This is my new favorite frame since it perfectly captures how I feel every time I wake up on Wednesday mornings.

By the way, what do you think are the chances for a new Ichigo Mashimaro?

Finally, something to look forward to again.

Death March to the Parallel Rhapsody. Stupid name, but it’s my comfy pleasure. And no, it’s not a harem, even though a cursory glance makes it look like it.

You are further along than I, but this sounds a lot like the usual Power Creep. The bane of many long-running series. And the more convoluted it gets, the more it needs to be explained away.

<I Saved Myself with a Potion> - Volume 3 by Akira Iwafune - ★★☆☆☆, 148 MynePages™ - MC is especially timid and lacks more self-confidence than usual in this volume. Not a fun read.

<The Tale of a Little Alchemist Blessed by the Spirits> - Volume 4 by yocco - ★★★½☆, 143 MynePages™ - Good volume with a good mix of fluff, adventure, and overarching story.

No worries.

hi there, this is a community for a specific type of novel:

This is a discussion-based community based around translated Light Novels and Web Novels which originate from Japan.

<Al the Adventurer: That Magic Shouldn’t Work!> - Volume 2 by Lemon - ★★★★☆, 231 MynePages™ - Another great volume. The pacing is something that is especially outstanding in this series and worth talking about. Every moment of tension is followed by something relaxing that leads into build-up for the next tense moment. And each transition flows effortlessly into the next. And each volume ends on a perfect spot where it feels complete on one side, but you need to know what happens next on the other without feeling like a cheap cliffhanger. I don’t want to glaze some author after just two volumes, but I think this is one worth looking out for.

<The Amazing Village Creator: Slow Living with the Village Building Cheat Skill> - Volume 5 by Shichio Kuzu - ★★☆☆☆, 107 MynePages™ - Another meh volume.

<A Journey Through Another World: Raising Kids While Adventuring> - Volume 1 by Shizuru Minazuki - ★★☆☆☆, 140 MynePages™ - Everything is very convenient. For example, fighting is strictly prohibited in the adventurers guild, but when there needs to play out the typical hoodlum-picks-a-fight-with-the-newbie scene needs to play out, the staff is suddenly forbidden to step in so that the MCs can act on it themself in the most cliché way possible. Another example: campfire cooking is a staple of the genre, and so it has to be included here as well, obviously. The problem is that MC got the soup he was warming up over the campfire directly from the inn, and his storage freezes time (because obviously it does). Which means somehow his time-freezing storage lets just those bowls of soup cool down so that the campfire cooking in the dungeon requirement could be fulfilled. As I said, it’s awfully convenient when it needs to be, with no internal coherence to its own rules. There is also not a single unique idea in this volume. It’s like it was written by committee: “Hello, author. Here is a list of scenes that scored highly with our focus group test. We need you to fill in the space between them with some of those tropes from this second list of genre mainstays here. Hop on it; no need to think too deeply about it”.

The weekly threads already provide links to the official publishers. Example, and the bot replies with links to individual volumes when you place a series title in angled brackets in a post. You are obviously free to share those links as well.

While I welcome the shoutout, we have a strict no-piracy rule over there. It’s a can of worms I don’t want to have to deal with.

I hope this is the last we see of this other group. I don’t need a Negan situation in my cute girls killing cute zombies anime.

<Genius in the Library: This Bookish Rookie Will Save the Day!> - Volume 1 by Misa Aoi - ★★★½☆, 188 MynePages™ - Great volume with a really unique concept I haven’t seen anywhere else. We’ve all seen series starting with a saint summoning a million times, but I’ve never seen a series that’s about what leads up to the summoning. Good stuff. And the protag is a bookworm, which is always a big plus. I have a few problems with the translation, though. There are a lot of anachronisms in it. Every couple of pages, there are modern phrases that just stand out like a sore thumb. And it’s not just the general writing style either. Characters that speak normally suddenly have an instance when they say “ya” instead of “you” for example. Or idioms like “head on a swivel”. There is a lot of stuff like that, but it’s so inconsistent. Almost as if the volume got sloppily rewritten and the remaining anachronisms were overlooked.

<Your Castle’s Little Helper - Please feed me, I’ll work!> - Volume 1 by Kazuhito Minagi and PenekoR - ★★★☆☆, 153 MynePages™ - Just as comfy and wholesome as the cover makes it seem. There are a few less-comfy moments, but they get resolved quickly. I have to say, though, that I am not entirely happy with how the story developed (and about how I believe it will continue in the next volumes). If MC is playing the castle’s little helper role for all of two chapters, maybe don’t name your entire series after it.

<A Young Maiden’s Growing Pains: I Reincarnated and All I Got Was This 100X Stat Buff!> - Volume 1 by Yuno Yozakura - ★★☆☆☆, 104 MynePages™ - Overly simplistic to the point where you couldn’t even consider it a guilty pleasure.

I never picked the series up in book form. I felt like without the, eherm…, physics simulation it would be lacking.

Made in Abyss for that adventure feeling. Girls Last Tour for that chill journeying vibe.

Wow. That’s how you retain a fanbase.

I like what they’ve done with the opening this time.

I am more of a purist. The way I see it, whatever is in the source should also be in the adaptation. For me, the adaptation work should be about how the same story/plot/narrative/information/etc. can be delivered in the new medium. If something was important enough to be mentioned in the source, it should be important enough to be in the adaptation as well. I absolutely agree that not everything has to be spelled out, but a quick hint that something has happened when it did so in the source is not spelling it out. As in the example, a quick glance down is enough, and it doesn’t need a voice-over of her thoughts or added dialogue of her asking why the spear tip is clean. But it makes all the difference between Romelia being some omniscient character and her being an observant one.

In this Ray example, as an anime-only viewer, I personally just thought she had seen him during the fight and didn’t think more of it when she singled him out after the battle. But at no point did I get the impression that she was especially observant of the little details and that that is why she was able to help Ray. It might be a small thing, and it didn’t take away from the anime for me since I didn’t know that I got a different impression of the character, but that doesn’t change the simple fact that my impression of the character was different from what manga-readers had of her. And that’s a failed adaptation in my view. I’m not going to drop the show over it, but now that I know that the source handles the narrative so much differently, I’ll keep wondering what else they fucked up. You could also just say that I have Bookworm PTSD and am overly prickly about this sort of thing.

That light novel was so terrible to read that it became entertaining again. You just needed to adjust your mindset a bit.

Ray’s Hesitation

Just showing her taking a quick glance at Ray’s spear before she told him to follow her would have taken maybe a single second. Just her eyes moving down, and a cut to the clean spear tip before cutting back. It would have been so simple and would have made such a big difference. But that’s something I see more and more. Direction is getting worse, and studios either put the wrong people in place, or they simply often don’t have people anymore who understand what made the source worth adapting in the first place.