I feel that light novels suffer from the same issues as any other Japanese media, and you just need to take one look at the anime board to understand what I mean here. At the same time, I think light novels have a lot of strengths over other kinds of media.
Some facts about Light Novels:
1) Because they are books, light novels can afford to be wordy, descriptive, and long.
2) Light novels are much, much cheaper to produce than a lot of other Japanese media. This way, stories can be longer, written more often, and more easily have sequels and anthologies.
3) Light novels are not visual media. They're interpretative and leave more to the imagination. Yet still, they often borrow a considerable number of tropes from very visual media like anime or manga.
4) Its easier for amateur works to get published as light novels, as opposed to other written media like manga or full literature.
5) Light novels are often associated with anime or manga.
I think in a lot of ways, light novels are the modern and Japanese equivalent of dime novels. Both were made to be consumed quickly, and were intended as cheap entertainment. You tend to get a lot of crappy literature out of that, but sometimes you can get really amazing works that start whole chains of genre defining stuff, amazing, massive stories spanning many novels, etc.. Furthermore, because they're cheap to produce there is less economic risk, allowing more creative freedom on the part of the writer. IIRC, the entire reason stuff like science fiction and fantasy kicked off was because of dime novels.
Now, what do I think about these things?
Well, 1 and 2 are great because I feel you get a lot of bang for your buck, as opposed to other Japanese media. Personally, I don't care what people say about how well some visual novels are written, they're frankly overpriced as all hell. 1 by itself is great because too often I find a lot of Japanese media has really, really poor worldbuilding, but in light novels I feel the worldbuilding is really strong. Worldbuilding, is really important to me when I consume media because it helps with immersion. On point 2, this allows light novel media a lot more creative freedom than other Japanese media. I feel a lot of really strong worlds are built from light novels. I see this translate well when light novels are adapted to anime, as for me a lot of those anime I find better than today's original anime, anime from visual novels, and anime from manga. But, of course, quality levels are all across the board, and while we can get masterpieces like Kyoukaisenjou no Horizon we can also get horribad shit like Sword Art Online. I really do feel that those books never should have been published, they read like fanfiction. Point 3 is kind of special for me; surprisingly enough as much as I'm into anime, sometimes I really don't like the direction a lot of them take, and this can simply be ironed down to differences in cultural expectations and genre expectations. All in all though, it allows me a much more personally crafted experience I feel all the more satisfied because of it. Points 4 and 5 are where I think the vast majority of the problem lies when it comes to visual novels. Because they're easy to produce, they're also cheaply produced. They can be exceptionally bad due a lack of stringent quality checking (cough SAO cough). Plus, because they're linked to anime and manga, they also get all the baggage attached to that stuff, including all the good and all the bad tropes and stereotypes.
Personally I love light novels, they've become my favorite Japanese written media to consume. I really wish they would get fan translated more, whether officially or by fans. I'm actually extremely tempted to learn to read and write Japanese so I can indulge in more light novels; I'm actually pretty scared of the day when Kyoukaisenjou no Horizon's fan translation stops, since I know for sure that light novel will never be licensed. I don't believe that the project can be completed by js06 on his own, its just simply too massive. |