No Game No Life (light novel)

*This is a digital eBook, not a physical book.

Synopsis

The original light novel that started the phenomenon!In this fantasy world, everything's a game--and these gamer siblings play to win! Meet Sora and Shiro, a brother and sister who are loser shut-ins by normal standards. But these siblings don't play by the rules of the "crappy game" that is average society. In the world of gaming, this genius pair reigns supreme, their invincible avatar so famous that it's the stuff of urban legend. So when a young boy calling himself God summons the siblings to a fantastic alternate world where war is forbidden and all conflicts--even those involving national borders--are decided by the outcome of games, Sora and Shiro have pretty much hit the jackpot. But they soon learn that in this world, humanity, cornered and outnumbered by other species, survives within the confines of one city. Will Sora and Shiro, two failures at life, turn out to be the saviors of mankind? Let the games begin...!

Volumes

Review

Jul 4, 2014

25 of ? chapters read

Overall Rating: 10

HaXXspetten (All reviews)

363 people found this review helpful

Preliminary

Since there is basically nothing on it, I thought I'd make the effort to say a few words about the No Game No Life original light novels for once, as I am sure there are a lot of people out there asking themselves “If I liked the anime, is it worth picking up the LNs as well?”.

This will be a bit of a short special “review”, as for once given the circumstances I'm basically expecting that anyone interested in reading this will already have seen the anime, and in case you haven't and just want to get the basic gist of it, I'd advice you to go read literally any review of the anime first and then come back here (although there will still be no spoilers)... or even better just go watch the damn thing.

Anyways I will here mainly talk about some key facts that you might be interested in knowing, and then also what differs between the novels and the anime.

- “How much content is there available past the end of anime?”
The anime covers up to the end of volume 3 of the LNs, and there are currently 6 volumes released in Japan. Every volume is released at roughly 5 month intervals, and at the moment 4 of them are translated, the latest one finished on June 29th 2014. The translation is going pretty fast however and will surely catch up to the Japanese releases before long.

- “Is it worth reading the whole thing from the beginning or just pick it up at volume 4 if I just want to know what happens past the end of the anime?”
I think as a general rule, as long as you have the time and willpower it is always better to read the whole thing from scratch (I did at least). However what the anime covers follows the original first three volumes very closely so you could skip them if you really wanted to. There are some minigames and similar that were skipped in the anime though, so you'd still miss out on some “new” stuff that definitely was worth reading.

- “Will already having seen the anime reduce my enjoyment value for the LNs if I read the whole thing from the start?”
I'd say yes and no. Of course knowing the outcome of all the major plot points up until a certain point as well as having heard most of the jokes before will hamper the experience the “second” time around. On the other hand I think having seen the anime already will make everything a lot easier to picture in your head, as knowing how everything looks and how everyone's voices sound will make everything feel a lot better in your head when reading, and definitely enhance the humorous parts if anything.

- “Does it get better or worse in the volumes taking place after the anime?”
I can't really answer that, there is only one volume translated past the anime's ending as of the time of writing this (which would be roughly 4 episodes with the anime's pacing).

- “What about the differences then? Does the novels have the same theme and atmosphere?”
Mostly yes, but not entirely I have to say. At least in my mind, I found the LNs to be significantly more ecchi a lot of the time, and the parts that were cut out from the first three volumes for the anime mostly consisted of the most perverted scenes of the story. Not that they're any worse in terms of quality, but it's something to take note of at least.

- “Are the games really as good in a text-based format?”
I think normally anyone would reckon that it'd be easier to explain clever and complicated flows of events in large amounts of text compared to what it would be animated, but in this case I'm actually going to say no. I think the more forceful approach and over-the-top animation techniques utilized in the anime were actually easier to understand than the more “normal” (..sort of) feeling the novels have. Mostly as a result I don't think the LNs feel quite as epic in comparison.

- “Overall then, which is better of the novels and the anime?”
Obviously this is not really a fair question as the anime covers only a portion of the story, but just comparing the content it covered from the source material then I would still have to say that the anime is probably better in the end. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy reading this immensely but it doesn't get me quite as excited as I got when watching the anime. Now I'm a huge fan of the franchise and thus even so I'd still give the novels a 10 as well, but if I had to choose one or the other then I'd still go with the anime. The animation, soundtrack and voice acting just enhances the concepts of the series too much to be able to overlook.

Helpful

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Jan 27, 2016

30 of ? chapters read

Overall Rating: 9

Professional2341 (All reviews)

92 people found this review helpful

Preliminary

SPOILER FREE

Most people are looking at the reviews to see if No Game No Life novel is worth picking up, especially after watching the anime. Because of that, I'm going to direct my review towards "I liked the anime, should I read the novel series, or should I hope for a season 2?" instead of something like "Is NGNL light novel good?".

Well to start off, there are currently 8 volumes released, 6 which are translated. The anime only covered the first 3 volumes, so you can assume that you are expecting at least double the content.

- "Should I read from the beginning, or should I just start reading volume 4?"
Personally, I don't know. Since I watched the anime, I skipped the first 3 volumes and started reading volume 4. The anime follows the novel very well so I didn't feel like I missed anything.

- "How good is the story after the end of the anime?"
Really good. Sometimes stories tend to start strong, stay long, and then get weaker and weaker throughout; examples would be Bleach, Naruto, SAO, and really many other anime. However, NGNL only gets better as the story unravels. The crew is bigger, more games (sophisticated ones too), more races to interact with, and a lot of insight on the background of this world and the races in general.

- "Light Novel vs. Anime?"
Well there are two aspects in this; Quantity and Quality. I'd say that the quality of the anime was better than the LN, even though I haven't read the first 3 volumes. The reason is because the anime did a very well job in explaining really confusing concepts and sophisticated games, plus it had good art and amazing sountracks. As for Quantity, obviously speaking the LN is better, it has a lot more content that is definitely worth reading if you liked the anime.

- "Quick summary with no spoilers?"
Usually sometimes when I want to read an LN I'm familiar with, I like to see how the LN does and what it covers, so here's a quick, as much spoiler-free as possible, summary:
- Volume 4: Follows the end of the anime, the crew continues to obtain more races to their side, and tries to do exactly that.
- Volume 5: Continues off the "problem/game" in Volume 4 to finish it, but also includes a lot of mini-games and a big insight on Jibril, the Flugels, and a little bit more about what happened during the Great War.
- Volume 6: This whole volume is Tet covering the Great War; how it was from the humans' perspective, how it ended, how Tet became the One true god, and a lot more about its secrets.

- "How much did you enjoy the LN?"
No Game No Life LN was the first light novel I read, combine that with the fact that NGNL has pretty sophisticated and potentially confusing games and you can pretty much guess that I had a little trouble reading some parts, but just reading those small parts again or waiting for a better explanation often helped me a lot. Overall, I did enjoy this LN as it was pretty good and the plot was well-written. I do give this LN about 8.9/10 - A very high 8 or a flat 9.

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Overall	9
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No Game No Life (light novel)

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