Novel pick-up requests

[Aruseus493]

@terrence It's about a girl that finds she can teleport back and forth between another world. So she tries to use her ability to make money and wants to save up enough for retirement.

[Hyferzftw]

I want both of them :( .

[Aruseus493]

@drone205
Added an LNDB page for the series, just for you. ;)

[Terabyte]

@aruseus493 I took a look at the manga, it looks interesting.

[Drone205]

Here are some Gender Bender type ones, though these are male -> Female types.

She Professed Herself The Pupil Of The Wiseman

The Guild’s Cheat Receptionist

Only Sense Online

[Rahul Balaggan]

From Curious Cat

Anon
do you still have a look at at "Novel pick-up requests" in the forum ?? just to be reassured

jnovelclub
I browse it sure. But there is a lot of people just posting cool covers which isn’t really a convincing suggestion.

[Terrence]

We're doing Gender-Bender?

This one seems up our alley (not that I'm banking on it coming stateside, but it seems like something people would like, it's an Isekai, it has enough volumes at 7). Earth Star is the publisher.

"Wild Final Boss Appears"

^ Afaik, it involves a dude transferring into his blonde, badass female avatar in a fantasy world. I don't want to read too too much into it on the off chance we get it, but it does appear like

spoiler

https://bookwalker.jp/deed251b9c-a82d-49db-b4d6-86bfc03dbddd/?acode=WpfPW3yk

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This one below is a Yuri type affair... With a male main character.

"My girlfriend has a single girlfriend!" (Broken Google title)

https://bookwalker.jp/ded0c64167-7d43-4cae-8c67-ce2725eec712/?acode=WpfPW3yk

This only had two volumes some years ago, and it really does look like it was planned as a bigger series (harem potentially), so i don't think it'll come over, unless, like, some upstart like Sol Press grabbed it at random.

[Aruseus493]

@rahul-balaggan said in Novel pick-up requests:

I browse it sure. But there is a lot of people just posting cool covers which isn’t really a convincing suggestion.

But I also try to explain what the series are about and why I want them. :(

For @Drone205's requests:

• Wiseman - It's a series along the lines of VRMMO -> Isekai in the same fashion as Log Horizon. The big difference though is that the players that entered the world didn't all dump in at once, but over the course of like 40 years. The protagonist before being transported was experimenting creating his ideal female character and after ended up in this other world based off the game, he's now stuck in a young girl's body as he roleplays as his own character's apprentice. Mira/Dunbalf (protagonist) is a summoner class and what makes this series interesting is how open world the game is. It's mostly hardcore as there are no tutorials or interfaces for the most part. It's all about the players experimenting and developing their own skills in a very natural human way. This includes the ability to improve this fantasy world's technology and construct kingdoms. I've been wanting this licensed for a long time. Unfortunately it's from a publisher which I think Sam mentioned rejected their digital first method.
• The Guild’s Cheat Receptionist - This is kind of an interesting series. The protagonist was reincarnated as a female elf and the story timeline takes place after something like retirement. She lives her life as a receptionist of a guild and we slowly learn a bit about her adventures and the world through people that know her and about some conflicts that take place in the story. She's ridiculously overpowered, but just wants to live a simple life.
• Only Sense Online - This is one of my favorite series. The setting is a straight VRMMO setting where the protagonist plays the game Only Sense Online with a female avatar due to a sensor mistake. It's mostly slice of life and playing as Yun (protagonist) spends his time experimenting and doing his own thing. Most of his adventures in the story are through getting recruited by either his sister or his friends. He mains as an archer and crafter making potions. The story is really good at making all his potion brewing really interesting and he develops various types and sells them. It's a very relaxing series to read because none of the conflicts in the series are truly detrimental to life as it's truly just a game. There are jokes about the NPCs potentially being staff, but they're kept out of sight enough to leave them feeling like NPCs. So overall, it's a game. The world-building is really well done as the game's system is explored in depth. You select skills to equip and can raise them and mix them however you want creating your "only" character build. The skills can evolve, split off, or even merge into new ones which creates and infinite number of player builds and styles. Overall, I'd much rather play something like Only Sense Online than stuff like Infinite Dendrogram, Sword Art Online, or Eldar Tales (Log Horizon).

[myskaros]

@rahul-balaggan said in Novel pick-up requests:

From Curious Cat

Anon
do you still have a look at at "Novel pick-up requests" in the forum ?? just to be reassured

jnovelclub
I browse it sure. But there is a lot of people just posting cool covers which isn’t really a convincing suggestion.

^ lol

It does beg the question, how else can we use this topic effectively? I've posted a lot of series I want licensed, I got a few upvotes, but otherwise no one really says anything about it, and the conversation quickly goes off topic or sometimes one book will get a bit of attention. And I'm sure JNC doesn't want to officially comment anything for business reasons.

Should I keep bringing up old series to garner more attention, or do we assume that JNC is already aware of them and focus on bringing new titles to the table? This is where getting a little feedback from JNC would be nice, though I'm not sure what form that would take since, again, getting too close to the inner workings of the business side can have an adverse effect.

I have the vague workings of a "fantasy unlicensed LN bracket" in my head, maybe I'll spend some time brainstorming on that and post something when I have it ready.

[Terrence]

@rahul-balaggan said in Novel pick-up requests:

From Curious Cat
jnovelclub
I browse it sure. But there is a lot of people just posting cool covers which isn’t really a convincing suggestion.

That'd be me (well, I'm evolving a bit, but I still try to avoid plot spoilers if I can before I read, so I definitely go based on either art, the title, or if those aren't illuminating, the synopsis).

But it does seem like he's challenging us to do real in depth recommendations. I need to check what I've done for the ones I've actually read.

