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Light novel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A light novel (ライトノベル raito noberu?) is a novel with anime or manga style illustrations, primarily targeting teens and young adults. The term "light novel" is a wasei-eigo, or a Japanese term formed from words in the English language. Light novels are often called ranobe (ラノベ ranobe?) or rainobe (ライノベ rainobe?) for short.
Despite their association with anime or manga, light novels are prose, the equivalent of a young adult novel. In recent years, light novel stories have been popular choices for adaptation into a manga or a TV anime series. Light novels are often serialized in literary magazines like Gekkan Dragon Magazine and The Sneaker, Dengeki hp, or mediamix magazines like Comptiq and Dengeki G's Magazine. An example of the light novel would be the Slayers novels written by Hajime Kanzaka. Slayers was made into a manga series as well as a very popular anime of the same name.
Light novels have become very popular in Japan, and the publishing companies are constantly searching for new talent with annual contests, each of which earns the winners a cash prize and publication of their novel. The Dengeki Novel Prize is the largest, with over 2000 submissions annually.
Licensed English translations of Japanese light novels are few, due to low demand and the amount of translation needed being far higher than for manga. The few light novels that have had English translations are reformatted into standard mass market paperbacks or similar to manga tankōbon, but starting in April 2007, Seven Seas Entertainment will be the first English publisher to print light novels in their original, Japanese format of 10.5cm x 15cm.[1] Other English-language publishers that produce light novels are Tokyopop, Viz, DMP, Dark Horse, and CMX.
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There are some traits that are prominent in light novels. Some attribute these traits as the reason that light novels are "childish." These traits may be lost in the process of translation.
In Japanese "original" light novels, furigana are used extensively for two main reasons. First, they are intended for young adults who don't have a strong command of kanji. Second, many light-novel writers prefer to "invent" new application of furigana to their own liking, which are not seen in common usage of Japanese.
Light novels also frequently have very short paragraphs, often only one or two sentences in length, and are usually driven by dialogue. The overall effect is for a very fast read.
- (English) LightNovel.org, light novel news, reviews and releases.
- (Japanese) Lightnovel Wiki