One of the big distinguishing points between “light novels” and “regular novels” is that light novels are born into a multimedia ecosystem. They aren’t made up of text alone—they have insert [...]
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta

I’ve been quiet on this blog for a while, and by the end of this post you will understand why. (It’s all good news, don’t worry!) I Translated a Mushoku Tensei Book! So… After I left ANN, I got into [...]
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta

When light novel titles swap the same couple dozen keywords between them, I wouldn’t blame you for getting them mixed up. Last season, there was an anime called Banished from the Hero’s Party, I [...]
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta

The first arc of The Apothecary Diaries begins and ends with a mystery that relatively few people in modern Japan have to reckon with: why would a baby die before their first year of life? It’s a [...]
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta

It’s that time of the year again! Looking back on this year’s English light novel debuts, there were a handful of titles that I was really looking forward to but which ultimately disappointed me [...]
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta

I am shook. I am trembling as I write this post. I did not expect Butareba: The Story of a Man Turned into a Pig to actually be a good series. I did not expect it to tug on my heartstrings and leave [...]
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta

In the afterword of Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me‘s first volume, author Makiko Nagaoka remarked: “If I got lucky enough to date a beautiful voice actress I admired, [...]
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta

At first glance, the I’m In Love With the Villainess anime isn’t a huge game-changer. It takes the oversaturated “villainess” trope and applies a yuri twist to it, which is, like…neat, but not unheard [...]
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta

Liar, Liar is a pretty darn half-baked anime. Like a lot of trend-chasing works of fiction that don’t really understand the appeal of the things they’re copying, you can easily identify which popular [...]
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta

I don’t want to write another post-mortem about a light novel anime adaptation. The Reign of the Seven Spellblades anime technically isn’t a bad adaptation; unlike the Spy Classroom anime it covers [...]
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta