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This Week in Anime -Narou-ing Down Your Anime Watchlist


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BodaciousSpacePirate
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Posts: 3017
PostPosted: Thu Oct 19, 2023 4:00 pm Reply with quote
Back before I Shall Survive Using Potions was officially licensed, it was one of the few fan-translated web novels that I was still keeping up-to-date on. I unironically feel that FUNA is a very talented isekai author… and I have now had to sit through three anime adaptations that have chosen to translate NONE of that talent from page to screen. I went into this one expecting to be disappointed, and I wasn’t surprised.
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Glordit



Joined: 11 Sep 2020
Posts: 469
PostPosted: Thu Oct 19, 2023 4:22 pm Reply with quote
Then there is me who tries to watch everything
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Terraziel



Joined: 01 Jul 2023
Posts: 57
PostPosted: Thu Oct 19, 2023 6:32 pm Reply with quote
I think a key point here is that the 'problem' isn't the novels themselves, it is the fact that it's become the start of content pipeline.

I can't bring myself to blame which ever bored accountant has written another story about bring double-entry bookkeeping to a fantasy world, the issue is them becoming fodder for low effort productions. I feel kind of bad for some of the works, because whatever the quality of the original works, the anime have been so.... perfunctory, like they aren't even trying to hide that they are just churning stuff out.
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Rogueywon



Joined: 01 May 2011
Posts: 251
PostPosted: Thu Oct 19, 2023 6:58 pm Reply with quote
Three points here, I guess:

First, I think the Isekai Plague might actually be waning. Yes, there are still a few, but it's not the absolute torrent of them we were getting until recently. Traditional fantasy shows seem to be making a comeback. Some of them are terrible. But they don't have a modern Japanese teenager explaining their world's stat system to us. It's progress.

Second, Tearmoon Empire will be really good if it follows the LNs closely. It's a very well written series and, thus far, they've navigated well around the very heavy narrator-voice that the novels have. It knows its history, but it also has good character writing and a few good original twists. Mia is the ultimate gremlin.

And... I'm In Love With The Villainess. There's a LN series with... concept. It's not immediately apparent, but... it goes places. The tone and style they've chosen make me wonder if they've already decided to just do the first two LNs. If I'm wrong and they go to the very end (which would take 3-4 cours), it'll be divisive, but not for the reasons you might expect.
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Shay Guy



Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 2126
PostPosted: Thu Oct 19, 2023 7:23 pm Reply with quote
I have to wonder how Kakuyomu's culture has become distinct from Narou's, or other fiction sites.

Quote:
Once the novelty of isekai wore off, everyone had to add their gimmick


Given how Narou's characteristic form of the genre is clearly a derivative of self-insert fanfic, I imagine the novelty may have already been gone by the time the site launched in 2004. Certainly by 2010, before fanfic was banned, there were plenty of stories about somebody from our world being sent to the world of The Familiar of Zero, or Koihime Musou, or Negima, or One Piece, or Gundam SEED… and that's just in the top 10 fanfics. Often becoming a child and/or gaining a cheat power in the process.

BodaciousSpacePirate wrote:
Back before I Shall Survive Using Potions was officially licensed, it was one of the few fan-translated web novels that I was still keeping up-to-date on. I unironically feel that FUNA is a very talented isekai author… and I have now had to sit through three anime adaptations that have chosen to translate NONE of that talent from page to screen. I went into this one expecting to be disappointed, and I wasn’t surprised.


For those who don't know, FUNA is also the author of Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement and Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!. The other day, I copied the chapter publication dates for all three stories from their TOCs, applied some regex, and stuck all the dates into a calendar in JavaScript. The results tell a pretty interesting history of their writing career:


  • November 2, 2015: 80K Gold chapter 1 is posted. The next two go up within the next 24 hours, then Potions chapter 1 is posted. After that, FUNA starts posting a chapter of both at midnight every day -- 14 chapters per week, for over a month.
  • December 13, 2015: 80K Gold chapter 43 and Potions chapter 42 go up. The latter is designated as its final chapter (it wouldn't stay that way), and FUNA's schedule drops to seven chapters a week.
  • January 14, 2016: 80K Gold chapter 75 goes up, also designated as a conclusion. At the same time, chapter 1 of Make My Abilities Average debuts; it also gets updated daily. In its first 38 chapters, FUNA's only break was a week off to (per author notes) visit their dying mother.
  • March 2016: After a couple missed days over the previous week or two, Make My Abilities Average transitions to an every-other-day schedule, interrupted only once in April due to hospitalization.
  • May 2016: FUNA officially becomes a professionally published author, with the first volume of MMAA coming out on the 14th. A week later, after chapter 80, MMAA shifts to one chapter every three days.
  • June 2016: The pro releases of 80K Gold and Potions also debut.
  • December 31, 2016: MMAA chapter 154 goes up, ending the one-every-three-days schedule that had had only one break in September. After this FUNA takes a one-week break.
  • January 10, 2017: The next chapter of MMAA goes up -- and continuations of 80K Gold and Potions. FUNA starts on a new schedule, posting an MMAA chapter on Tuesdays and Fridays, an 80K Gold chapter on Wednesdays, and a Potions chapter on Thursdays. This four-update-a-week schedule continues for over three years, with the only breaks being regularly scheduled ones for Obon, New Year's, and Golden Week. (The first few breaks were a week or a bit more; all the rest since have been two weeks.)
  • April 3, 2020: MMAA chapter 465 comes out, with an announcement that it'll be the last Friday update. From then on, it'd get one chapter a week, just like the other two stories. And that's the last change FUNA's made to their schedule, right up to the present day. The only irregularity since then has been an extra one-week break they had to take in February 2022. All three stories are still going.