I read a healthy portion of the WN (about 21 parts; I'd say, give or take, 50 pages of an LN maybe) for this one recently since it is a "completed" light novel...

"I do not need cheat in the new game!"
"ニューゲームにチートはいらない！"

https://bookwalker.jp/de34fdf246-f833-4706-ad7c-4f02567f8ebe/?acode=WpfPW3yk

...but I don't know if I recommend it (I probably won't read more unless it comes stateside).

The Basics:

So, despite that broken English Google title, it's actually not an Isekai. The main dude starts as a 70+ year old on the last days of his life. He's been training to fight the shadows of demonic gods that leak out of shrines his whole life. He was never blessed with magic, so he was never one to get sent out to fight the biggest baddies or do major quests, which bums him out. Somehow or another he reincarnates as the 20 year old you see (he literally is birthed from a hole in his original body, and the OG body continues to exist as a corpse). He assumes a similar name for himself and iirc he pretends he is the disciple of his previous... body.

So here's some stuff:

Romance - It's decently fun. The female character you see on the cover is Bianca, a prostitute who our main character really wants to free (you need a tremendous amount of money to free people) and have live with him. I fear it goes harem, but I haven't read long enough to know for certain.

Explicitness - It's not that explicit. Sure, characters have relations, but there's no real description of what's going on in the bedroom. So yeah, tame from what I recall.

Battles - The battles are decent. Our hero is basically fighting gods, gods with physical and agile prowess. Our main character's big ability is his

spoiler

Scale - Really small. Like, it feels like everything is a stone's throw away, and the setup really seems small (there's shrines built for the gods and he has to destroy the gods that leak out of them). I think this is really the thing that is bringing it down for me. And it's so structured (there are 3 shrine gods that our hero has to defeat; maybe there will be a twist once he defeats them all, but yeah, small in scope and super structured). I'm sure there's some stuff to switch this up, but I don't know that it'll become a massive story when it is only 3 volumes (I read through about 21 of the prepub parts, which gets you through the first major battle).

[Drone205]

I started out describing why I want certain series (I even talked about what sort of series I think could work for JNC, eg. short story/episodic series) but then before I knew it I kinda turned into the Posting Covers.

@Aruseus493 already described the series I posted recently, but I like to post series that at least to me seems like they may be more Slice of Life and the three I posted do seem like they would be like that.

[Drone205]

Maybe we should get some sort of Format for these, like Reasons why on the top, the title and cover, and if we have multiple titles then they all should be clearly connected somehow that is easy to understand.

[Rahul Balaggan]

I used to post LN requests here a while back but then I had an epiphany and that was, I just wanna read light novels.

Don’t matter what genre or what story, as long as it is good (and for the most part I assume anything any foreign company would license would have to be good to a degree)

Literally every single Light Novel mentioned here is a Light novel I wanna read and would be happy to buy and read. (I am assuming no one said Lance N' Masques I don’t ever wanna see that licensed...)

So now I am in a place in my Light novel reading life where I will just kick back and relax and wait for more novels to read, whatever comes comes and I have no control over what that may be...

[Aruseus493]

If we're talking about format, I've been going with:

Title

Publisher

Synopsis

Explanation Why I Want It

Cover

@Rahul-Balaggan I'm kind of the same way in wanting to read pretty much most stuff. I actually tend to read so much though that I end up with gaps. So I tend to bug for more licenses so I have more stuff to read. My goal is to have a volume for every day of a month.

[BloodyGaikotsu]

I usually go
Title
Cover
Publisher
Then either talk about the story or why I want it or both

I even try to reply to every license that interests me
But...Kinda feeling outta the place lately with all Isekais and fantasies so haven't reacted much recently...

But the thing is it's manly people throwing their titles here without much interaction...

-X posts title
=Y Upvotes it
-Y posts title
and so on
How can Sam or anyone tell if enough people here are interested in the said title?

Like JNC is the only company that deals Bungeishunjū and Kodansha LIGHTNOVEL (aside from Vertical)
So JNC is like the only publisher I can expect being able to get some of the stuff I am interested in

[Aruseus493]

Maybe we should just start making individual threads for every request?

[Drone205]

@aruseus493 there would be so many threads. maybe certain genres of some other kind of category. or we can create threads for titles that get recommended alot.

[BloodyGaikotsu]

@aruseus493
We kinda have to sell our own requests to the people here (Kinda envy people who want more popular titles) before Sam and I don't think swamping the forum with different threads will help that.

[Terrence]

@aruseus493 said in Novel pick-up requests:

Maybe we should just start making individual threads for every request?

If it's an in depth request for a title you know a lot about, I think that may be a good idea. Do a "Why You Should Pick Up (Insert Title): In Depth Reasoning" or something, lol. I can do two of those at some point (Zoa Hunter and Attacking the Dungeon with My Boss is OT Work).

---

We can still use this one to try and generate interest in stuff we don't know much about. Like if we see a new series pop up with not much info known, but there's no fan scene for it yet, just to kick the ball around a bit.

Like I saw this Earth Star published one pop up recently. I'm planning to look at the Syosetu a bit.

"If You Request a Hero, We Send Him"

https://bookwalker.jp/de11476abe-4a5e-45b2-a551-f6cad8b33f08/?acode=WpfPW3yk

I wouldn't do an individual thread on this because, well, it's new, I'm not going to read the synopsis so I can keep my impressions to what I see (the cover and title kind of speaks for itself; elf girl, human dude, and human girl work at an office that dispatches a Hero in exchange for rewards).

[Kite-XX]

So many popular light novel series mentioned on this thread, and yet I’ve only seen JNC start translating light novels that are barely mentioned from posts I’ve read from when I first joined. As more time passes, the number of volumes for those series are increasing.