Forum - View topicREVIEW: Spice & Wolf Novel 17
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AnimeMaine
Posts: 123 |
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As a business professor I have thoroughly enjoyed this series. I have the last two novels to finish; maybe by the end of next week. For those who like his writing, he has also written World End Economica. Parts 1 & 2 are available on Steam, with the final Part 3 to follow.
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3561 Location: Finland |
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Reminded me of the famous poem, "On The Move", by renounded Swedish poet and author Karin Boye. It's a beautiful piece of understanding the value of the journey itself. Here's an English version of it (translated by dr Hans Corell, former legal council of UN); http://www.karinboye.se/verk/dikter/dikter-engelska/on-the-move-2.shtml Yes, it a very apt description of the tone of Spice and Wolf... I too received this volume a week ago myself, and finished the last of the previous main novels few months ago while on visit to Sweden. Still have the last two Side Colors to read though... |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2480 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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Would love to see more Light Novel reviews like this on the site, although I understand that given the length of the material to be reviewed, it's probably not going to be a common occurrence.
(I remember Zac saying that reviewing VNs was impractical for this reason - the page views on such a review would never justify the 50 hours required to read the damn thing and then write it up) |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18426 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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VNs are impractical, for exactly the reasons stated (although I actually did do one several years ago, for Exodus Guilty), but I think you'll probably see a bit more for LN reviews going forward. Both Rebecca and I do read them, and there are a few popular series which either already are past their animated content (Devil is a Part-Timer) or will be with the next publication (SAO, DanMachi, among others.) I'd also like to get a bit more into LNs which have been released in the States but haven't had a released anime form yet, but that, of course, depends on what actually gets published.
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invalidname
Contributor Posts: 2480 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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I've been reading the Book Girl LNs, which is an example of precisely this scenario (there was a movie, but we never got it here). |
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Via_01
 Posts: 551 |
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Though I understand why VNs are so impractical, it's still a shame, as I'm sure there are people out there who'd like to read them (myself included). Maybe hiring someone to review some of the most popular releases from time to time could work? On the topic of Spice and Wolf, I'm still on the 8th novel, so I'm not going to reach this volume until many months into the future, but it does sound like the satisfying conclussion I feel this series deserves, so I'll be eager to read it when the time comes. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18426 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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The problem with this is that the "most popular releases" often don't come to the States legally - or if they do then it's not until several years later. And that still doesn't get around the disproportionate amount of time it takes to prep something like that compared to a traditional review. (For the one I did, for instance, I think it was only about a dozen hours long total, and that's relatively short as these things go.) |
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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Nice to hear that the conclusion was satisfying. Since I only heard about the series a couple of years ago, I wanted to wait until the final volume was released before deciding on getting all of them.
I own the anime...but have yet to see it. Just haven't made time. But, this review has helped me decide to get the novels. Everything I've heard about the series makes it sound like something I enjoy.
Ah, have been meaning to get into that series too. Actually saw the movie, and while it wasn't perfect, I did like the characters enough to see what the novels are like. Currently, I'm reading through the Kieli series. I'm currently reading the 7th volume, and loving the series. Kind of don't want it to get to the finish... 
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Calsolum
 Posts: 904 |
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while you have properly explained why VN probably wont be covered in the near future I'll also support the idea of having a VN review section or corner or even just 1 a month or 2 months. To be honest i really love some VNs so any publicity that doesn't portray them as only H games is great and I hope they'll become more socially acceptable to talk about and recommend. as for the not releasing to the states bit, i thought mangagamer had quite a bit of VN on their website and I've noticed steam has started picking up VN. lucy the eternity she wished for, fruits of grisaia, and sunrider come to mind So i heard talk off a sequel to Spice and wolf so is this really the end? or willl the sequel be a prequel of sorts that explores the time gap in between. I for one would like to see them actually reach their destination (i think i went a little crazy waiting for guts and his band to finally get off that damn boat only to be hit by more haitus) and how much did the anime cover since i might just jump a few volumes since the earlier novels are a pain to find |
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invalidname
Contributor Posts: 2480 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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Apologies for continuing this VN sidetrack, but maybe I can bring it back to where it started with the analogy to LNs. Let's say ANN generally pays $100 an article (put another way, let's say ad impressions on page views allow ANN to pay $100 for an article). No idea if this is right, it's just an easy number to work with. For a streaming review, let's say a writer spends 30 minutes watching, and 3.5 hours writing it up. They're making $25/hour. Not bad! But now we assign them an LN. Let's say it takes 2.5 hours to read and again 3.5 hours to write up. Now they're making $16/hr… not nearly as attractive. Now let's play a VN for 50 hours, write it up, and now it's less than $2/hr, which nobody's going to do willingly. So the problem ends up being that unless an article on VNs can justify paying much more than the going rate (and it's unlikely there's evidence to support this), you can't afford to pay someone to write a review of a VN. Even only doing something once every couple months won't change the fact that either ANN or the writer would be taking a big loss. So the only people who really know a title are those that have already played it all the way through, which means your entire base of potential reviewers is basically fanboys, or at least people who liked the VN well enough to finish it. VNs are really great, but you don't need ANN to validate them, learn about them, or find the good ones. The web has gobs of info you can dig into, like the Eroge Bus podcast with a list of news briefs and a review or interview every month, and the Fuwazette blog has news and translation status updates every week. Kazamatsuri.org has gobs of news just from VisualArts (Clannad, Rewrite, Angel Beats, etc.), Kiminozo.life is a new site just for stuff from Kimi ga Nozomu Eien / Rumbling Hearts… I could go on all day. Point being: it's OK for ANNs economic model and the enormous length of VNs to be incompatible. The web will happily make up the difference. Last edited by invalidname on Thu May 12, 2016 9:52 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18426 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I haven't heard anything serious about a S&W sequel, either in novel or in anime forum. While I would love to see more animated, the fact that the novel series has been finished for more than 4½ years now probably means that there would be little or no financial value to animating more, and as for additional novels, the writer has moved on to other projects. (Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that a writer is finished with the original project - see Reki Kawahara of SAO fame.) To answer your second question, the anime only covered vol. 1-3, 5, and a couple of entries from the later short story collections. |
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teferi
 Posts: 400 |
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animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-02-09/spice-and-wolf-light-novel-series-gets-sequel-on-10th-anniversary/.98489 Seems like it's just one short story though. edit: actually nevermind that. They've posted the short stories on their website and it seems like there will be more in the June issue of Dengeki Bunko (at least that's what I got out of it through the magic of google translate). http://hasekuraisuna.jp/trial/spicywolf-mag2/ |
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Blanchimont
Posts: 3561 Location: Finland |
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@teferi
Any hope there will eventually be enough of those short stories for them to consider publishing a 4th Side Colors volume? |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18426 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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No, I think Holo made her true intent quite clear in her statement at the very end. And frankly, I believe that's exactly what she meant because it would be so perfectly in-character for her.
Wow, I don't know how I entirely missed that! |
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