I can't help but be impressed by that pace, and the consistency they've shown over the past six and a half years. These stories all average around 3400-3500 Japanese characters a chapter, which I think would be over 1,500 English words. Maybe 2,000. I've been struggling to keep going on my current writing project even as consistently as 300 words a day, and that's not even fiction-writing, which has always been so much harder for me.

Rogueywon wrote:
Mia is the ultimate gremlin.


You could wait, like, two days for Maomao to enter the contest before calling it.
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zztop



Joined: 28 Aug 2014
Posts: 646
PostPosted: Fri Oct 20, 2023 7:39 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Given that these stories had humble, amateur beginnings, the tally shakes out rather ordinarily. I've got two Narou series I'd like to keep up, a handful of middling ones, and a pile of shame. Those are pretty good results, honestly.


Some of them can be surprisingly good. My personal favourite is Deathbound Duke's Daughter, whose author used the "reincarnated as the minor plot-device villainess of an otome game" template to springboard their story into a fascinating dark action-fantasy with plenty of intrigue and rich worldbuilding.
https://j-novel.club/series/deathbound-duke-s-daughter

Although the webnovel is still ongoing with enough material for multiple volumes, unfortunately the publication ground to a halt after just 2 published light novels (presumably because actual sales didn't match projected expectations).

Which brings up the next point; that a good number of sloppily-written yet heavily pandering webnovels get all the readership attention instead of ones that have thought and effort put into them.
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DamianSalazar



Joined: 25 Jul 2017
Posts: 720
PostPosted: Fri Oct 20, 2023 7:59 am Reply with quote
One correction I have to make: Kadokawa doesn't own Shousetsuka ni Narou. Syosetu is independent. They own Kakuyomu however.
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Gonzo_Deluxe



Joined: 01 Nov 2020
Posts: 21
PostPosted: Fri Oct 20, 2023 10:24 am Reply with quote
Is ANN boycotting "Let Me Check the Walkthrough First"? No coverage during the season previews, no coverage in the Isekai episode of TWIA... I may have missed a news story that explains the situation, but for me right now it's still a mystery...
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Dark Mac



Joined: 17 May 2008
Posts: 313
PostPosted: Fri Oct 20, 2023 10:30 am Reply with quote
Gonzo_Deluxe wrote:
Is ANN boycotting "Let Me Check the Walkthrough First"? No coverage during the season previews, no coverage in the Isekai episode of TWIA... I may have missed a news story that explains the situation, but for me right now it's still a mystery...


It's not anime.
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TheSleepyMonkey



Joined: 11 Jul 2022
Posts: 897
PostPosted: Fri Oct 20, 2023 11:58 am Reply with quote
I completely disagree with everything said about Shangri-La Frontier. I don't see how it's "missed potential" or how it "misunderstands" VRMMOs, specially since not once does it say anything about "playing bad games makes you good at great games", and I don't know where the hell the reviewers got that from. Sounds more like a problem of getting the completely wrong impression about the anime and anti-isekai bias kicking in.
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Glordit



Joined: 11 Sep 2020
Posts: 469
PostPosted: Fri Oct 20, 2023 11:33 pm Reply with quote
Dark Mac wrote:
Gonzo_Deluxe wrote:
Is ANN boycotting "Let Me Check the Walkthrough First"? No coverage during the season previews, no coverage in the Isekai episode of TWIA... I may have missed a news story that explains the situation, but for me right now it's still a mystery...


It's not anime.


It actually is.

This is funny, because they did a review of Castlevania Nocturne.


Last edited by Glordit on Sat Oct 21, 2023 3:16 am; edited 1 time in total
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RickyTheRat



Joined: 02 Jul 2023
Posts: 23
PostPosted: Sat Oct 21, 2023 12:57 am Reply with quote
Dark Mac wrote:
It's not anime.


To be fair this has never stopped ANN covering various games, cartoons, or movies before. I imagine it just comes down to personal interest in what a writer wants to talk about or make an article for. I can see why a writer might want to talk about Castlevania Nocturne because it has topics and politics that align with more their views and something they want to discuss compared to a Chinese donghua that is essentially another isekai show that the staff are kind of known for disliking and probably have little interest in. All people would be asking for is an article trashing it like this one, although maybe some people do want that and just want to see a show they dislike get roasted.
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NeverConvex
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Joined: 08 Jun 2013
Posts: 2307
PostPosted: Sat Oct 21, 2023 5:07 am Reply with quote
RickyTheRat wrote:
Dark Mac wrote:
It's not anime.


To be fair this has never stopped ANN covering various games, cartoons, or movies before


Has it not? This is also the reason I understood ANN doesn't have any Link Click coverage, which came up a few times this season.
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Takkun4343



Joined: 19 Jul 2007
Posts: 1502
Location: Englewood, Ohio
PostPosted: Sat Oct 21, 2023 10:21 am Reply with quote
Dark Mac wrote:
Gonzo_Deluxe wrote:
Is ANN boycotting "Let Me Check the Walkthrough First"? No coverage during the season previews, no coverage in the Isekai episode of TWIA... I may have missed a news story that explains the situation, but for me right now it's still a mystery...


It's not anime.

Such is life being a donghua.
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Woozy



Joined: 18 Apr 2023
Posts: 17
PostPosted: Sat Oct 21, 2023 2:35 pm Reply with quote
Yet another season another lame TWIA where all the isekai get shoved in the same post.
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