I was watching Anime for a long time already, picked up a manga here and there but I didn’t really enjoy them. It felt like there was so little story and I could finish one in under an hour. So I gave up on Manga.
I watched So I’m a Spider, So What?/ Kumo desu ga, nani ka? when it started airing and it hooked me instantly. Her character. The world. The comedy. Everything. (Except the humans…).
Once it was over, I wanted more. And since everyone kept saying the Light Novel is way better, especially the human side, I bought the first 3 volumes.
It was amazing. I binge read them until I had to wait for the English releases. Right now I’m waiting for vol. 16 to be available again so I can finish this series.
I had been reading manga for a while and then, similar to you, ran into a series in which I could not wait to see what happened next. For me, that series was Eminence in Shadow which was my entry into LN/WN reading. I was surprised at how different the LN was from the manga in tone though, moreso than many other series I have since consumed both forms of media. It is a great example of the different storytelling modalities adapting the same story and ending up with three (LN, manga, anime), interesting for different reasons, pieces of media.
I am not sure how I got into light novels. I have been reading manga for a long time so at some point light novels were mixed in.
Spider was one of the first ones I got super excited about. Before the anime was announced I was collecting the manga, and the light novel was on sale so I picked up the first volume. Then the second. And before the week was out I was completely obsessed scrambling to get my hands on all of the available English releases.
@EnmaAi22 @lightnovels Was reading comics and looking for something different, found the first Manga translation for AoaB, then found out that there are translated books for it. So, Ascendance of a Bookworm.
Can you give me a sales pitch on ascendance of a Bookworm? I see it recommend or praised a lot but the story doesn’t seem that intriguing to me.
@EnmaAi22 The Main character went to library school before being Isekai’d to a place with magic but few books … As a sickly commoner. It’s fairly slow paced, but the world building is top rate. Some folks cannot imagine being as obsessed with books as she is, but I married a librarian and I read hundreds of books a year.
Like any book, it’s not for everyone.
I also love female led books that aren’t romance-centred. It hits my buttons well.And lete guess, she is trying to make books more commonplace in the world?
I think I’ll give it a try and order the first volume:)
I started reading in high school at some point. I believe it might have been after bakemonogatari aired, i was readding them on bakatranslations back then. I read some of the monogatari translations, i believe they might have had it broken up in parts because i only remember reading kizu. After that i read some others that didnt get my attention until i read the first SAO. Dont remember if i read it before or after the anime aired, it had to be before or right after because i remember defending the story as a whole to the anime haters at the time. The only other memorable novel i read were high school dxd, which i wasnt telling anyone i read lol.
I dont recall reading much after, i delved into vn at some point though. Then some years later when the first season of slime started airing it immediately got me hooked and I started reading before the season ended. I dont think there were even 4 volumes in english at the time so i jumped to the web novel. So after i did some googles for more isekai novels i came across mushoku tensei, again at the time there werent many english volumes so i had to resort to the webnovels again.
After those two i just never stopped, then it went out of hand when the pandemic hit. Ive now read close to 1000 volumes probably. The last couple years i changes things up and have my epubs played through my book app which makes it almost as good as an audio book. Some times better i would say.
Only one I’ve read is by Okina baba
I’m a spider so what.
I’m currently in book 10. Can bash out a “book” in a few hours. It’s great but it’s super expensive. 16 books at $10 a book. Actually 12 on Kindle and 8 on book walker.
Good choice. Was my first too. I adored it. Yea it’s pretty expensive per chapter.
I’m new to the light novels, my first LN was The World’s Finest Assassin’ after watching the anime on Netflix. I think it’s fun to read and I like the most part of it, but I just dropped it because I don’t like its kind of harem. Then I can’t stop, I read Tearmoon Empire, Ascendance of a Bookworm, those two are so good, Sasaki and peeps is also fun to read. Now I’m reading Konosuba on V.15, the next after I finish this story would be Secrets of the Silent Witch.
One thing I noticed after I started reading LN is that I kind of don’t enjoy anime adaptations from LN source anymore 😐.
It’s definitely hard watching an anime adapted from a LN you read.
Classroom of the elite was painful, atleast the first season didn’t watch any further.
So I’m a Spider was painful too, not as much because Kumos side was decently well done.
I forgot exactly how I got into it, I suppose it’s just a natural extension of my interest in Japanese media (and I love reading, comics and novels alike). I don’t know if this is the very first, but it’s one of the very first and the most memorable for me - “The Empty Box and Zeroth Maria” fan translation, many years before it was officially licensed.
I don’t remember exactly which light novel was my first, but I know it was a fan translation I read after an anime’s end. I was pretty snobby about the quality of the translation and someone suggested I give the official translation a try and from that point I was hooked. Right now I read around 170-200 volumes per year (though I won’t reach those numbers this year - too many great games eating up my leisure time).
