Viz has dropped a bomb over at the San Diego Comic con by licencing both the Shakugan no Shana light novels and manga, as reported by both ANN and JpMeyer’s blog. Of course for any Shana fan this is a dream come true. The manga was most likely expected but no one thought the novels would be brought over. In the niche market of manga light novels are themselves an even deeper niche.
Light novels are like ero games, one of the most least expected things to ever be translated outside of the asian world. Why is that? Is it the phenomenal amount of text, more so than manga and anime combined? The difficulty of making japanese prose sound normal in the west? Because otaku don’t like to read?
Of course than there’s the difficulty of saying what exactly a light novel is. Is it a book with pictures? A book inspired by anime? The deranged writings of otaku? My boogiepop
novels tell me that Kouhei Kadono ignited the light novel trend, so I guess light novels should focus on kids in high school faced with strange events? Sounds like my anime to me.
In the end all that can be said about light novels is that their just another cultural phenomenon otaku have chosen to rally around, since light novels generally exult all of thier own cultural norms that otaku love. As for me, well I’ll just continue to read things I like and thank God that tokyopop didn’t get the shana novels. Now if only someone would hurry on that Haruhi licence…
February 2, 2008 at 7:26 am
pos yourgirls