fantasy harems about the same nihilistic Japanese teenage boy. Never mind the fact that the way Japanese is constructed makes it so that you can't really have good literature aimed towards young adults (they don't know enough Kanji). Meanwhile, Western YA has produced something like Catcher in the Rye, a classic of all literature.

Good4fap.

>>5152990
This is exactly true.

>>5152918
Becvause I have a lot of [female] friends. Unlike you.

>>5152932
No. Saying "top tier" just means it's really good. (which no light novel is, of course)

>>5152990
>the fact that the way Japanese is constructed makes it so that you can't really have good literature aimed towards young adults (they don't know enough Kanji)
Um, ever heard of minimalism? Or furigana? Moron

There are even ways to look up Kanji on the internet based on the radicals used. High school Japanese kids have no excuse not to read serious literature.

I can't read the Haruhi Suzumiya ones. They write it so that you can't tell the difference between when the protag is talking and from then he is narrating. Sometimes a character will respond to something he said while in quotations and sometimes a character will respond to something he narrated out of quotes. I felt dumber for reading it.

>>5152990
Well hell, I just looked it up and it turns out even dictionaries use radicals to organize characters. So your argument is completely wrong.

>>5153339
Furigana is only used for works aimed towards children or maybe some very obscure kanji/compounds. No serious works of Japanese literature are full of furigana. It would be like reading a book in English where each word has its IPA representation above it.

I want to write a light novel, any tips?

>>5153354
I'm guessing you don't read much. I never had any trouble with it.

>>5153359
I know. But there are probably editions of Serious Works of Japanese Literature that make use of furigana for the benefit of younger and foreign readers. Also, sorry I called you a moron, I do that impulsively sometimes

>>5153369
>Also, sorry I called you a moron, I do that impulsively sometimes
Haha you could say I'm "tsundere" :D (just realized this, and it's relevant to the thread!!!)

>>5153354
That's deliberate. If I remember correclty that also happens in the anime: He narrates internally and someone answers him. It's just a gag.

>>5153433
I remember that. It's more a technique than a gag, though (it's not necessarily funny).

>>5153360
Yeah, get a gun and shoot yourself in the mouth.

And dont forget to title it "I Can't Believe My (adjective) Sister/Class Rep/Pet Cat/Childhood Friend/Secret Crush/Neighbor/Sensei/Long Lost Twin is Actually (blank) (blank)"

>>5153473
Yeah, except the title has to be at least 50 words long, as a joke that has never been done before.

>>5153473
Edgy

>>5153515
The word "edgy" should be filtered to "true" or "correct" in my opinion

>>5150112
There ARE gegika, which have the same artistic pretensions.

>>5150043
Slightly superior in that LN authors don't take themselves super-seriously and pretend they are writing real literature and whine about how pointing out that their work is trash is sexism because so much of it is written by women, like YA authors do.

>>5152990
> Meanwhile, Western YA has produced something like Catcher in the Rye,

Pls stop, Catcher in the Rye is not YA. Neither is The Hobbit, or Alice in Wonderland, or anything written before 1990. I really hate this pathetic YA trend of trying to appropriate literature of the past as "YA" in an attempt to give their awful vampire/romance/dystopia stories artistic legitimacy.

>>5154112
On the other hand, many of them are gross shit obviously written by and for pedophiles.

>>5154140
This is also true.

>>5153864
They really are superior to regular manga, though.

>>5150043
All are total garbage besides Haruhi.

>>5150614
The fall
(bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntro
varrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait
oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian
minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the
pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of
humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of
his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock
out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.

>>5153354
They do that on purpose. The author definitely will use it to pull some kind of twist, but he obviously has no idea what kind of twist he's going to pull.

Aside from that though, I've read some LNs and for the most part they're pretty bad. I read all the Haruhi ones and the first book in the HakuMari series. The prose is horrendous. The concepts are ok.

>>5154469
That's good prose, and it's not from a Young Adult book.

>>5154140
Because no books before 1990 were aimed towards young adults.

>>5154542
There were plenty, but they are unrelated to the modern Young Adult genre of fiction.

>>5154542
"YA" is an invention of the 90s. YA books consciously limit themselves in terms of vocabulary, complexity, characterization, etc. The exact analogue for them is the Japanese LN. The fact that YA authors are now developing delusions of artistic merit is just a sign of the utter rot and decay of Western culture.

>>5154561
I'm not sure it's an exact analogue. LN's are associated specifically with a more expansive nerd culture (anime, manga, games) and the specific kind of escapism involved (often sexual in nature), and that doesn't exactly apply to anglophone Young Adult novels.

me.

You can tell /a/ is full of plebs who read "for the plot" - because otherwise there's no way they would be able to stand the terrible translations, not that the source material is exactly a masterpiece of prose anyway.

>>5154580
It's definitely not an exact analogue, but there are a lot of similarities. I would say that the differences aren't so much inherent differences in the nature of the 'genre' itself as much as they are simply reflections of cultural differences between East & West.

>>5150127
>reading that dreck

>>5150132
do you actually not like westerns

>>5154561
I get what you're saying, but light novels are even more simplistic than YA lit.

Light novels contain onomatopoeias, sound effects, they slip into monologues all willy nilly, they often neglect to establish any kind of setting-- like they might mention "home" or "school" or "the arcade" but never in any kind of detail. These sorts of faux pas are things that even the worst Harry Potter novel would avoid.

a light novel is literally like someone took all the dialog and non-visual bits of a comic book and transcribed them to paper without any sort of nuance or wit.

>>5154542
Young adults? No, such a concept wasn't widespread then. Even books for teen wasn't that widespread till the late 20th century. It was books for children and everything else.

>>5157268
>The history of YA literature is tied to the history of how childhood and young adulthood are imagined. Beginning in the 1920s, it was said that "this was the first time when it became clear that the young were a separate generation" (Cart 43);yet, multiple novels within the YA category had been published long before. One early writer to recognize young adults as a distinct group was Sarah Trimmer, who, in 1802, described "young adulthood" as lasting from ages 14 to 21.[7] In her children's literature periodical, The Guardian of Education, Trimmer introduced the terms "Books for Children" (for those under fourteen) and "Books for Young Persons" (for those between fourteen and twenty-one), establishing terms of reference for young adult literature that remain in use today.

>>5153354
>They write it so that you can't tell the difference between when the protag is talking and from then he is narrating.
I was just about to note Haruhi for this very point. It's supposed to be comical and is probably why I think that series is one of the few LNs worth a damn.

>>5156247
It's surprising that they are translated so readily and easily by amateurs.

>>5153522
Le kill yourself xD

>>5158277
It's hardly anything brilliant but I guess it's better than Index or whatever

>>5150043
Wasn't Welcome to the NHK classified as a light novel? That was pretty good, I thought.

>>5159358
Why is this one so popular? Or is it just you who keeps posting about it?

>>5160579
>Why is this one so popular?
Because losers can self-insert themselves.

>>5160586
That makes sense. 4chan is indeed filled with losers, such as myself.

>>5160579
Why is a story about a NEET who gets his cute, shy, nerdy waifu so popular on an anonymous imageboard filled with NEETs who will never get a cute, shy, nerdy waifu?
>>5160586

>>5160579
First time I ever posted about it. I thought of it as sort of the anti Fight Club. The protagonist starts off estranged from society and shirking traditional values, but ends up defeated and conforming by getting some shit job.

Also, I've had interest in the hikikomori phenomenon in Japan and it's connection to late stage capitalism and economic stagnation.

>>5160586
Contrary to your opinion, I didn't really feel connected to any of the characters. I enjoyed it more from an ethnographic perspective.